sanitizers

[nicker]

I know this has been brought up before but.  A friend of mine just bought their tub a month ago.  He uses lithium.  Until him, I have never heard of this.  He is getting major foam, I mean its 6 inchs thick in spots.   He was told by his dealer that lithium causes this.  I found that very weird.  He is going to wait until he is all out of lithium and then switch. He says he was thinking of going Bromine.  I use dichlor and refered him to that.  He said his dealer scared him away from it because he has kids.  Not sure why that matters.   Does anyone have and insite on this matter?    I have never had any problems with dichlor and rather like it.  I have heard bromine causes Ph and Ak to rise and fall.

[Brewman]

With the Brilliance Bromine that I use (contains no chlorine) and their MPS shock, PH does tend to drift low over time, but it's easy to get back in range using Ph increaser stuff.  Not sure if it's the shock or the bromine doing that.
I don't see why using dichlor would be a problem with kids- chlorine is used to sanitize swimming pools, and that doesn't seem to be a big issue anywhere.
Brewman

[tony]

The biggest difference in lithium and dichlor is that dichlor contains CYA and lithium does not.  They are both chlorine.  Lithium has a higher pH and you would need to use more product to get the same free chlorine readings which would add to TDS faster.

[Sunny]

The biggest difference in lithium and dichlor is that dichlor contains CYA and lithium does not.  They are both chlorine.  Lithium has a higher pH and you would need to use more product to get the same free chlorine readings which would add to TDS faster.

I’ll show my ignorance . .  .

What is CYA & does it have something that could be harmful to kids?

[Mendocino101]

Is the foam simply soap residue from suits .....

[doodoo]

Is the foam simply soap residue from suits .....

Excellent question. My next door neighbour (who has a tub from a big box store) had a foam problem last summer. A serious foam problem. He brought his water in to be tested I don't know how many times to a local pool/hottub store so much so that they started charging him for the tests. Still the foam would not go away.

A single question from his kids provided the solution.

Daaaaad! can we go outside and play? sure answers the dad! what would you like to do? can we make bubbles like we did before? sure answers the dad! whereupon the other sibbling turned to her brother in an acusatory tone, yeah but don't drop the bottle of soap in the hot tub this time!

The tub was emptied and the kids were grounded. I laughed and laughed.

[nicker]

Is the foam simply soap residue from suits


I think that may be part of the problem.  As its  a new tub and he didn't know about the soap residue.  How ever he did ask his dealer about the lithium and the dealer said it causes foam.  So I was just wondering what you all thought.  I think its soap too.  As the foam is the same as you get with soap.

[bulmer4nc]

We found that if our calcium hardness is too low (soft water) we get lots of foam.  Make sure the hardness is in the 150 - 200 range and you'll know for sure if it's the soap residue or not.  Also make sure that when you clean your filter with the spray cleaner you rinse REALLY well...  Cleaner residue in the filter can cause as much a foam problem as soap in the suits...

[ArcherC]

What is CYA & does it have something that could be harmful to kids?

CYA stands for Cyanuric acid, which most people would refer to as a stabilizer or conditioner. It is used in chlorine to keep it from being used up by the UV rays of the sun. This really is not important in a spa most of the time, but it is important in pools. The recomended range for CYA is 30-50, but they have tested it up to 200 without any negative affects. However, one thing to be aware of is that the CYA reading does affect your Total Alkalinity reading. For instance, if you have a CYA reading of 150 and a Total Alkalinity of 100 then you could have a problem because your actual Alkalinity is 50ppm. To find your real TA, take the CYA and divide by 3 and subtract it from the TA. So in the example above, 50ppm was taken from the TA. This can be important to know because you could always be having a low ph and everything else looks great but you just can't make the PH stay within range. Since alkalinity affects ph, this could be a factor.
I have never heard of the CYA affecting kids.

[drewstar]

I thought some foam could be caused by scummy water? No? Is all foam soap foam?

[HotTubMan]

With the Brilliance Bromine that I use (contains no chlorine) and their MPS shock, PH does tend to drift low over time, but it's easy to get back in range using Ph increaser stuff.  Not sure if it's the shock or the bromine doing that.
 I don't see why using dichlor would be a problem with kids- chlorine is used to sanitize swimming pools, and that doesn't seem to be a big issue anywhere.
Brewman

Its the MPS that lowers your pH. MPS has a pH of 2.3.

As for the Lithium, the fact it has a high pH could cause foam if the pH is not corrected.

As mentioned the suits could be the cause of the foam as could:
excessive moisteriser use
use of self tanners
deoderant
soap from your body
any hair/skin care products
dirty filter

Lithium is often used in conjuction with pucks. Pucks will errode pH and TA while the Lith-Chlor will off set the effects of the pucks (to some degree)