New hot tub owner...used hot tub. Set up?

[Powderfinger]

Hello all!  

I tried to use the search function ( like any new guy should   ) but I could find anything - although I am sure it's around here somewhere...

My wife got a hot tub from a friend of a friend who was having their house foreclosed on and didn't want to leave it behind...so we are actually into this thing for very little money.  It is a Hydro Spa Mark III Tiara, according to the Hydro Spa website.  I'm not sure what year, or if that even matters.

We just got it on the covered patio, and the electrician is putting in the power now, so we should have at least the initial installation complete in an hour or so...

This thing set on a trailer for a few days, in numerous rain storms, and there is algae on the seats and such.  I sucked out the standing water with the ShopVac this morning prior to lifting it.

I guess I told you all of that to get to this:  Can you tell me what exactly we should do to this thing before we use it...and EXACTLY what I should ask the guy at Pinch A Penny for.  

We live in a small town north of Tampa, and Pinch A Penny is the only pool supply store around us - unless I drive the 40 minutes to Tampa (which I can do if needed).

Thanks.

Scott

[Bonibelle]

check a few threads down..Hot tub start up. There are several members who had/have similar situations and you may want to follow the same instructions

[Powderfinger]

Thanks...I read that.

We cleaned it today, and ran it for a while tonight...

My wife read the bottle wrong and added about twice as much "ph stable" as the bottle said...it called for 1 quart per 300 gallons - she added 1 quart and our hot tub is only about 150 gallons.  The water is really cloudy, but we will let it run overnight and see what happens.

If it is still cloudy tomorrow should we just drain it and start again?  

The tub has an ozone thing, so we are going to use bromanating granules, which I believe will be ok, right??

Thanks,

Scott

[JLOCO123]

do you still need help with you hot tub?  let me know i can help you i am here intampa

[stuart]

I don't know pinch a penny tubs but what we do is ask the customer to load up all their Chems and Accessories, bring them in with a water sample along with any paperwork they got with the spa so that we can set them up with the right program for them.

[bosco0633]

my sister bought a house last year that had a beachcomber hot tub.  The tub had been sitting for months without care.  When the jets were active all kinds of algae that looked like linguinee pasta and green algee were present in the tub.

The first thing that you should do is clean clean clean, but you will need to clean the lines.  there are two methods that I have read to really ensure that you kill bacteria from the tub sitting.  I have heard of people using a ton of dichlor, running for a day non stop and then drain and refill.

For us, dichlor is difficult to find around here so we bought 5 bottles of bleach loaded the tub with it and ran it for a day.  The tub was gross the stuff that was coming out of the lines.  We drained it, refilled it added swirl away ran it and drained again. Then filled back up with water.  

the tub was better than new, I mean really clean no gross bacteria and algae floating around the tub.  

I then put him on a bromine maitenance system and we were good to go.

Try to remember in the beginning, use as little chemicals as possible.  We always tend to over use in the beginning and need to drain water and refill often