Hot tubs and spas are just about the ultimate in relaxation and stress-relief. A great hot tub can last you 20 years or more, and research done in 2014 found that nearly 21 million of our American households already have a spa, a pool, or a hot tub. People get hot tubs for a lot of reasons: over 33% get them to help improve sleep; more than 22% use them to recover from an injury; and a whopping 42% get them primarily to bond with their family. If you’ve got one, though, you might be wondering the best ways to take care of hot tubs and spas to ensure they have a long and profitable life. Read on for some tips to keep your spa in great shape:
Be Sure to Circulate
Different tubs have different recommended schedules, but circulating runs the water through cartridge filters for about 15 minutes. This should be done at least once a day, and twice is even better. Hot tubs and spas run more smoothly, stay cleaner, and keep the right chemistry balance with the right hot tub maintenance.
Test and Adjust
Make sure your water is at the right levels for pH, alkalinity, hardness, and sanitation. If you keep up with this every week, nothing has time to get too badly out of whack. Leave it for too long, however, and you can end up with something much more difficult to fix.
Clean Every Three to Four Months, and More Often!
Few people just love to clean, but try to make time for this one. It’ll ensure your spa is in good shape for a long time to come. You want to clean scum off the seats and the waterline very regularly, and do a thorough clean and also drain and refill it once every three to four months. And if you’re using it constantly or keeping it outside, you might need to do that big clean more often than that. The cartridges are an issue as well. Rinse them out with your garden hose regularly, and clean them with the chemical spray that came with your spa. Go ahead and soak them in cleaner whenever you drain the tub.
Keep Things Sanitary
You need your spa to be sanitary for your own safety and for its long-term life. You can choose from a variety of sanitizes these days. The most popular is definitely chlorine. It’s low cost and works well; but it can have an acrid smell and be hard on skin. A salt or minerals system is a bit more expensive, but easier on the skin and still effective. Just be sure that whatever system you use you know how much water is in your hot tub and exactly how many parts per million you’ll need of your sanitizer to ensure everything stays clean.
Hot tubs and spas are an investment, like a car or a house, and need to be treated with care to get the best use out of them. Maintenance isn’t hard: but it does require you to be conscientious if you want to enjoy your home spa and get years of good use out of it.