Thanks for this great forum! I've really learned a lot.
My wife and I installed a HotSpring Prodigy in November, and it's been great so far. We went away for 9 days over the holidays, but before leaving I dropped the temperature and shocked the tub with dichlor. When I returned I noticed a little bit of greenish build-up in a few places on some of the seats, and so I shocked it twice over the course of the day. All of the build-up was gone and the chemical levels looked good. However, the water was a little bit cloudy when I ran the jets.
Over the next week, the cloudiness continued, and I was contemplating dumping my water and re-filling. I went to check my filters this morning, and noticed that one had a lot of green/beige sludge build-up caked onto it (picture didn't attach, but it's aggressive). I'm trying to hose it down, but I wanted your advice on a couple of questions:
1. is it worth trying to save this filter, or should I just replace it? Should I try a chemical bath? Honestly I recommend both, meaning its always good practice to have a bottle of filter clean on hand as well as an additional set of filters you can "swap" back and forth with.
2. do I dump, refill and shock, and then dump again? Should I add any other cleaning products? you'll get varying responses here but after 9 days of no sanitation I would personally dump it and refill it
3. what did I do wrong? I shocked before I left and promptly when I returned. Is this just what happens if you leave town for more than a couple of days? you simply didn't add enough santizer to maintain a level while you were gone for 9 days, next time you leave try and have someone stop by once or twice during a 9 day period to pour in a capful of sanitizer
Thanks so much.
