The water in your hot tub needs to be kept clean and sanitary – which means
free from bacteria and odours. To do this, all hot tubs need sanitizers and/or
purifiers.
There are a variety of sanitizers and purifiers on the market, all designed to
purify your spa water. We have placed these in the order of our recommendation. 1. Mineral Based Purifiers • This is the method we would ideally recommend for sanitizing your spa
water. These purifiers are based on breakthrough science that recreates nature’s
own methods of purifying water – a process called mineral-bed technology.
• These mineral based purifiers are fast becoming the most popular spa water
purifying method, because they are:
o Easy to use
o Highly effective
o Very low maintenance.
• This is a two-part system, and is so easy to use because you need do nothing
when the spa is not in use!
o First, add a tubular or cylinder shaped purifier in the spa filter. This needs
to be replaced every three to four months, and when you drain the spa.
o Second, you simple add non-chlorine, non-bromine activator to the water every
time you use your spa, just before use.
• The purifier is very effective, and easily meets disinfection standards of the
National Sanitation Foundation. It even meets the guidelines set by the
Environmental Protection Agency for the bacteria in drinking water (but don’t be
tempted to drink your spa water!).
• If your spa has an ozonator, you usually need to use bromine or chlorine
regularly – but with a mineral-based purifier, this necessity can be eliminated.
• There are a variety of mineral-based purifiers to choose from, including the
Frog and Nature2.
2. Two-Part Bromine Systems • This would be our second recommendation of choice for purifying your spa
water.
• It’s not a particularly popular method to use, however, because many people
have difficulty learning the process and maintaining the system. If you can
learn the process, this may well be the next best way to sanitize your hot tub.
• As the name suggests, this is a two-part system: a sanitizer and a spa
activator. In this case, bromide liquid salts (a water solution of sodium
bromide) are the sanitizer. The activator is a granular oxidising agent that
simply activates the sanitizer – it contains no bromine or chlorine.
• The system works on the basis that the activator activates the sanitizer,
which kills existing bacteria, and any unused sanitizer stays in the water
system for future use – effectively “in reserve”.
• You must add sanitizer each week to maintain the level of sanitizer in your
water system in “reserve”, ready to be activated by the activator. You then add
spa activator each time you have used the spa, or once a week if it has not been
used. This way the system only uses the amount of sanitizer necessary each time
to kill the bacteria, no more, no less.
The sanitizers and purifiers below are common systems, but mineral based
purifiers and two-part bromine systems are the systems we recommend customers
use whenever possible.
Chlorine
• This is the most common hot tub sanitizer – in the form of chlorine granules
(sodium dichlor).
• It’s easy to use – you simply maintain a chlorine level in your spa of 1-3
parts per million. This is done by adding 1-3 teaspoons of granulated chlorine
to your spa every other day.
Bromine • Bromine tablets simply go in a dispenser that floats in your spa
water, giving round-the-clock disinfection.
• You keep tablets in the dispenser constantly, and add 2 oz. of sodium bromide
to activate the tablets when filling your hot tub with water.
• You must maintain a bromide reading at all times. So long as you maintain the
dispenser with tablets in it, the reading should stay above zero, but if the
reading drops to zero at any time, you’ll need to reactivate the tablets again
by adding 2 oz. of sodium bromide. The tablets are made up of about 70% sodium
bromide and 30% chlorine. Baquanine
• This chemical sanitizer is very effective at killing bacteria, and is based on
hydrogen peroxide.
• It is available under the name “Baqua Spa” and “Soft Soak” from many spa/hot
tub retailers.
