Ease inline smartchlor

[Ralith]

I put the mineral and smartchlor in once the tub was at temp.

[Ralith]

The ph and alkalinity were pretty low to start and took me a couple days to get up and level, would that have affected it that much? Also, calcium hardness was very low at 50ppm, but I waited a week or so to adjust that to 150 rpm. Alkalinity is like 120ish and ph probably around 7.4-6 last time I checked. Test strips for @ease were showing completely white on top part that says to replace smartchlor, so I started dosing with granular chlorine after every use now. Brand new to this so any advice is welcome!

[Hottubguy]

One more question for you.  Do you have a circulation pump or do you use one of the main pumps to filter water?  If main pump what are your filter settings set for?

[castletonia]

Low pH will cause the SmartChlor cartridge to dissolve quicker.  I also don't believe hardness will have anything to do with that.  Your hot tub is 550 gallons, in my opinion, you would be lucky to get 3 weeks out of a cartridge.

[Ralith]

One more question for you.  Do you have a circulation pump or do you use one of the main pumps to filter water?  If main pump what are your filter settings set for?

I have 24/7 circ pump

[Hottubguy]

One more question for you.  Do you have a circulation pump or do you use one of the main pumps to filter water?  If main pump what are your filter settings set for?

I have 24/7 circ pump

I didn’t realize your tub was 550 gallons. Agree with you would be lucky to get a couple weeks out of each cartridge. That’s a big tub!

[Ralith]

Good to know. And even with granular chlorine, bottle says 1/4 to 1/8 oz per day per 500g and I'm putting more like 3/4 to 1oz and its nearly not showing up on test strips after 20 hours (<.5 ppm). I guess that's not a bad thing if it's doing its job, just seems like I'm needing more than recommended amount.

[sjde]

I just heard about this system and thought it might work for us in our vacation rental. The convenience/peace of mind would have been worth the expense, if we didn't have to worry about our sanitizer level going down when guests are there for 3 nights or 7 or whatever. Our bromine floater doesn't seem to be doing its job. It was explained that the system would know when and how much chlorine to add. (And that you'd only need to shock monthly).  But I see now it won't work since there is a setting. And we might have 2 guests or 7 and some may have kids and use it heavily and others not.

Buba the 1st ingredient you showed (81%) is what my bromine tablets are (86%).

[flamingoezz]

Just bought a Grand Bahama Elite -- arriving in a month or so. Was wondering -- could you swap the smart-chlor cartridges and use bromine cartridges instead in the inline system? First tub but from what I've read, bromine is a bit easier to maintain. If so, what would you use to supplement on heavy bather load?

[bud16415]

Just bought a Grand Bahama Elite -- arriving in a month or so. Was wondering -- could you swap the smart-chlor cartridges and use bromine cartridges instead in the inline system? First tub but from what I've read, bromine is a bit easier to maintain. If so, what would you use to supplement on heavy bather load?

The cartridge system that @ease chlorine comes in the frog system also has bromine cartridges and you use a packet of starter bromine powder when filling to jump start your bromine bank. For additional sanitizing for heavy bather loads etc you use dichlor. When adding dichlor to a bromine tub the bromine in the tub acts on the dichlor and converts it to bromine.

As to what is better and simpler my experiences with bromine have been anything but simple. Bromine unlike Chlorine need to maintain a reserve in the tub called a bank. The action of killing things traps the bromine and makes it unusable and the process of shocking releases the bromine back again. That is quite over simplified but it is the short explanation from myself a non expert.

Chlorine is much more straight forward IMO as it has direct cause and effect. After doing bromine and then @ease in the once a month containers. I was always checking levels and tweaking and never sure when a cartridge was empty and the dispense rate seem to vary throughout the life of the cartridge so I was taking the cartridge out and shaking it to see if it had stuff in it and then changing the setting and adding some dichlor anyway. I figured why not just add a little more dichlor save the money on cartridges and spend less time on the tub in the process. I now just use the cartridges when I’m going away for a week or more.