We’re a busy family of four (five if you count Eugene, our dog). With work, kids in school, sports and other activities, I don’t want to spend a lot of time taking care of the hot tub AND I want it to look and smell great whenever we want to use it. I see the store shelves full of bottles upon bottles of products for hot tubs, but in our years of product testing, our customers’ experiences and in my humble experience, the best thing is to keep it simple – LESS is MORE.
- At water change time, use Breakaway® flush (I skipped this step ONCE – never again).
- Fill the spa using the StartNaturally® filter (I use well water and then because it’s more convenient, I top off the water level with softened water from the indoor tap).
- Use pH down to achieve 7.2 on initial fill and then I don’t chase it.
- Use SpaMoss® and change it once a month. When I change it, I rinse off the cartridge filter-it’s dirty
- After each use of the spa, add a cap of brominating granules.
Full disclosure: We aren’t daily users… weekly at best. Usually used by 2-4 people (adults and kids) who don’t wear a lot of body and hair products and if they do – they have to take a shower first (because otherwise that’s gross – this isn’t a bath tub!).
What if the tub goes bad? On the occasions when we do have a party with lots of users, spilled food and beverage, and other debris, foam, cloudiness and smell are usually the main issues. I wash off (with hot water) the filter a few times each day for a few days and add a cap of bromine after each filter wash. (If it’s really bad, I might wet vac the foam off, but I think I’ve only needed to do that once.) The tub recovers in 2-4 days. I accept this time for filtration, oxidation and SpaMoss® to work, rather than adding foam out, perfume, clarifier, etc. and then soaking my family in chemical soup.