Hot Tub Advice

Snow Fun

We've been so busy that we haven't had a chance to enjoy the hot tub but I kept checking on the water to make sure it was good for use.  Well, after the big snow storm from Friday, we got in the tub with snow on the ground and a nice cool 20 degree air temperature.

The water was a warm 104 degrees and I had a nice warm fire ready inside the den.  We HAD A GREAT TIME.  There is nothing better than going in the hot tub with snow on the ground and then heading into a roaring fire on the inside.....

Enjoy the video

Eric

New Post Coming

As soon as the site is formatted properly again...

So How Did We Do With Cleaning Water?

As you can see from this video, we did quite well and the water is holding up nicely since Thanksgiving.  We've all been tired as of late, but hope to jump in while it is snowing today in NJ.  BTW - I have a better video arriving on Sunday so hopefully we can boost our quality.  Yes - that's my daughter (the person running the video) laughing in the background....

Eric

The Green Water is Back

Hi there Spa friends,

Made a (crude) video of cleaning our hot tub on Thanksgiving.  Believe it or not it worked and I'll have a follow-up video on the results.

Eric

Out in the NJ Snow

So it snowed in NJ on Nov 21 2007 so the kids and I decided to hit the hot tub.  However, as cool as this sounds, ran into a couple of "challenges".  First was walking out in the snow out to the tub.  As cold as that sounds it really wasn't bad at all.  Next up was where to put the bath robes and towels so I cleared off a bench.   Finally, how do I stop the kids from having a snow ball fight in the tub (you don't).

Anyway, it was AWESOME.  We'd take turns sitting in the snow and then back into the 104 degree water.   That's our version of "hot tub blanching".  The worst part of the whole experience was going back outside to cover the tub after I got dressed.  BUMMER.

Eric

Oooh That Smell..

My wife always complains about the smell in the hot tub and I often find myself scooping out hand fulls of water and doing the sniff test.  She also complains about the smell of our bathing suit and my daughter's hair when she climbs out of the spa.  So, I kept turning up the bromine on the frogger but it got worse.  That was until I figured out the smell she hated was the bromine.

So what did I do?  Kept the bromine down to around a "1" on the strips and started to shock the spa once per week.  That really seemed to help but for this winter I bought one of those nice smelling spa "perfumes" (Caribbean) and plan on adding it in this week as soon as the weather is a little better.

Good luck with that smell,

Eric

Does Draining Your Spa Kill Your Lawn?

So, for the very first time we drained the hot tub.  This was about 5 months after we first opened it up.  The folks at Pelican Pools told me to not drain the hot tub into our lawn because it will kill the grass.  Makes sense right?  Did you ever take notice on how much chemicals you pour into your tub?  A ton.  So, what should we do?  We thought about draining into the sewer but we had one of those pesky "don't pollute the Raritan River" signs so we couldn't do that.

We drained the hot tub into the grass/weeds under my daughter's jumper.   Its been about a month and guess what  - the weeds are still blooming under there and the grass looks fine.  Of course, it could be some other reasons but the chemicalfied (is that a real word, no) water didn't seem to do any damage yet.

We ran a hose out from the spa to under the jumper and if you think 600 gallons of water are going to rush out of a garden hose, guess again.  It barely made a spot in the dirt and probably took about 5 hours to drain.  Even after all of that, I still sponged some water out of the filter areas and from the very bottom.

So my experience?  Draining the spa water did not kill my lawn.  What have you experienced?  Did I just get lucky?

Eric

Welcome to Hot Tub Advice

Hi,

You probably got here from my main site PardonMyFrench and you are wondering why a Hot Tub Advice blog?  Well Mary and I took the plunge about 6 months back having never owned a spa or pool so we have no clue as to what we are doing.  Spending tons of hours online every day I found it very frustrating  that there was little personal advice about buying a hot tub or owning one.  So, I decided to share what I know with you readers.

Unlike PardonMyFrench, I don't necessarily want to be the only author, so feel free to let me know if you want to write a post or make a lengthy comment.  I am by no means an expert on owning a hot tub and learning along as I go, so I am very open to any help or comments.  Just drop me a line.

I'll also be making changes to the design of the blog and really just wanted to get going today with some comments.  So don't worry I'll make some changes when I can.  Thanks for stopping by.

Eric