How To Care For Your Spa Water
Caring for your spa water may seem like a dull subject but it is extremely important to maintain clean sterile water for your enjoyment and safety.
The safest and most reliable way to sterilise spa water is with the use of Chlorine or Bromine. Chlorine is more reactive and volatile than Bromine, ie it acts faster to sterilise the water and evaporates from the spa more quickly. If used as a single accurate dose after each and every bathing, it may well have evaporated from the spa before the next use. This would be ideal so that the water is sterile for use but without an annoying chemical smell and the red eyes people often get as a result. However this course of action requires that the user judge carefully the quantity of chemical required and the time till next use and never forget a treatment.
A simpler but less effective method is to use slow dissolving Chlorine or Bromine tablets to maintain a constant chemical supply in the spa water. The spa user would normally put the tablets in a floating dispenser and leave it in the water all the time. This has the disadvantage that the chemical levels do not match the spa use, (the amount of chemical needed is almost entirely dependant on the level of use the spa gets) leading to times with not enough chemical and times when the chemicals can be so overpowering that they make using the spa unpleasant and damage the spa. This is less of a problem if Bromine is used instead of Chlorine but still not ideal by a long way.
There are systems that help reduce these dilemmas.
- Ozone. This is the most common alternative to halogen use. A simple device takes in atmospheric oxygen O2 and converts it in an electrical arc (mimicking lighting) into ozone O3, a relatively unstable but powerful oxidising agent that “burns” bacteria and organic matter in the spa water.
- Ultra-Violet light. This is used extensively in the sterilisation of swimming pools, drinking water, surgical instruments and sewerage. Spa water passes over a UV light in the filtration pipe-work. UV is a very effective biocide and has the advantage that it also reduces levels of used Chlorine (chloramines) that are an unpleasant by-product of chlorine water sterilisation.
- Metal Ions. Copper, Zinc and Silver ions are dispensed into the spa water from a mineral cartridge that has to be replaced every six months.
None of the three methods above can give complete water sterilisation alone and they all need the addition of either Chlorine, Bromine or a non chlorine shock depending on usage levels.
However there is one more alternative.
Salt Water Chlorination.
This uses salt (NaCl) dissolved in the spa water, as it passes through the filtration pipe-work it goes through an electronic cell that splits the sodium (Na) from the chlorine (Cl) releasing chlorine ions (Cl-) into the spa water and sterilising the water in much the same way as chemical chlorine. The big advantage is that any unused chlorine recombines with the sodium so the user has no chemical smell or stinging eyes.
Better still, although salt water chlorination can be used on it’s own it can also be combined with UV to give excellent water sterilisation and removal of chloramines all without the spa user having to remember anything.
If you have questions or want to know more, please get in touch with me and I’ll be happy to help further. You can visit my website www.devonpoolservices.com or email me at devonpoolservices@gmail.com or call me on 07929 960761.
I’d welcome your comments to this post. I’d also be grateful if you would ‘like’ my facebook business page for Devon Pool Services – just CLICK HERE and ‘share’ with your friends. Many thanks. Hugh Gardner – Director of Devon Pool Services
