Hello! I'm having a water chemistry and decontamination problem that I'm hoping for help with.
My tub:
Divine DL 1040 from Costco
440 gallons
Usine 3-step bromine as detailed on this site.
The backstory:
I forgot to maintain my water balance and sanitizer levels for about a month back in May/June, so of course it was nasty when I finally opened it up. I superchlorinated overnight, drained and rinsed the tub and shop-vacced as much water as possible out of the lines (there are 120-something jets and 4 pumps in the tub so I didn't get it all, of course). I chose not to refill it at that time since I live in CA and we have the drought and all so I left it covered for the entire summer with periodic openings of the cover to let in fresh air.
The problem:
I refilled the tub last weekend and shocked it up to 20 ppm FC, but it was down to 0 ppm after 2 days and I noticed what I later determined to be white water mold after running the jets. Here's how I've tried to treat it:
-superchlorinated to probably 100 ppm FC, ran the jets for an hour, let it sit for 3 days.
-neutralized down to 10 or so ppm FC
-treated with Ahh-some and let sit overnight with the filters floating around in the ahh-some water as prescribed by the manufacturer
-drained the tub and scrubbed the gunk off with lysol wipes and bleach cleaner then rinsed with a hose
-refilled the tub, balanced the water, but the sanitizer demand was high and the white water mold came back.
-superchlorinated to probably 75-100 ppm FC again, ran the jets for an hour, let sit overnight
-treated with Ahh-some again and got way more gunk and a ton of foam that didn't come out the first time (note: I didn't neutralize the sanitizer this time)
-soaked the filters in filter cleaner overnight separate from the ahh-some treated tub this time
-ran the jets all day with the tub putting out mountains of foam and dripping gunk on the sides of the tub and the surrounding plants and lawn
-drained, scrubbed the heck out of it with ahh-some water, rinsed and refilled.
-rinsed and replaced the filters and balanced the water, I can see no evidence of the WWM so far but...
-now the same amount of concentrated bleach that had been elevating the FC by 2.5 ppm is only raising it by about .4 ppm and as soon as I added the bleach and turned on the jets I got a mountain of soap foam (much different in appearance than the foam from the ahh-some superchlorination treatment, these new bubbles are large and have a soapy appearance and feel to them)
Does anyone have ideas about what is going on with my tub or what I should do now?
Thanks!