Water Maintenance Issues

[score1more]

Hi Everyone,

I have a couple questions on water maintenance.  We've been using our Hot Spring Aria since March.  We use it about 2-3 times per week, sometimes more, sometimes less.  The spa came with the Silk Balance System along with some other chemicals.  I've been using the InstaTest strips in the red snap-lid container.

My first question is on Bromine.  The spa came with Silk Balance bromine pods, and recommend using them after every bathing session.  They also recommend chlorine on startup and (i believe) once per week.  When I use the bromine pods, my pH gets out of balance and I end up having to add PH reducers into the water.  I've changed the water three times so far, just to hit the reset button on the levels.  On the second go around, I didn't use bromine and only used chlorine as a sanitizer.  And I didn't have any trouble with pH.  On this water fill, I tried a few of the bromine tabs in lieu of the chlorine and pH went high.  Here's the question.  Is there anything wrong with not using bromine and just using chlorine as a sanitizer? 

Second question is on calcium hardness.  I'd been going by the test strip levels on hardness, which recommends 250-450 ppm.  The manual states 50-150 ppm on hardness.  I'd opt to follow the manual, but I'm curious why the discrepancy?

Thanks for your input!

[Sam]

You can use chlorine in place of bromine without any issues.  I wouldn't worry about calcium hardness.  In reality, the proper calcium hardness depends on ph, alk, tds, etc.  Most companies just provide a general range guideline based on assumed levels for ph, alk, tds.  We stopped even worrying about calcium hardness a long time ago.  Conventional wisdom was that low calcium hardness could cause corrosion but that has been challenged in the last few years. 

Short answer is; anywhere between 50 and 450 is perfectly fine.