Taking care of your hot tub isn’t strenuous or time-consuming, but there are a few essential steps to keep your hot tub clean and running smoothly. Here’s our hot tub chemical experts’ top 3 tips for maintaining your hot tub from how to clean the water, to changing filters, so you can make sure you’re enjoying your hot tub for many years to come.
Tip 1: Keeping Your Water Clean
As warm water attracts more bacterial growth than cold water, you need to ensure the water in your hot tub is sanitised on a regular basis to avoid build-up of dirt and mould.
This is to avoid bacterial growth and general dirt building up in your water. It needs to be sanitised on a regular basis using Bromine or Chlorine. If you don’t regularly sanitise your hot tub water, the quality will quickly deteriorate, including bacterial growth, cloudy water and even white mould. These problems can be time-consuming to eradicate and in some cases you will need to completely drain the hot tub and replace it with clean water.
There are two ways of using Bromine or Chlorine to clean your water. You can simply sprinkle granulated form of sanitiser into your hot tub until the water reaches the acceptable level for bathing, typically between 3 – 5ppm. The amount of granules you need to use will depend on how many people have been using the hot tub, how long for & how much organic matter is present with in the spa. Alternatively, you can use Bromine/Chlorine tablets. You simply add a tablet to the dispenser and the tablet will slowly release the sanitiser to clean the water and leave it looking crystal clear. As it’s a slow release of sanitiser you may need to supplement with granules to get an instant hit of sanitiser in the spa if the sanitiser levels are low on the test strips.
We recommend to test the water before you enter to ensure you are getting into safe water, and follow up with a test on exit to roughly work out whether you used any sanitiser in said session and replace if required to maintain acceptable bathing levels of 3 – 5ppm.
Our hot tub chemical experts believe it’s vital to test your water everyday with one of the Hot Tub test strips to keep your water quality at an optimum level; regardless of how often you use your hot tub.
Tip 2: Cleaning Your Water Filter
When you own a hard-shelled spa, you can purchase filters that fit into the hot tub to help keep the water clean. Dirty water is pumped through the filter and clean water is pumped out through the jets.
An advantage to these filters is they last for roughly 12 months before they need to be completely replaced. We recommend that you clean your water filter on a fortnightly basis to ensure it is pumping through clean, warm water. Depending on how much dirt and grease is trapped in the filter, you might need to soak the filter regularly, otherwise, a thorough rinse might be enough to keep it clean.
Dirty filters can cause a range of problems for your hot tub; firstly, the water becomes dirty and can lead to you using more sanitiser because of unclean water particles. A dirty filter can also put a strain on other parts of your hot tub, as debris that isn’t getting captured in the filter can get clogged in mechanisms, such as the heaters and pumps, leading to faults and potential damage. Finally, an uncleaned filter can cause less power to come through the pumps, heater and jets, so you can’t enjoy a complete hydrotherapy experience.
Tip 3: Changing The Water In Your Hot Tub
As well as changing filters, it’s important that you change the water in your hot tub on a regular basis. As you clean and sanitise your hot tub, over time the particles will no longer fully dissolve and build up in the water – these are called Total Dissolved Solids (TDS). This is when you will need to drain your hot tub and refill it with clean water.
Depending on how often to use your hot tub ultimately depends on how often you need to change the water, as the more times you use it increases the amount of times you need to sanitise the water which leads to the built up of TDS.
We recommend changing the water on a 3 month basis and to keep checking the water regularly. If you go through periods where you use your hot tub more frequently, such as during the summer, it is best to increase the amount that you are changing the water.
As we mentioned, maintaining a hot tub is not strenuous and doesn’t take time away from you enjoying your spa. By ensuring that you check, clean and change the water on a regular basis, you will be able to enjoy your hot tub for a long time to come.
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