IT'S TIME! Thanks to
@Leebo for getting working on fixing some things in the background while also running around today doing non-TFP stuff!
After we closed yesterday we wanted to begin purging the spa right away. As I mentioned before, it’s a 2008 Cal Spa Legacy Atlantic, 5 seats plus 1 lounger. Typical wood style outside, hard cover with lifting hinge support. We tested, and my wife can lift it off completely by herself, which is good.
Here is the spa before any purging started. Nice cloudy water. They had no filters installed at the moment and as far as I’m aware, were not adding any sanitizers over the winter as they were not using it, but were maintaining it at 80 °F. Perfect for all sorts of nasties to grow. There is ozone installed on the tub, and it smells like it’s working, but it only runs when heating or filtering, and as we all know, ozone is not a sanitizer. (I will be disabling the ozone “soonish”)
The spa is listed at 450 gallons, so we added 3.5 teaspoons of Ahh-Some and fired up all the jets. I positioned the big water diverter valves so that all jets had waterflow (assuming individual jets were open) and opened all the air inlet valves. Just minutes after starting, blackish junk started building up on the white foam as the Ahh-Some went to work.
I can’t remember the exact details, but we let it run most of a jet cycle (15 minutes), then I restarted the cycle and we left for 40 minutes to grab some new filters. I suppose I shouldn’t have left the spa open, as we don’t have a fenced in yard. Oops. I will learn for next time!
I’m not certain if we ran another 15 minutes of jets when we got back or not. In either case, after ~25 or ~40 minutes of jets, this was the result. The water had cleared up (which was a surprise), and there was a nasty,
nasty ring of greenish-black junk around the entire edge of the spa at the waterline.
We wiped it off with paper towels as best as we could, as that was all we had. It was very sticky. We should have worn gloves (as the Ahh-Some says to do). We washed our hands extremely well after this!
Without draining, I added more Ahh-Some and started the jets for round #2. As with before, more stuff started coming out almost immediately, though it was less than before, and less black and more green.
This shot shows the color difference really well. I think I forgot to wipe off inside the skimmer the first round.
All the blacker bits were leftovers from the first wipe. Paper towels are pretty weak to be wiping this off, it’s really sticky stuff!
After running the jets for the recommended minimum of 30 minutes, we ended up with a bunch of greenish junk on the edges and floating around in the water.
The “ad shot”, as I thought of it. Really, really gross stuff, but the Ahh-Some
undoubtedly works! People soak in spas with this junk in their pipes!
I put my utility pump to work pumping out the spa, then closed the lid (I learned!) and ran off to our old house. We grabbed the work light, our cotton washable rags, rubber gloves, and some food, and ran back. The pump was sucking air by the time we got back 40 minutes later.
You can see flecks of junk around the edges of the spa, both at the waterline and down the seats as the floating junk started sticking to the walls as the water dropped.
I wiped all the seat water into the bottom, sprayed the walls with ~1/4 teaspoon Ahh-Some in a spray bottle, and wiped them off with the heavy duty washable cotton rags we have (and some gloves).
Entire tub after cleaning.
I rinsed down the walls with a hose with running water, while at the same time sucking out water with the pump to pull out as much of the debris in the water at the bottom of the spa as possible. Then, using the manual as a guide, I “opened” all the jets...BIG MISTAKE. I ended up closing all of them, because the manual got the turn direction for open/closed wrong.
All filled up. Doesn’t that look so inviting now!?
So now that I listen to the manual, I had to go reaching my arm up past my elbow into 46 °F water to re-open all the jets I closed trying to make sure they were all open! That was NOT FUN! With all the jets open (except maybe some of the 5 floor jets, cause I can’t reach those without entering the spa), I left the spa to heat overnight.
Oh yeah, and I added 0.5 oz of dichlor, which should give 5 ppm FC, just so the new water wasn’t sitting without any sanitizer until I get back to it this evening or on Sunday to start purge #3!.
The spa does not have a circulation pump. The main pump is a two speed pump. If it needs to filter or heat, it runs the pump on low speed and you cannot shut it off. Otherwise, you can run this pump on low speed manually with a 4 hour timeout (so you have some circulation and the waterfall while sitting and talking to people) or high speed for jet action. This pump appears to be connected to about half the jets. This pump is controlled by the “jets” button. The other half of the jets are connected to a second, single speed pump controlled by the “options” button, with a 15 minute timeout.
My plan is to climb into the tub before starting the next purge (water should be okay for that now) to make sure all 5 of the floor jets and the two side jets near the floor (not shown) are open before the next purge starts. That way I know
all the jets are open, so I don’t finish the purging and find out that one or more of the jets was closed the entire time.
I'm also going to continue to try and not kill myself, as my winter boots slipped twice while walking around in the empty tub. Luckily I didn't fall, but I have to keep being careful!
Purge #3 starts tonight. Hopefully less junk this time!
