Blog: Fun with Hot Tubs

While I was adamant about not buying a house with a pool since I didn't want the extra maintenance, the house we ended up buying came with a hot tub. I had a local pool company clean and set it up 16 months ago, and I've been maintaining the water with varying levels of success since then. Keeping all the chemicals balanced is both a science and an art.

There are several things to keep in balance: alkalinity, pH, sanitizer (typically chlorine), water hardness, and cyanuric acid. Too much chlorine causes skin irritation, while too little allows for bacteria and algae to grow. Periodic "shocking" with an oxidizer is necessary to turn combined chlorine (chlorine that has neutralized contaminants) back into free chlorine. pH that's too high or too low can also cause damage to skin and components. And low alkalinity can cause pH swings, while high alkalinity can reduce sanitizer effectiveness.

Priscilla uses the hot tub once or twice a month, while I've only joined twice. I get bored out there, though perhaps I should look at it as a way to promote recovery after my workouts.

Conventional wisdom is that water should be drained every 3 to 4 months, but that's for a usage level that's much higher than ours. And I make us shower before getting in, so that greatly reduces the amount of contaminants. I waited 16 months because I didn't know how to drain the hot tub, but going forward I think that 6 to 12 months is a good cadence. The consensus online is that you'll know when it's time once it becomes harder to maintain the water chemistry.

So last week we finally drained and cleaned the hot tub. Draining was actually really straightforward. There's a spigot underneath that you pull out and attach a hose to, and the previous owner had installed a fitting to allow connecting the hose to the sewer drain.

I had gotten lazy with maintenance a few weeks before draining the water, so we ended up having some algae in the water and biofilm in the piping. I ran a cleaner through and drained and filled the hot tub twice for good measure. We gave the shell a good wipe down with soapy water, and I got a hand pump to get the last couple gallons of water out from the bottom. But next time I might see if I can have a company do a professional cleaning.

So far so good, and the water looks cleaner now and it's been easier to keep the levels constant. I've been undisciplined with maintenance over the past year, but going forward I'm going to check on the water at least once a week. As with many things in life, consistency and small adjustments are key here.