I took a job a few months ago as maintenance person for a vacation cottage rental company. Had never used a hot tub before and all of a sudden I am responsible for 11. They are all HydroSpa. It took forever to get wiring diagrams but the repair part is pretty simple, even without wiring diagrams. Very basic panels. The biggest concern I have is the maintenance of the water. We drain the tubs and clean them with Clorox Clean Up after each guest leaves. I found a filter cleaner/degreaser that I use pretty regularly on the filters. When I first started, a couple of the tubs would smell like pond water after 4 or 5 days. The local pool place told me I should shock them fairly often. I have shocked alll of them at least once this summer and have been able to get a coupleof them a couple times. According to the boss, none of them had ever been shocked, only used, drained and refilled. I shock a tub when it is going to be vacant at least 24 hours. After it is cleaned and refilled, I dump the shock stuff in and let it circulate 12 to 16 hours, at normal temperature. We try to keep all of them at about 100 degrees. I then drain and wash the tub down and refill it and put the bromine bottle back in So far that seems to suit most people. We don't have a "scedule" for changing the filters, if it looks to bad, I change it. I have used the teststrip totry to monitor the condition of the water but the pool people tell me thaat as often as we drain and clean them that we would have trouble fixing any water problems. Are ther any good books that I might be able to buy so that I can do a better job. I have taken sggestions from th pool guy and I keep carefull note of what Ido to each tub (CYA) We dont want to get into a situation where someone gets sick and it be blamed on the tub maintenance. Are there any good books out there on overall hot tub maintenance? We did use Linseed oil on the exterior of all the cabinets to better protect the woo. This winter I plan to completey disassemble the cabinets and put linseed oil on the inside of the panels. I have one that I need to completely rebild the frame structure.I has nearly rotted away.We have problems with covers. The only place we have found to order them says the shipping doublesthe price of the cover, a $200 cover costs $400 with shipping. Tese tub range from 1 year old to10 years old. Some of the covers are in very bad shape. Foam is busted and waterlogged and the actual covers are getting ragged.

I would no longer use a cleaner/degreaser on the filters. Proper cleansing of the filters is to use 1 part muratic acid and 4 parts water, and soak the filters for between 1/2 hour and 2 hours, then rinse with clear water. In your situation, considering the cost of replacement filters and the chance of liability, I would replace the filters annualy, just to be on the safe side. Soak the filters after each guest. Be a good idea to keep a full set of replacements so you always have a clean filter to rotate out.

Just how often do you drain and fill the tubs? if you are talking after each guest, how long do the guests use the tubs? If it averages a week each, I wouldn't worry too much about maintaining exact chemistry, unless you have a problem. Most problems will come from the guests themselves, as they won't know that laundry soaps, lotions, perfums, body oils, etc... will throw the chemistry off quite easily.

It would be a good idea to shock the tubs before you drain them each time, as bacteria can easily grow in the pipes, especially if they are left drained for any length of time. You can never drain ALL the water out of the tub. So shock them before draining.

The most important aspect of commercial tub use is to make sure you have adequate amounts of sanitizer in the tub at all times. If you aren't checking it daily, you need to be. Guests are dirty. No matter what anyone says. So make sure you have the sanitizer to combat that. The reason the water starts smelling like pond water is lack of sanitizer, and inadequately cleaned filters. If the water smells, it carries the potential to cause illness.

Hope that helps you a little!

I had not heard of using the muratic acid solution to clean the filters. I will look at that some more. Sometimes the guests may only be there one night and then we drain the tubs as soon as they leave. The longest stay we have had is a family was there for 14 days awhile back. The tubs are never drained more than a couple hours. Guests leave by 11:00am and usually we have new ones come in around 3:00pm. If I would put the shock treatment in and let it work about an hour, would that be enough time. We are fairly tight on the timing. For example, this Sunday we have guests leaving and new ones coming in for 8 of the cottages. We have 3 cleaning ladies to do the cleaning. Usually what I do is drain the tubs as soon as I see the folks leave since it takes 45 minutes to an hour for them to drain. This usually has the tubs empty when they get to them. We take the filter out and the ladies use a shop vac to drain the rest of the water. They put the hose on the fitting at the bottom of the filter and pull some water out there too. The sanitizer that is mentioned, is that the bromine? We have bromine in bottles with holes drilled in them. The boss said he used to have "flaoters", but they were always thrown out of the tub. We haven't had any odor problems since I shocked them and have been following the steps I have mentioned. Thanks

Most commercial pool filter cleaning solutions are simply glorified muratic acid. So why pay the price?

A faster way to drain the tubs is to use a pool cleaning hose. I use this with my tubs and can usually drain them in about 15 minutes or less.