Brown Water and Scum in my new Soft Tub

[ah117]

Just set up our SoftTub Sunday and filled with our well water. Initial readings of the water had us add PH UP (our PH is chronically very low) and an initial dose of Chlorine per the specifications on the back of the bottle. Excited that the tub hit 100+ degrees, I lifted the lid today find apple-cider colored water, complete with a very light coating of scum on the sides.

Called the SoftTub customer service hotline, and he recommended lowering the PH (maybe we made it too high?) and giving it a dose of Soft GON ... which I didn't have (just had HTH Metal Control, which I added 2 oz per the back of the jar.) He also recommended loading Chlorine 2-3x since the initial Chlorine treatment isn't registering....

So... Has anyone gone through this? How soon will it take to clear up (if at all?)

Also... I'm concerned about permanently staining the vinyl liner. I've read somewhere about cleaning/agitating the sides during treatment to keep it from staining.

Help?

 

[pooladdict]

You need to get a FTP test kit, those guess strips just won't give accurate enough results.

The high ph did in fact chase the metals out of your well water, personally, I would drain and clean, then add new water using any prefilter you can get. Check ph immediately and never allow it over 7.6. When chlorinating, do it very slowly, the rise in ph, will chase metals out again.

 

[ah117]

Thanks for the thoughts! Our house water has very low PH actually, and we have a soda ash filter attached to the water system to correct. Our initial PH test was very low, so we hit the PH in the spa water ONCE with the product ph UP (which is actually just soda ash, again, turns out.) Any thoughts on how the PH swung completely the opposite direction? I'm just worried about the same situation repeating itself...

 

[pooladdict]

Not sure why you say opposite, soda ash increases ph and high ph chases metals out of suspension. Keep the ph on low end of accepted range.