Newbies: A good example of water turning bad.

[Vinny]

I'm posting this for the newbies on this board.

I went into my tub Mon night and when I was done added a "dose" of dichlor - 1 teaspoon. This is a typical amount for a single soaker that gives me about 1.5 PPM. I use 24/7 ozone but no Nature 2. This usually this will do for 1 1/2 days when I used ozone for 8 hours a day.

This morning I opened the tub to peek inside and it was cloudy. I hit it with 4.5 PPM dichlor, MPS and some clarifier. Tonight I have 2 PPM chlorine and the tub is still cloudy. Obviously something happened to my crystal clear tub on Mon night.

This is something that can happen to water even if it's crystal clear. Bad water can happen quickly.

My problems could have been:

1) low chlorine dose - even though it worked before, it doesn't guarantee it will work all the time.
2) High PH - My tub's PH was 7.8 on Sat so there was more oxidizing chlorine than killing chlorine. This was compounded that I used a low dose.
3) Bacteria wasn't sufficiently killed before soaking - I doubt this is it since it was crystal clear and I have been soaking on the weekend with more chlorine added.
4) Something in the water the reacted with chlorine - The chlorine was busy working on other gunk rather than bacteria - a good possibility.
5) Combination of the above or something else  - for lack of anything else I can think of.

KNOW YOUR WATER!!!  I suspect that it was a high PH and low chlorine dose that did my tub in! With a PH of 7.2 to 7.4 there is a lot more killing chlorine ions than oxidizing ions. The low dose couldn't produce enough of the killing ions - a little higher dose (3 PPM) may have produced better results.

Going minimal chlorine can work but you really need to know how everything affects the water... prevention is easy, cleaning up is much harder!

[Amanda_Panda]

I'm glad you posted this. Your absolutely right... bad water can happen very quickly! I thought of a couple of other things that may have been the cause as well.

*poor filtration (may need to clean the filters)
*some jets may have been "closed off" not allowing water to flow through, and when they were "opened" the "stagnant" water entered the tub.
*or a possible build up or high dose of organic materials

There's probly more that I didn't think of as well.

[Vinny]

I'm glad you posted this. Your absolutely right... bad water can happen very quickly! I thought of a couple of other things that may have been the cause as well.

*poor filtration (may need to clean the filters)
*some jets may have been "closed off" not allowing water to flow through, and when they were "opened" the "stagnant" water entered the tub.
*or a possible build up or high dose of organic materials

There's probly more that I didn't think of as well.

I'm glad you added to this.

My dealer warned me about closed jets! It is a family run business and we did talk for a while about stuff. He explained how people turn off sections of the tub (1 seat) and after months of non circulation turn it on to get a big cloud of crud!

I also forgot to mention that my water is about 2 months old and may have been affected by TDS and as you said organic load. I have found that just because people say the get 4 months out of water doesn't mean everybody will get 4 months.

[LINDALU]

We are somewhat of a Newbie, about 3 mo's into tubbing.
Had a similar situation where our water became cloudy after friends used it having "slathered" with some type of sunblock before getting in.
For what it's worth we did the following:
First, cleaned our filters, did an MPS shock, then a Dichlor shock to bring it up to about 10ppm, also added a little Sea Klear. (All at different intervals).
Didn't totally clear up the water, but helped quite a bit.
Let the circ. pump and ozonator, do their thing for about 5 days, then repeated the previously listed shock routine.
Water came back to clear again.
Not positive, but think that doing an occasional Dichlor shock at 10+ppm does much to clear up the cloudy water in addition to cleaning the filters and keeping  the circ. pump going 24/7. The PH and Alk. were kept in range also.
Don't know if this is any help but it worked for our water cloudiness.

