A simple water care schedule?

[zapta]

Hi all, a spa newbie here. Two weeks ago we got a small CalSpas FZ522L (125 galons). The dealer set it up and left us with starter kit and instructions for a 2 step bromine water care (no floater, ¾ SPARKLE SOCH every day or two, weekly CHLORINE and NO MORE PROBLEMS).  I am looking to simplify the maintenance to a once a week process. Our load is 2 clean bathers 30min, twice a week. Water temp is 100F. No ozonator.

From reading around I am thinking of having ongoing maintenance along these lines:
1. A floater with Leisure Times bromine tabs.
2. Water balancing once a week with Leisure Times Spa Up/Down and Calcium Booster. (Do I need also separate PH/Alk increasers reducers?)
3. Shocking once a week with Leisure Times Renew.
4. Testing weekly with 4 way Bromine strips.
5. Water refill every three months (with pre fill filter and one time Leisure Times Sodium Bromide).

Is this a reasonable plan? Anything missing?  Any other chemicals I should get?

I am not trying to come with the perfect and most cost effective plan, just something good enough that we can sustain and that will not get us infected.

Thanks,

Tal

[chem geek]

Unless you want to plan on soaking with relatively high levels of bromine, then you should plan to add an oxidizer after each soak (after initially adding sodium bromide after a fresh fill), so twice a week.  If you do that, then you won't need any additional shocking and the bromine floater can be set to a dosing level that just provides a low 2-4 ppm bromine background level that should be more pleasant during the soak.

[zapta]

Thanks Chem Geek. How exactly the after soak oxidation should work, do I need to target a specific peak bromine level after the oxidation? Will it decay by itself even if we don't use the spa for few days? If we don't use the spa fro a week or two, should the bromine floater be sufficient to maintain the bromide level or do we still need to sock it?

I plan to use Leisure Time Renew shock. Spa is 125 galon at 100F with two clean adult each time.

[chem geek]

You add enough oxidizer after each soak so that you measure a residual of bromine at the start of your next soak (or after 24 hours if you don't soak the next day).  After you add the oxidizer, the bromine level will go up a lot, but will drop as it oxidizes your bather waste within 24 hours (mostly within 12 hours).  With bromine, you may need to use chlorine once a week or so since bromine doesn't oxidize as much as chlorine.

As for how much is needed after a soak, if there is no ozonator then a rough rule-of-thumb is that every person-hour of soaking in a hot (104ºF) spa needs around 3-1/2 teaspoons of Dichlor or 5 fluid ounces of 6% bleach (3-1/2 fluid ounces of 8.25% bleach) or 7 teaspoons of non-chlorine shock (43% MPS).  Really though, you should just adjust your dosage so that you have some residual 24 hours after the soak and never get to zero and with your somewhat cooler spa temp your amounts are likely to be less.

Leisure Time Renew is non-chlorine shock, but 32% MPS and not as concentrated as more pure product which is 43% MPS, probably because this is more pH balanced.  It will reactivate bromide to bromine assuming you initially created a bromide bank by adding sodium bromide after

[zapta]

Thanks Chem Geek. I will start doing it and figure out the amounts that work.

Three more questions if I may:

1. Every chemical that is good as the after soak 'oxidizer' is also good for the weekly 'shock', just with different amounts, right?

2. The step by step bromine procedure here http://www.rhtubs.com/BROMINE.htm does not mention the after soak oxidatzation. Is it required mainly for small spas (mine is 125 gl, no ozonator)?

3. If I will install an ozonator, will it simplify my spa care?

[chem geek]

No, if you need to shock because you are using bromine, then you should shock only with chlorine.  Shocking with anything else isn't helpful assuming you've been properly keeping up with bather load by dosing properly with some oxidizer (chlorine or MPS) after each soak.  In a chlorine spa, such proper dosing means that one never needs to shock unless there is an unusual event.  The same is true for properly maintained chlorine pools.  Shocking is not necessary if the proper Free Chlorine (FC) to Cyanuric Acid (CYA) ratio is maintained.  For a bromine spa, however, chlorine may be needed on occasion to keep the water clear.  You can see how things go and shock with chlorine only when needed.  The shock level would be around 10 ppm though there really isn't any magic amount since it depends on what's in the spa that bromine isn't oxidizing fast enough (or at all).

