Settings to Use For Night Cleaning of Pool & Spa

[jeremysm1]

The main problem is that I have a spa that is dirty and seems to be growing algae periodically. I'm curious as to what settings are recommended to turn the water over in the spa? Some details: Spa has a spillover feature into the pool, has an air bubble feature, and also has its own separate jets. There is a floor return but I think it's only used when I manually move a lever near the main pump (I messed with that once and it basically sucks out all the water in the spa until it's dry).

Right now, I have my pool set to clean for approx 8 hours, 6 of those hours are the Caretaker system. What setting, and how much time, should I use for the spa? Do I turn on the spillover for 30 minutes every night? Do I turn on the jets and air first to move the particles around? Or should this be every other day? Should I be concerned about turning the water over so it's properly chlorinated and clean?

I can set this up via my Aqualink PDA. Thanks for any guidance.

 

[mas985]

How big is the spa? I run mine every day for 15 minutes and that is more than enough time.

The algae problem could just be a issue with chemistry. What is your normal CYA level and minimum FC level? How are you chlorinating?

 

[jeremysm1]

The spa is approx 6ft x 6ft. Use a salt system for chlorination. I haven't checked the CYA level recently, but the chlorination levels are perfect in the pool. I'm thinking that I didn't setup the spillover or anything for the spa after the power went out and that created stagnant water there. Now that I have to program it, I realized I don't know what setting and for how long.

 

[mas985]

That is about the size of mine so you shouldn't need much run time. However, there are a couple of factors. It is best not to rely upon the SWG for chlorinating the spa. What I mean by that is when you run the spa spillover, the SWG could be in the off cycle because it is based upon the pool setting. So when you run the spa spillover, make sure the pool has enough FC to properly chlorinate the spa. Test the spa water right after the run cycle for the spa. If it doesn't have enough FC, then either up the pool FC or the spa run time.

 

[jeremysm1]

Thanks! I think this was caused by not having any program running for the spa. I set up the spa to spill over each day for 30 minutes and turned on the air blower and jets for a few minutes and now everything looks clean as a whistle. I did throw in some algae cleaner last week to tackle and cleanup the mess--but the water looks good again. I'll keep an eye on the FC level and water to see if things change or if this was a good long term fix. Thanks!