While some people may think that once they fill up their hot tub they’re good to go. They don’t have to worry about it or the water until maybe they drain it around the 3 month mark, or was it 4 months..? This is not that case.
That doesn’t mean you have to put on your lab coat, hire an assistant, get out your £120 Free-Chlorine Ion Colourimeter and test every 2 hours and then plot the results on a 3D Scatter graph. You’re not a chemistry undergraduate. You’re meant to be relaxing. You only need to learn a few basics and your hot tub water and more importantly the life span of your hot tub will be better off for it.
First off let’s start with a comparison. Your bath. Would you fill up your bath and then keep reusing the water for 3 months? No, you wouldn’t. Granted this is a bit of an extreme comparison as your hot tub will be filtering the water in those 3 months but you get the point. You also have to remember that because you’ve set your hot tub up to maintain a toasty temperature of 38°c. Hot water is very good at extracting any ‘impurities’ from our body. Things like oils, makeup, sweat, general dirt. Any bacteria found in those ‘items’ will get in to the water. This means that any bacteria in your water will be having a field day and reproducing like crazy.
One thing we put in a hot tub that we don’t put in our bath tubs (unless you’re some form of Mexican gangster..) is chemicals. Adding Chlorine to the water daily acts as a disinfectant that will kill any bad bacteria in there. You must also keep the pH and Alkalinity of your water balanced. This is so that the Chlorine can actually work effectively, this is very important.
Another thing that you must try and do weekly is give your filter a quick clean. Even if you have crystal clear water and keep on top of it with Chlorine everyday, your filter will still get dirty from the aforementioned bodily ‘impurities’. It’s a good practice to take your filter out once a week and give it a clean with your hose. Even better than that would be to pick up one of our Aqua Combs and use that as well. It attaches on to the end of your hose and its forks allow you to get right in between the filter pleats. If you don’t do this weekly clean, your filter can become caked, for a better word, in grime. This not only looks disgusting but also may cause some problems for your hot tub. Just take a look below at some example of dirty filters.
Firstly, by having a filter that is covered in muck, it means that your filtration will be impaired. The filtration pump will have to work harder to pump the water through your filter. This will mean that your hot tub won’t filter as much as it previously did which will cause more dirt and grime to stay floating in your hot tub water. Following on from this, the weaker filtration will also cause your hot tub to take longer when heating. This is because to heat the water evenly, the hot tub will circulate the water while the heating element is in use. Since the water is not circulating as much due to a dirty filter, the tub will take longer to heat up. This also means that you will see an increase in the daily running cost of your tub.
Don’t forget that you will still need to properly clean your filters roughly every 3 months using a good filter cleaner. Steeping your filters overnight and then letting them dry properly. You can find our Filter Cleaner here.
Another issue that can arise from dirty water is a limescale build up. Yes just like in your kettle, limescale can build up around the heating elements in your hot tub. This is very problematic as it means that the heat transfer from the heating element to the water is blocked by the limescale. This means that in the long run, you will be paying more to heat up your water. This increases your daily running cost. Here’s a picture of what a limescale build up on a heating element looks like.
*Issues like this aren’t usually identified unless a hot tub is serviced*
That is why every so often, usually around every 4-6 weeks, we recommend running a descaler through your water. We use our No Scale, which works great at removing any limescale build up. Please be aware that you will need to have a clean filter before your descale your hot tub. This is so that any limescale that is dislodged will be collected by your filter.
– Richard | TheHotTubWarehouse