Hot Tub Maintenance

[cidley69]

Excited to have fired up hot tub last night.

Wondering what others do for upkeep:

Do you use pleated or disposable filters? how often do you clean pleated or replace disposable filters?

What do you use to check water chemistry? Color match test strips? Or fancier digital meter with strips? Or meter that reads water directly?

For people with water softeners, do you fill tub with softened water or bypass softener?

How do you top up tub in winter, when too cold to use outside hose?

Any other good tips/tricks?

Happy tubbing!

[Tik-Tok]

- Pleated filters, switch them out every 6 months, and replace one set annually (so get 2 years out of each set)
- Colour strips, haven't had a problem yet after 5 years
- NEVER fill a hot tub with softened water. Not even with "salt water" hot tub systems, bypass it if your cold is also on a softener
- In winter I fill it with a hose from my laundry room, through the back door. Chinooks are a great time to empty/fill (which we do twice a year)

One mistake you'll want to avoid... never leave your hot tub empty. I left ours empty for only 2 weeks this summer as it was time to drain, and we were also gone on vacation, so figured why not? Sprung 4 leaks because of it ffs.

Also, and this was a HUGE blunder on my part (and may have attributed to the leaks). Keep using metal/scale remover as part of your weekly water treatment. When we first got our hot tub I used the one that came with the kit, then when it was finished, I completely forgot about it altogether. Fast forward to us leaving the hot tub empty this summer, well all the scale and calcium that built up over 5 years of use, solidified and started breaking away from the lines. Now we've giant flakes of minerals floating around our hot tub. I've been using a water vacuum twice a day for almost a month, but every time the main jets are on, more blows out from the lines. At this rate, it'll take 6 months to get rid of it all.

[ercchry]

Disposable filter, change when I do a fresh fill
Fresh fill is every 4-5 months or so, whenever the water is cloudy when jets are on (due to total dissolved solids)
Avoid filling during runoff season, usually fill around now before it’s too cold, then a fill during a good chinook... if needed, if not probably around April, etc
Just paper test strips, I use to be super paranoid, now I just check after treating to see what the ph is up to
No softener for me, I once tried filling off the hot water tank to speed things up, was pointless... was like a 1 degree difference (tub is like 1500L)
Top up in the winter is usually me bringing in the hose to melt for a few hours... then fill (I leave my outdoor tap on year round) in a pinch I have also shoveled all the snow off the deck into it, dips a couple of degrees but surprisingly doesn’t screw up the levels too much

As for chemicals:
Perfect spa
Refresh
Boost if I miss filling the chlorine floater
Best defence
Spa perfect
Adjust up and down for ph if needed
Have perfect balance too, but rarely need it
Fresh start if I say... leave for 5 weeks and the wife doesn’t do anything and I need to drain

If it’s not obvious, it’s all arctic spa brand for the most part, got my tub at paradise bay, and that’s what they carry

[speedog]

Over 20 years with a tub now, pleated filters - change out as Tik-Tok said, color match strips - so easy, so fast. Fill in winter when warm out, get and cut swimming pool grade bubble wrap to the inside size of your tub as that will considerably drop the amount of water lost during the cold months.

[suntan]

Balancing water in Calgary is actually quite easy because our water is hard, which is a good thing for water chemistry.

Really once you've balanced (if even necessary, like said above avoid runoff season because then the water is a bit too hard), just add chlorine as needed, and use something to remove chloramines after each use.

Never use softened water, it will destroy every metal part in your hot tub.

I have frost free taps and food safe polyurethane hoses so I can fill up anytime of the year.

[Maxt]

Well tried a little experiment with the tub to get rid of the water scale build up. We are on well water that is hard, and the scale builds up easily and rapidly, even with the chemical in check by the test strips. It's quite a chore to wash it down with scale cleaner every time we change the water, so I filled it this time with softened water, turned it back on, and like magic the tub is clean. The water is showing slightly towards the hard side now and I need to lower the pH a bit, but it's pretty close to where it should be, and didn't have to clean it for 2 hours. Next refill I am going to try a 50/50 fill if it stays clean.

[gwill]

Soft water isnt actually good for a hot tub tho! Well water runs into issues with high TDS(solids/minerals), high ph and alkalinity. Normally well water is already super soft which you want to increase for your hot tub.

If your getting lots of scale its because your water needs to be hardened a bit more. Also balancing your ph and alkalinity is important. Use muriatic acid to balance ph and alkalinity as it's cheap to buy 4 litres for under $20 which is good for a few fills.

Tiki toks post from 2017 was spot on 100%.

[Maxt]

The softwater picked up the mineral from the tub, it's testing at 250 for TH, I added Ph lower, showing 7.2and 120 all, which is all in the "ok" bands.
My well water is too hard right out of the well, I think a blend now that the tub is clean will get the water into range with less chemical and messing around. Water is clear on this fill instead of its usual cloudiness and has no foam. I am going to test some blended buckets of water to see the ratio to get the water right off the bat.