Hi Bassie: I am still uncertain about your piping. Is the piping flexible or solid? In any event, if you have CS or a mound issue the purge with the vinegar will certainly go a long way in getting your gunk out of the plumbing. Are these whitish particles sticky? Do they look like wet Kleenex tissue pieces? White mound will have that look.
Since a week or so there is small flakes / scale coming out of my pipes
- Thread starter bassie123456
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Hi Bassie: I am still uncertain about your piping. Is the piping flexible or solid? In any event, if you have CS or a mound issue the purge with the vinegar will certainly go a long way in getting your gunk out of the plumbing. Are these whitish particles sticky? Do they look like wet Kleenex tissue pieces? White mound will have that look.
It is pretty solid. I can bend it a bit, but it's not easy to squeeze for example. It is very hard to grap these particles. I am cleaning the filter today and will try again. However, as I remember they do look like (very small) wet tissue pieces. I was able to pick one particle up the last time and you could hardly see it on my hand due to the thin tissue. It also fell apart easily when I touched it. But I will test this again today and let you know.
Hey guys, so I just cleaned the filter. Incredible the amount of flakes / particles that were coming out of it. Good thing the filter catches it. Bad thing it still is so many. I have made a bunch of high res pictures since I now got a good amount of this stuff in a bucket. I also have noticed a couple things:
- The flakes feel sort of dry. Just like wet tissue paper. If you rub it they fall apart really easy.
- The flakes are quite a bit bigger floating around in the tub. Coming out of the filter it's just really small particles. I think because it gets crushed by the water streams.
- After cleaning the filter, my water was pretty clean. After putting all the jets on at full power for like 10 minutes, I saw lots of this stuff floating around, again.
- I have a small waterfall foutain kind of thing. It is not on very often, when I put it on I did see flakes coming out of there too..!
I have attached a couple pictures below. Hopefully someone can pinpoint what it is now. Thanks so much to y'all for the great help so far!
- The flakes feel sort of dry. Just like wet tissue paper. If you rub it they fall apart really easy.
- The flakes are quite a bit bigger floating around in the tub. Coming out of the filter it's just really small particles. I think because it gets crushed by the water streams.
- After cleaning the filter, my water was pretty clean. After putting all the jets on at full power for like 10 minutes, I saw lots of this stuff floating around, again.
- I have a small waterfall foutain kind of thing. It is not on very often, when I put it on I did see flakes coming out of there too..!
I have attached a couple pictures below. Hopefully someone can pinpoint what it is now. Thanks so much to y'all for the great help so far!
So I even took a picture of some of this stuff on my finger, before and after I rubbed it. Sorry, it looks kind of nasty.. xD
View attachment 68847 View attachment 68848 View attachment 68850 View attachment 68852 View attachment 68853
View attachment 68847 View attachment 68848 View attachment 68850 View attachment 68852 View attachment 68853
Hi Bassie: Based on what you are now describing, I think you have a very typical White Water Mold issue. WWM is a biofilm issue. Every surface in the tub is affected.
Keep purging with an effective plumbing and jet cleaner and be sure to have sufficient sanitizer levels in your hot tub. Your filter is harboring millions of these spores. Be sure to totally remove the filter(s) when you are purging or your water flow will be affected. Put every jet on high along with the waterfall. If you have to periodically open some jets and close others to accomplish this, so be it. Just be sure to do a few purges with all jets getting water flow through them. Throw away the filter as well. You will need to start fresh with a new one after you get the tub cleaned. WWM can be eradicated. That is the good news. The NOT so good news is that this can be somewhat time consuming and frustrating.
Hi Ahhsomeguy, thanks a lot! It's really weird because my sanitation is now better then ever. But maybe that's the reason. Could it be this bio-film has been in my pipes all along, but now finally is breaking down due to proper sanitation?
Anyway, I am going to purge my spa and I will see how it goes and if I can get rid of everything without too much trouble. I'll update here once I have done the purges. Thanks again for all your help!
Anyway, I am going to purge my spa and I will see how it goes and if I can get rid of everything without too much trouble. I'll update here once I have done the purges. Thanks again for all your help!
Hi,
It's been a while but I promised to update here. In the meanwhile I did get rid of the 'white flakes' problem before actually doing the Ahhsome purge. I am not sure what solved it. My best guess is by switching to this chlorine method some stuff has come off my pipes, and in a month or 2 I have filtered it all out. Also, I had this soapy residue on my surface. After throwing in a 'spa clean' product there was a lot of scum in the filter and on the spa walls. After rinsing that down I no longer had foaming and this soapy residue. However, it did come back after a month or so, and repeating the same procedure solved it again.
Today I finally decided to do the Ahhsome purge because I still am not confident that my plumbing is clean and I guess there might still be biofilm. So I threw Ahhsome in like 30 minutes ago (3 teaspoons for my 330 gallon tub). It instantly started foaming excessively, I even had to use a little bit of 'foam down' for the foam not to flow outside the spa.
I now see a little bit of scum build up on the walls of the tub, but not too much. I hope my tub was hot enough for the ahhsome to dissolve completely, because I only read afterwards that it dissolves better in really hot water. My water temp is 95 degrees fahrenheit. But since it foams a lot I guess it has dissolved quite good. I did expect more scum looking at the youtube videos of this product, but maybe my pipes are pretty clean after all
So to conclude: while my 'white flakes' and 'oily/foamy residue' issues have been eliminated (with chlorine treatment, filtering and some spa clean miracle stuff), in the meanwhile I will throw in ahhsome on every refill from now (every 4-5 months) to make sure I get all biofilm and scum out of the pipes. Thanks all for your help.
It's been a while but I promised to update here. In the meanwhile I did get rid of the 'white flakes' problem before actually doing the Ahhsome purge. I am not sure what solved it. My best guess is by switching to this chlorine method some stuff has come off my pipes, and in a month or 2 I have filtered it all out. Also, I had this soapy residue on my surface. After throwing in a 'spa clean' product there was a lot of scum in the filter and on the spa walls. After rinsing that down I no longer had foaming and this soapy residue. However, it did come back after a month or so, and repeating the same procedure solved it again.
Today I finally decided to do the Ahhsome purge because I still am not confident that my plumbing is clean and I guess there might still be biofilm. So I threw Ahhsome in like 30 minutes ago (3 teaspoons for my 330 gallon tub). It instantly started foaming excessively, I even had to use a little bit of 'foam down' for the foam not to flow outside the spa.
I now see a little bit of scum build up on the walls of the tub, but not too much. I hope my tub was hot enough for the ahhsome to dissolve completely, because I only read afterwards that it dissolves better in really hot water. My water temp is 95 degrees fahrenheit. But since it foams a lot I guess it has dissolved quite good. I did expect more scum looking at the youtube videos of this product, but maybe my pipes are pretty clean after all
So to conclude: while my 'white flakes' and 'oily/foamy residue' issues have been eliminated (with chlorine treatment, filtering and some spa clean miracle stuff), in the meanwhile I will throw in ahhsome on every refill from now (every 4-5 months) to make sure I get all biofilm and scum out of the pipes. Thanks all for your help.