Marsha Brady refills her tub...

[usuallytrue]

It's been a very long day for this newbie...

After 4 months it was time to do my first drain & refill. Armed with my bottle of Swirlaway I dumped 250 ml into my Sundance Altamar (1/2 the bottle - erring on the side of caution) and turned on the pumps. Phone rang...went inside for 15 minutes...when I came outside I could hardly believe my eyes   Suds 3 feet tall above the rim of the tub.   NO JOKE!!!  I KID YOU NOT!!!!!  

As the suds poured over the sides of the tub all I could think about was the Brady Bunch episode where the kids were doing the laundry and put in too much detergent  I turned off the pumps as I tried to figure out what to do with the monstrous mass of foam.  The sit-com continued as I tried scooping, bailing, blowing - anything to reduce it - all I got was covered in it! At that moment my mother walked into my backyard and saw me and my tub and she burst out laughing!! She laughed so hard she cried I managed to get it under with 1/2 a bottle of Foam Down, but seriously folks...has this happened to anyone else?

What's with the foaming & Swirlaway?  Is it supposed to foam THAT much?  I'm glad I didn't put in the whole bottle.  Did I do something wrong?  Did it foam so much because my TDS was so high?

The rest of the drain & refill was quite uneventful. Changed the filter, wiped out the inside of the tub, added Metal Gon - the water looks great.  Right now it's heating up.

I can laugh at it now, but I'd sure like some insight as to why it created that much foam?!  Any thoughts?

[stuart]

Marsha! Marsha! Marsha!(sorry, couldn't help myself)

The foam is normal for the Swirlaway, thats kind of how it works. I usually pull the filters while I'm using it. You might find that you did not get it all out and still have some foam.

[Bubbles]

Keep the air controls off too next time.

[Warkovision]

Luuuuuuuuuuuuuucy!

Sorry, different generation.

[Brewman]

We just did this last weekend.  We had maybe a foot of foam, nothing near what you had.  We did pull the filter, and the air to the jets was off.  I could see where adding air could really whip things up.

I had a real life example of your Brady episode.  Many years ago, Mrs. Brewman put regular dish soap in the dishwasher, fired it up, and took off for work.  I got home to a nice foamy mess, which took hours to correct.  The funny thing about this is she did it again several months later.

Brewman

[ttodd1]

We did ours this weekend and it didn't foam up too much.  At first it looked as though it might turn into a huge mound but then it seemed to slow down.  I did make sure ALL air jets were off and that the hubby did not press the button for the air (which he was aiming for   )  

[wmccall]

We did ours this weekend and it didn't foam up too much.  At first it looked as though it might turn into a huge mound but then it seemed to slow down.  I did make sure ALL air jets were off and that the hubby did not press the button for the air (which he was aiming for   )  

I too had a huge foaming issue when I used it. I followed the directions and turned off the air, but what I didn't consider was the neck jets are above the waterline and I ran them at full strength along with the waterfalls. That turbulence generated foam 6 foot high in the tub.   For the most part the foam was real clean, but I did see a little crud.    I'm going to use the other half of the bottle on my water change at the end of this month and this time I'll only turn on the neck jets and water fall to a low trickle. (want to move some water through there)

Oh, while I didn't see that swirlaway removed a lot of crud as others have described, I did see some, and I believe most of my spinner jets spin much more freely after I did that, so by that I would say it was worth it.