Hot Tubs 101

Everyone. And welcome to Hot Tubs 101 by Swim University, where we help you keep your hot tub clean and clear all year. My name is Matt, the founder of swimuniversity.com. On this episode, we're talking about weekly hot tub maintenance. Let's dive in.

Real quick. If you want more help taking care of your hot tub, be sure to grab our free hot tub cheat sheet at swimu.com/spa sheet. Now hot tub maintenance doesn't have to be hard. In fact, it only takes a few minutes each week to keep your water clean and clear. And all you need to do is follow this 3 step process, test, add, and rinse.

So first, we're gonna test the water. This will help you figure out how much chemicals you need to add. I recommend using a four way test strip because they're easy, they're affordable, and they measure everything you need for weekly maintenance. And it only takes about 20 seconds to get your water chemistry reading. All you gotta do is dip it in the water and compare the results to the back of the bottle.

Each week, you're gonna check your total alkalinity, your pH, and your free chlorine or bromine levels. 2nd, you're gonna add your chemicals. Now that you've tested the water, you gotta balance it. You wanna start by balancing the total alkalinity and pH. Your alkalinity shouldn't fluctuate too much week to week, but make sure that it's relatively in range because it helps to stabilize your pH.

Your pH, on the other hand, can fluctuate quite a bit, especially if you've used your hot tub a lot. When your pH is out of range, it can irritate your skin and your eyes and corrode your hot tub services, and it can even affect your sanitizer. So you'll wanna adjust your pH before adding any chlorine or bromine. Now depending on your test strip results, you may need to add one of these chemicals during the step. Either alkalinity increaser, pH increaser, or pH decreaser.

Then it's gonna it's time to add your sanitizer, and this is usually chlorine or bromine. Your sanitizer is what kills contaminants like bacteria and algae. And you'll need to top it off weekly to keep your water sanitary. Bromine is gentler on your skin and doesn't break down in the heat. So it's a popular choice for hot tub owners.

But chlorine works too, and it's less expensive. But you never wanna mix the 2 together. Bromine and chlorine come in either granules or tablets. And you'll add granules directly to the water, or you add your tablets to a floating dispenser or a built in chlorinator. Now it only takes a few teaspoons of granules or a few tiny 1 inch tablets to sanitize your water each week.

And finally, you add shock. Now shock helps kill contaminants and keeps your sanitizer active in the water. Once a week, you're gonna add either non chlorine shock, aka oxidizer, or chlorine shock. Oxidizer is great for weekly maintenance, but chlorine shock is more powerful to help clear up, you know, if you have any cloudy water, murky water, green water, any of those problems. Now you wanna wait 20 minutes between adding chemicals.

You wanna run the jets on low, turn the air blowers off, and this will help the chemicals to circulate and dissipate. And you wanna make sure that your hot tub water is actually warm. So wait till it gets at least 80 degrees or higher. Fahrenheit, by the way. Finally, it's time to rinse your filter.

Once a week, you're gonna remove your filter cartridge and rinse it with a garden hose. This is gonna keep your filter system running smoothly and keep contaminants from circulating back into your hot tub. And if your filter is really dirty, you just wanna soak it in a filter cleanse overnight. And I recommend keeping a spare clean set of filter cartridges on hand to use in your hot tub while the other one's being cleaned. And that's basic weekly hot tub maintenance.

And remember, if you need more help with hot tub maintenance, grab our free hot tub cheat sheet at swimu.com/bawsheet. And if you found this episode helpful, subscribe for more hot tub maintenance tips on your favorite podcasting app. And when you do, leave us a review because your support helps more hot tub owners just like you find this show. That's it. Thanks again, and happy soaking.