Enzyme Methods?

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M

marmo

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Nov 6, 2013
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Northern New Jersey
I did a search about a specific product called WatersChoice on the forums and didn't find any useful info. I purchased a new Divine Spa from Costco manufactured by Clearwater. At any rate it came with a product called Waterschoice that claims to be an enzyme method and if followed correctly can keep your FC under 1ppm. I'm a little weary so I called the company and was told it could be used for my pool as well. Does any of the experts have experience with the product? As of now I've been following pool school, the TFP calculator, using simple household bleach and my SWG to keep my pool pretty much spotless. I've had one outbreak of algae this year but it was my own fault thinking I could depend on my SWG and my Intellichem by themselves but quickly learned after a lot of reading on these forums that wasn't the correct approach. Anyway using waterschoice product I'm told that the hot tub will be cloudy for approximately a month and then it should be crystal clear with my ability to keep the FC very low. Again hoping the experts can chime in with your opinions.

thanks in advance
 
I wouldn't complicate it with enzyme methods. I use the dichlor then bleach method for my spa. It's detailed in the How do I use Chlorine in my Spa (or pool)?) thread. Spa is always clear and it's simple to maintain, just watch the pH and add a cup or so of bleach after soaks and occasionally during the week if I don't use it much. I don't even use any MPS as is in the sticky.

Is your SWG too undersized for your pool that it can't keep up on its own? Are you adding bleach every day? A SWG should be able to keep up with normal chlorine demand as long as you have adequate CYA to allow it to keep up. If you can post full test results and some more description of how you're maintaining your pool, that would help. This may be off-topic for this forum, so feel free to start another thread if you'd like help with being less reliant on adding bleach while using your SWG.
 
@JVTrain, thanks for replying but I'm fully aware how to maintain the tub using sanitizers since this isn't my first tub. However, I'm trying to find out if anyone here has had experience with this product or something similar based on enzymatic cleaning.
 
If the enzymes work properly, then they can help oxidize bather waste preferably using oxygen in the water as the oxidizer. However, if they just accelerate oxidation from chlorine then you won't be saving any chlorine. Because enzymes oxidize bather waste, they make more sense to use in high bather-load situations such as residential spas used every day or two. Otherwise, in an infrequently used spa or in a residential pool they don't make sense since there isn't much to oxidize and therefore they can't save on chlorine usage. Most chlorine loss in residential outdoor pools is from sunlight, not from bather waste. One person-hour of swimming in a 10,000 gallon pool only requires 0.1 ppm of FC to oxidize the bather waste. One person-hour in a hot (104ºF) spa that is only 350 gallons requires around 7 ppm FC to oxidize the bather waste.

It is for this same reason why an ozonator makes sense in a heavily used spa but not in a less frequently used spa nor in a residential pool that is typically low bather-load.

Finally keep in mind that usually the enzymes are more expensive than chlorine so unless they actually save on chlorine usage they won't save you money. With the Dichlor-then-bleach method, you add chlorine after every soak and you usually start your next soak with 1-2 ppm FC which with 40 ppm CYA in the water and at 104ºF is actually equivalent to no more than 0.2 ppm FC with no CYA.
 
@chem geek, excellent explanation, just what I was waiting for. I did purchase a 1 quart bottle for my pool at a cost of $130 which is supposed to work for the entire season. But I'm not even sure I use that much in chemical costs. I pay $1.87 a gallon of bleach @ 5.25‰

On another note with my old spa I used a Solaxx CLG20A Saltron Mini Drop-in Salt Chlorine Generator. I keep my spa's salt water by pumping in my pool water since they are next to each other. I had no problems with my old spa by just keeping CYA and PH balanced. The Solaxx did a fine job maintaining FC levels with an occasional shock after heavy loads ie parties.

Would appreciate a response so I can learn. :)
 
You can read about what happened when enzymes were added to my pool (during the same experiment where a phosphate remover was added) in the thread Orenda Technologies PR-10000 and CV-700 Products. The guy who runs the company and came to my house was fully expecting to see significant reactions (bubbles/foaming) from the enzymes and instead saw very little occur and noted that the pool was exceptionally clean. I told him that was because it was properly maintained using chlorine alone at an appropriate level for the CYA level and that the pool was opened to sunlight regularly as well (since the breakdown of chlorine produces hydroxyl radicals that are very short-lived but powerful oxidizers). So your enzymes for you pool are a sunk cost and won't help unless you have some sort of accident like spilling oil into the pool or perhaps if you get a lot of people using sunscreen and want to get rid of it faster (though using a scum ball is cheaper for that sort of thing).

Using a saltwater chlorine generator for a spa is fine and works well, but as you've noted for higher bather loads you need to add some additional chlorine to oxidize the extra bather waste.

Anyway, given the low bleach cost it sounds like the enzymes aren't going to be saving you any money even if they did reduce the chlorine usage, say in the spa.
 
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