We are going to talk about how to keep the water of your newly purchased hot tub crystal clear and healthy for yourself and your family or friends. You need to know about what chemicals to use, when it's the most appropriate time to add them, and how is the most efficient and easy way to add chemicals.
Also if you have been on vacation or you were too busy with other things and the water cannot be saved by any chemicals in this world, we will talk about how to properly drain your hot tub.
Table Of Contents
Water Sanitation
As a freshly new owner of hot tubs you must know exactly how to check from time to time if the water is sanitized, you might want to make a schedule for its maintenance even daily if necessary. You must use chemicals and other sanitizes to keep control of the viruses and bacteria from the water.
To have clean and healthy water and to ensure that its appearance is pleasant a proper maintenance is highly important to keep the water balance thus the use of sanitizes is the most important and number one priority when it comes to hot tub maintenance.
Choosing the best chemicals
When looking for chemicals for your hot tub, it's always best to check with the user's manual; it might tell you exactly what you need. Usually, with most hot tubs anything that's chlorine or bromine based should suffice. An important factor that you should be aware of is that concentrated chlorine products can cause damage to your hot tub, not just the water but also to the material that the hot tub is constructed from.
Water Chemistry balance
Before you start adding any chemicals to the water, please be aware that no one must be in it. Chemicals that are used to sanitize the water can cause severe eye or skin irritation. Most manufacturers recommend to test the water before each use but let's be serious not all of us will do that; my recommendation is to test it at least once a week.
You can use the three-way test strips that comes with any inflatable hot tub, those can be used to test the Chlorine, pH and total alkalinity levels all in one test, for instructions on how to do this you should consult the user's manual for proper step by step instructions, as some of the tests might be different from one manufacturer to another.
Before you use the test kit provided make sure to check the expiry date because it may come up with inaccurate results if the kit is old and expired. If the results of the tests show that the water is not in normal figures and you need to add chemicals to the water you can use the chemical floater dispenser to add the chemicals to the water.
Something very important is to know that no one must be present in the hot tub while the chemical dispenser is in the hot tub. And of course, before you add any chemicals to your hot tubs check the water with the user's manual for any special instructions as you may have to get the water to a certain temperature or have the bubbles or water jets on for an effective water sanitation.
Drainage
You may come across at some point when the water is green and doesn't look so good to have a bath in it, and no chemical in the world will clean it. This can happen when no maintenance has been done to it; thus you might have to drain the water and replace it. This can be an easy job or quite difficult depending on the type of the hot tub that you have. Always the first thing that you must do is unplug the hot tub for the electric supply because in most cases water is going to be everywhere.
Usually, in the user's manual, there is a step by step guide on how to drain the hot tub of water which is the recommended thing to do before you start, even if you are certain you know what to do. If you get stuck or you've lost the user's manual ask for help by calling a friend that might know how to do this.
If you are uncertain of yourself try to withhold yourself from continuing to drain it, since most inflatable hot tubs have a water capacity of over 200 gallons of water you might cause a mess, especially if the hot tub is placed inside the house.
When it's empty now is the time to give it a good scrub, an important thing that I have to add is that you must never use any type abrasive cleaners like hard brushes or steel wool because you can cause damage to the material that the hot tub is made of. To clean up the hot tub of that unpleasant smell or debris that have appeared while you were on vacation.
You can use just water or any soft detergent, after you are done make sure to give it a good rinse before you start putting it back together. After you have cleaned the hot tub use the wrench that most probably came with it to tighten everything back and check for air leaks before you start to fill it up with water, you can check the user's manual for a proper way on how to do this.
Final Verdict
In conclusion, I must say that I cannot express in words how important it is to have the water in your hot tub clean and healthy for you and anyone else that will use it. If you are unsure about chemicals like chlorine or bromine that most manufacturers recommend you can find all natural types of products to keep your hot tub's water clean, but they might not work as efficient as what manufacturers recommend.
