I'm wondering why the water in my spa feels so nice and soft and silky when I have a fresh fill the first time I use it, then the water starts to feel worse with each use???? dries the skin terribly. the first use we usually don't quite have the ph down to "good" range yet and TA still on the slightly high side?? would the TA and PH levels make a difference to how the water feels??? I'm told I'm not supposed to run the TA and PH outside a certain range.
AND THERE'S THIS G*****M RASH I CANT GET RID OF!!!!! All readings are normal and I shock with dichlor after each use. I shock the SH** out of the spa and still get this *(*&()(*)& rash! I use a bromine floater to keep a steady bromine level and it is equipped with Ozone. this has been going on for a year and I"m ready to sell lthe spa. Doctors are useless, they call it eczema and give me a paste to clear it up but it comes back as soon as the paste runs out. the spa water "feels" terrible after a few uses but everything tests great> why am I having trouble??????

Get rid of the bromine feeder, and instead just use dichlor after each use.

When you're adding all that dichlor to shock, it's reacting with the bromine already in the water, and it turns into more Bromine, over-brominating the spa, and lowering the PH, making for quite the caustic environment.

Try adding about 1/2 teaspoon/100 gallons after each use, and 1 teaspoon/100 gallons to shock. The dichlor is PH neutral, and not very stable, perfect for use in Spas.

You'll need to empty and re-fill.

Enjoy,

!Swine

I tried throwing out the bromine floater almost a year ago. that didn't help. This last fill two weeks ago is the first ive used bromine in at least 10 months.out of desperation I tried going back to square one because when we first got the tub I didn't have any trouble. last summer getting no help from the dealer I was draining and filling the tub every two weeks to try different things, even at one point adding four gallons of bleach on the advice of an online "expert" to try to kill bacteria they believed to be present.
currently I do not use di-chlor shock, just the floater and the mps shock that goes with it. I just don't understand what if anything I'm doing wrong. My wife isn't affected by rashes but she gets dried out from the water. My situation is that on a fresh fill the water is usually very soft and my skin tolerates it well, but after a few days it turns bad and I get a rash. WHY???

try and find a BioGuard dealer near you. Go to their website and use their dealer locator. Ask if they're spa water experts, and bring them some spa water and tap water.

Hopefully the dealer you're having trouble with is not one!

This may help. http://www.scarritt.com/spasanitizing.htm or check doc's site for much more.

thanks, will try. maybe i've been a bit stubborn insisting my dealer I paid thousands to might agree with me that the only way they can help other than months and months of silence is to send someone out and get water samples. It never happened. One would think they'd at least do that? No.

I'd been wondering if the iron content of our well water might be screwing with the chems, but ... dealer won't take a water sample so....... I gotta find an "expert" somewhere else.

JHKnight - I have not been a spa owner for more than a month but I have been caring for pools for many years. I am also a chronic psoriasis suffer (with Psoriatic Arthritis which is why I now have a spa) so I know what bad skin feels like and how infuriating it is making you. Imagine having no cause other than your body "attacking you" with no cure.

First off, where are you located? You say you fill with well water. Depending on your water source, how are you balancing your water? If it comes naturally with a high TA like mine (south central WI), how are you adjusting it so that "your numbers are good?" -- using dry acid or muriatic? How do you first introduce sanitizer? Let's see your numbers as they are when you first fill and when you notice the water "going bad."

Secondly, what are you testing with? Strips or a good titration Bromine (or Chlorine???) test kit?

Finally, go to any dedicated Pool/Spa store -- any will do -- and ask them to test your water sample. Don't give them any forewarning of what you think the problem is. Let them test as a clean slate with no preconceived notions of selling you chemicals.

Start with a very clean glass jar with a tight fitting lid (Ball Jar for canning works best). Pre-rinse it a few times with spa water, keep it upside down and stick it 18" (away from the Ozone output) into the water and turn it right side up to fill it full and cap it immediately.

Let's see your numbers and understand what you are testing with and we could probably help more.