[Vinny]

We are somewhat of a Newbie, about 3 mo's into tubbing.
Had a similar situation where our water became cloudy after friends used it having "slathered" with some type of sunblock before getting in.
For what it's worth we did the following:
First, cleaned our filters, did an MPS shock, then a Dichlor shock to bring it up to about 10ppm, also added a little Sea Klear. (All at different intervals).
Didn't totally clear up the water, but helped quite a bit.
Let the circ. pump and ozonator, do their thing for about 5 days, then repeated the previously listed shock routine.
Water came back to clear again.
Not positive, but think that doing an occasional Dichlor shock at 10+ppm does much to clear up the cloudy water in addition to cleaning the filters and keeping  the circ. pump going 24/7. The PH and Alk. were kept in range also.
Don't know if this is any help but it worked for our water cloudiness.

Thanks for the info!

I swear by a shock of dichlor and MPS - you got the best of both worlds! I typically don't shock to 10 PPM but do get it to 6 PPM about once a week. This is Vermonter's reason to shock with dichlor vs MPS - get a super chlorination of the tub.

[pg_rider]

So did you have to drain/refill Vinny?

And what is this Vermonter's method I keep hearing about?

[Bonibelle]

Tell the truth, Vinny....it was too much olive oil!

[In Canada eh]

Tell the truth, Vinny....it was too much olive oil!

Good one   Boni

[ORANGEPEEL]

To find the Vermonter's style, go to the following:
1. www.rhtubs.com
2. To Q&A Message Board
3. To Chat room box (upper left), click on BBS FAQ
4. Click on; Dichlor dosing Vermonter's style
Don't really know who Vermonter is, but I've followed it, and it does work for me.

[MarKee]

Remember to never add shock and clarifier at the same time.  You will get some beautiful brown bubbles

[kervis]

Remember to never add shock and clarifier at the same time.  You will get some beautiful brown bubbles

Now, I thought that was "normal" and that you just scooped them out because that was all of the stuff that was making the water cloudy!  :-/

Can someone offer some type of list  of things that go together or are not supposed to go together in the tub chemical-wise?

[windsurfdog]

I went into my tub Mon night and when I was done added a "dose" of dichlor - 1 teaspoon. This is a typical amount for a single soaker that gives me about 1.5 PPM.

Vinny,
This isn't for you as much as the newbies for whom you originally posted.

"Spare the dichlor, spoil the tub"
I always use a minimum of 2 tsp. which brings ppm between 3-4... 8-)

[lskarp]

I think that the brown bubbles with the shock is the congealed materiel that was clouding you up in the first place.  I am pretty sure that this is the case as the brown bubbles that come out of my tub smell a lot like the lotion that my wife puts on after a shower?!?!?  go figure...

I think it is an excellent point regarding the jets being shut off.  when I first read, I was like, "does not apply to me, I keep all of min on", but of course we all have our favorite seats, and the diverters are set to them, not to the vacant ones!!  I will be sure to rotate on the diverters after adding Chlorine after soaking to push through the stuff and also get chlorine water into the pipes.

I am up to 3 months now and the water still looks and feels great.  I think I will hold off another month to drain and start over as it is not broken..  Thoughts???

[windsurfdog]

I think it is an excellent point regarding the jets being shut off.  when I first read, I was like, "does not apply to me, I keep all of min on", but of course we all have our favorite seats, and the diverters are set to them, not to the vacant ones!!  I will be sure to rotate on the diverters after adding Chlorine after soaking to push through the stuff and also get chlorine water into the pipes.

Regarding turning jets off via the jets and not the diverter, I have 4 jets that are either at or just above water level.  I keep these jets rotated off except when I desire their therapy because of the noise level.  When I rotate them completely off, I notice there is still a small stream of water that passes through.  This has always been enough to keep water fresh in those pipes no matter how often/seldom used.  

As for the two diverters, I make a point of rotating both to the center position upon exiting the tub.

[tony]

 

As for the two diverters, I make a point of rotating both to the center position upon exiting the tub.

Good point.  Keep your diverter valves in the center and your venturi valves off when exiting the tub.