Hot Tub Maintenance: How to Care for Your Backyard Get-away

Maintaining a spa can be accomplished by a 5 year old, when you have the correct knowledge and the right maintenance products are present. Spa care is a simple matter of knowing what chemicals to use, how much of it to use, and when to use it; and rarely, maintenance will involve srubbing or vacumming.

You will need these chemicals to care for your spa:

1. Bromine tablets
2. Spa shock
3. ph increaser
4. ph decreaser
5. stain and scale control

When initially filling your spa with water, bromine tablets and spa shock should be added according to the volume of your spa and the directions of the chemicals use; for example, it may say add in 1 oz. of spa shock for every 500 gallons, so if you have a 5000 gallon spa you would put 10 oz. The bromine tablets, the most important of all the spa chemicals, is added into the filter of the spa, sometimes in a narrow clear tube just wide enough to fit the bromine inside of it. Shock should also be added at once per week, and post shocking do not get in the spa until chlorine levels are down which is usually around five hours.

When finding out what amounts of what additional chemicals you may need it is often easiest to go to your local pool and spa maintenance center and get a spa sample, which is the water you bring maintenance center from your spa. They will run tests and get information from you such as size and type of spa, and will then give you a detailed sheet of directions on what chemicals and how much of those chemicals to put in your spa to most effectively reach "spa nirvana".

Instead of taking the drive to your local spa maintenance center you can always test the water yourself with a spa water treatment kit, which usually includes strips with colors and has a key that tells you what each color means, such as purple may mean add bromine, orange- raise pH, etc; but, this type of water testing is not as detailed and precise as what you would get from a maintenance center.

From time to time while using your spa it will create stain and scale, this is when you bring out the stain and scale control chemical, but usually it is also time to drain and refill your spa, which should be done about every two months. After water is drained you should clean the spa surface with a nonabrasive cleaner and sponge to make sure that previous stain and scale is not present when refilling.

Here is some quick fixes for a couple of common spa problems:

Cloudiness

1. Make sure filter is clean and working properly.
2. A pH greater than 7.6 should be treated with pH decreaser to solve a high ph and cloudiness problem. The pH
should be between 7.2 and 7.6.
3. It may be time to drain and refill, especially if reoccurring stain and scale is being produced.

Irritation

1. pH may not be in the safe zone of 7.2-7.6
2. Chlorine level too high, wait until level has dropped before entering spa again.

Once all maintenance has been completed and "spa nirvana" has been reached, you may reward yourself by taking a relaxing soak in your spa while enjoying the fruits of your labor.