Leisure Time Sodium Bromide and Renew

[Aubade]

Hi all. Sorry for this basic question, but I read the bromine sticky and searched but I'm still confused. Basically my husband has been taking care of the hot tub with a pretty lax method, and after the recent news about people dying at the state fair I'm a little nervous it's not good enough! He's been putting in Leisure Time Sodium Bromide to establish a reserve, then adding Renew weekly to oxidize. I think based off the sticky (and what I just read on the bottle!) I definitely need to add the Leisure Time Brom Tabs to the routine in a floaty.

But my big question is according to the sticky you should still be super chlorinating once a week, and using liquid bleach. Do we still need to do that even though we're using Leisure Time Renew to oxidize the bromide weekly? Because according to the bottle it's a non-chlorine shock, and from what I read here it seems that the potassium peroxymonopersulfate does basically the same thing as chlorine?

I've been using the TFP method for our swimming pool with great results, so I want to make sure we do whatever you guys recommend for the spa from now on. Btw I also just purchased a Taylor K-2106 since the test kit I have for the pool doesn't measure bromine.

We had a big storm this week that blew off the lid and some leaves got in, so I'm thinking we may want to refill it again and start from scratch even though we refilled it just a couple weeks ago and I skimmed out all the leaves. Not sure if that's necessary though, as long as we correctly superchlorinate it...

edit: just thinking this might be helpful to know - it is a very old hot tub from the prior owners, a HotSpring brand Prodigy model from I think 2005, 325 gallons.

 

[Texas Splash]

Aubade, sorry your post has been sitting for so long. I think the whole bromide thing has a few people leary about jumping in, myself included since I don't normally deal with bromine. But I will tag @Donldson and @JoyfulNoise who are well-versed in that issue. Once one of them gets back online I'm sure they can speak that language for you.

 

[wogster]

There are two ways of using Bromine, first is to establish a bromine reserve, and use an oxidiser to reactivate it. Chlorine acts fine as an oxidiser, and if you have a swimming pool, you already have it on hand. The tricky part is knowing how much to add, which is not that difficult, you add a small amount, wait an hours test it, if it's more then 5 and less then 10, your good. If you started at 2, and your now at 4, add the same amount again, keep a log of where you started and how much you added and where you ended up, it doesn't take long to figure out exactly how much to add, to go from a certain point, to where you want to be.

The other way is to just test, if your low add some, often for spas the container of bromine will tell you how much to add for a given size pool, test again in about an hour...

With a spa, if you can't get it to balance, or it's way high, toss some Ah-some in. then drain and refill.....