Hardly any chlorine or bromine procedures talk about dosing right after a soak and most procedures just talk about regular dosing, sometimes only once a week.  The spa industry has often taken the route of making things simpler to the point of having insufficient dosing and having resulting problems.  The only time you wouldn't need to dose after a soak is if you have your bromine floater set to handle the amount of bather-load and that such bather load is fairly low.  And you are correct that the necessity for dosing after a soak is greater in smaller spas because the bather-load is higher.  Without an ozonator, 20 minutes of one person soaking would need around 3 grams of chlorine equivalent to oxidize the bather waste, but in a small 125 gallon (473 liters) spa this would result in 3*1000/473 = 6.3 ppm chlorine or 14.3 ppm bromine.  So if you were to set your bromine floating feeder to put out that amount of bromine every day, if you soaked every day, then you would be starting your soak with a rather high level of bromine that would likely smell a lot and possibly be irritating.

An ozonator works well in high bather-load situations so would work well in a smaller spa that was used somewhat frequently for chlorine spas and it works generally well for bromine spas instead of using a bromine feeder (tabs) since it can oxidize bromide to bromine.  However, for a small spa with high bather-load such as yours, bromine with an ozonator may be tricky.  On the one hand the ozonator will handle a good deal of your bather waste, but on the other hand if it is that strong it will create more bromine as well and the amount of bromine generated will depend on the strength of the ozonator, how long it is on, and the concentration of your bromide bank.  So if you don't soak for a while, then the bromine level could go up too high because the ozonator could create too much.  With chlorine, the only negative side effect of the ozonator is to use up chlorine more quickly in between soaks.  If you use the spa regularly, then the ozonator can only help reduce the amount of chlorine needed.  So for your kind of situation, an ozonator and chlorine are a good combination.  You may even like chlorine better than bromine.

You can always try different methods, such as after your next water change.  You can try chlorine to see if you like it.  If you don't, you can easily switch to bromine without another water change (the other way around, going from bromine to chlorine, requires a water change).  You can certainly stay with bromine if you like -- I just wanted to give you other options you can try that might work better for your specific situation.

[Chas]

Not to complicate matters, but bromine tabs are about the worst way to keep a tub safe. They tend to make the water entrain air, which makes it look grey as the jets run. That also creates a cloud of chems just above the waterline - bothers my eyes and I don't like the stench! The floater is  going to dose more strongly in moving water, which would seem to be almost 'automatic,' but people forget that you still have to test and then remove the floater when the level gets up there. The brom tabs have over 40% chlorine, and that attacks pillows, metal trim and the cover. I know there are plenty of dealers who set customers up on floaters, and done correctly, it can keep your water safe, but at a big cost in damaged items and in some cases, voided warranties.

But this is one dealer who says; "say no to bromine tabs!" I do so at my own cost: I make less selling dichlor itself, and I get my customer's covers to last years longer. But I think its the right thing to do.

I pitch a very simple doctrine: balance your water as often as you need to, which may mean once a month for some and once a week for others.

Add a bit of Dichlor after every soak, and back that up with a shock once a month (once a week if your spa doesn't have ozone and Nature2).

Make life easier: ozone and Nature2 are worth the money IMO.

 

[zapta]

Thanks Chem Geek and Chas. Reading your suggestions bring me back more or less to the instructions I got from my dealer (please see here http://imgur.com/Sa1Du , I could not figure out how to attache here). He also did not like floaters and he sounded very much like Chas except that his name is Bob. Looks like there are no short cuts.

I will go back then to the after each soak + once a week schedule.

[chem geek]

Say Chas, I hadn't thought about this before, but I bet that the worst cover degradation with bromine tabs was when they not only were BCDMH so contained both bromine and chlorine, but when people used MPS or unstabilized chlorine as the oxidizer and/or for shocking.  Without any CYA in the water, the chlorine would be rather strong and tend to outgas, at least until it reacted with bromide in the bromide bank to make more bromine.  And for those who just started out using tabs there wouldn't be any bromide bank unless they explicitly created one so the chlorine would stick around as is, but not moderated in strength by any CYA.  It would be as bad as using bleach right off the bat with no CYA.

There are more rare bromine-only DBDMH tabs that would probably be more suitable.  Or one could add some Dichlor (or pure CYA) initially after a refill, but I agree with you that at some point it just makes sense to go with chlorine, at least for frequently used spas.  It's for infrequently used spas where bromine, especially that generated by a mild ozonator, would make some sense.  It's too bad that spa manufacturers don't put in some controls for the ozonator to be able to have it be on longer right after one indicates that bathers have used the spa and then in between soaks it's at a lower maintenance level so as to not produce too much bromine (or to risk outgassing ozone which could also damage covers).  This sort of idea is in the "boost" mode one can set at the end of one's soak with the saltwater chlorine generator ControlOMatic TechniChlor though it's only a single fixed boost setting independent of actual bather-load.