AGE

okay, I'm in southern minnesota in Steele county (known for iron in the water). I use the brilliance spa system and test with test strips. the welll water is too far off the scale for me to tell the TA until I get it tested. It takes a full bottle 24 oz of dry "PH reducer" to bring it down. and a few more small doses to make it stay down in range. the Brilliance (bromine) system uses packets of "starter" to introduce the sanitizer once the water is heated to 90 degrees and a floater to maintain it. there is also a liquid metal and scale reducer that must be introduced weekly to protect the components of the spa. unfortunatly there is nothing more to tell really. the test strip numbers are in "good" recommended range the first soak. and I keep it there. I have drained and filled many times and the water always feels best on fresh fill, first soak, then it just feels worse each time. It has been the same scenario with each "system" I've tried. feels good at first then that dang rash starts up...! I should add that the water does go through a visible change in the bubbles. the bubbles are large at first and some basic change takes place in the water during the first few days until the bubbles become tiny. I also notice that sometimes the water feels "sticky". I have never noticed any unusual odor, just chemical, sometimes a harsh chemical smell.

I would like to recommend something. This will require daily testing but a slow and gradual balancing of your water. Since you are floating your bromine and you have an ozonator, you will be adding probably more sanitizer than is necessary. The fact that you are smelling chemicals sounds just wrong.

Since you say your TA is probably off the charts and you add 24 oz. of pH minus to get the numbers "good," I am going to make an assumption. You are starting off too fast.

Let's assume your hot tub is 400 gallons and your TA is 400 ppm. If you want to drive towards 100 ppm, you shouldn't dump a bunch of sodium bisulfate into the water in one shot. That's a 300 ppm drop. Slowly work your way towards the appropriate TA by adjusting your pH daily. In the beginning, you might be using a bit more sanitizer to maintain a 3 ppm bromine but you will slowly work your way down towards a balanced condition. Bromine is not too affected by a higher pH and with an ozonator, it will be well controlled. I would use only enough bromine in your floater to keep a consistent 2 - 3 ppm.

You will add acid (sodium bisulfate) to adjust the pH and then allow it to recover in 24 hours. You don't want to make the water too acidic in one shot. Record the numbers every day for a couple of weeks and you will find the rhythme of your water and spa.

The thing about test strips is they don't tell you precise numbers. As a rule of thumb, if you have a 400 gallon spa, you will need to add about 1.25 oz (actually a little more) of dry acid to reduce TA by 10 ppm. To reduce your pH by a total of .6 (from 8 to 7.4), you may only need to add about 1.5 oz. of pH minus. So you see, dumping a bunch of pH minus to get your TA adjusted quickly is going to wreak havoc on your spa. Small bodies of water take small incremental changes to reach your goal.

In the end, what you will probably notice is that the Good Feeling water remains good feeling longer. The Bromine will do it's trick and with the ozonator and weekly shocking using your Potassium Monopersulfate, it should release the Bromamines (bad) back to the good Hypobromous Acid (good). But, adjust the TA by slowly managing the pH daily.

Use your spa daily and test either just before or just after use. If you find that your bromine is staying consistent, then test after use and adjust your pH accordingly. Your sanitizer will kill the bad stuff and you will slowly but surely drive your TA down to a stable level. Hopefully, you will find that your water remains lovely and will smell like, well, fresh water. Again, you may need to reduce the bromine you use and find the "just enough" number.

By the way, what kind of spa do you have?

AGE

You assume correctly, the spa manual calls this a 355 gallon spa but I "overfill " it slightly because we are tall. It is an Arctic Spa Fronteir model.

I did in fact wonder abouit your suggestion; adding an ounce of acid per day. It says so on the bottle, and I think I read it somewhere online. But again, I got NO HELP OR ADVICE from my dealer and the manual said simply "adjust ph, then add sanitizer" not in these exact words but no more specific. So now that I've been miserable and wasted hundreds on chemicals I really find it hard to say anything good about my spa dealer. and boy do I feel stupid.

So what' your'e telling me is that while the only thing that my dealer ever asked was "is your TA and PH correct?" that doesn't mean dumping in a whole bottle of stuff to get it down quickly because the sanitizer will work anyway until I eventually get it down?

Well, thanks, right now the average outdoor temp is aroun 20 degrees F so I think I'lll wait for a bit warmer day to drain it and try this.

I have a very similar skin reaction to what you are describing. Mine shows up as a itchy, blistery rash and starts a week or so after a fresh fill. I tried many different chemical systems and the only one that does not give me a rash is BaquaSpa. It's expensive and may cause some spa maintnenace issues over time, but it's the only way I can use my spa. BaquaSpa is not a chlorine or bromine based system. I believe it is based on hydrogen peroxide. If you decide to try it, you will have to drain and fill your spa, replace the filter cartridge, balance the water and then start using the BaquaSpa system. Good luck.