Keeping your spa water clean is essential in maximizing your enjoyment of your hot tub daily.
Including some essential spa supplies in your treatment arsenal can make managing your water chemistry easy, ensuring you’ll have crystal-clear water each time you lift the cover to enjoy a quiet evening soak.
Whether you’re a new hot tub owner and want to be prepared to effectively care for your water or have been a longtime owner and have been struggling with cloudy water recently, this article can help.
To discover the eight best spa supplies you need to keep your water clear and ready to use, keep reading!
8 Spa Supplies For Clear Hot Tub Water
Finding the perfect balance of water treatment products can be challenging, but once you find the right mix, you’ll be able to maintain its crystal clear state much easier!
Here are our eight favorite spa supplies to keep your spa water clean and clear.
1. pH and Alkalinity Treatments
Your water’s pH and alkalinity are two of the most influential factors in the clarity of your water.
If either of these falls out of balance, your water can quickly become too hard or too basic, leading to cloudy, foamy, or foul-smelling water.
Additionally, this can wreak havoc on every part of your spa that comes in contact with your water, causing scale buildup or corrosion!
Your water should be tested a few times a week using test strips or a digital meter to track your pH, alkalinity, and sanitizer levels. If you discover they have fallen out of balance, it’s important to treat your water to bring them back into their proper range.
Your pH should always be between 7.2 and 7.8, while your alkalinity should be within the range of 80-100 ppm.
Using a pH increaser or decreaser, you’ll be able to adjust your water’s chemistry levels to return them to normal.
Alkalinity significantly influences your pH, so it’s important to bring it into range first before adjusting your pH.
To support your water balance long-term and minimize any fluctuations, consider adding a pH balancing treatment to your water directly after doing a water change. This will help keep your levels steady, reducing the likelihood they will fall out of balance between changes.
2. Sanitizer
Your sanitizer is responsible for combating bacteria in your water, ensuring it’s crystal clear and safe to use.
There are various sanitizers on the market, and which one you use will depend on your water system.
Some of the most common include:
- Chlorine
- Bromine
- Salt
Chlorine is one of the most popular sanitizers, mainly due to its ease of use, affordability, and its effectiveness.
One thing to remember when using chlorine is that a strong smell of chlorine should never occur. If it does, it could mean two things:
- Your water has too much chlorine in it
- There is an abundance of chloramines in your water
To easily manage this, test your water to verify your sanitizer levels. If your sanitizer levels are too high, turn on your jets and let your water off-gas.
If your chlorine levels are within the expected range, add an oxidizer treatment to help break up the chloramines.
Your water should never have a strong chlorine smell when its sanitizer levels are within their optimal levels (1-3 ppm)
Bromine is similar to chlorine and is often used by people who want to avoid the smell of chlorine products.
This sanitizing option has the ability to maintain its levels even as your pH and alkalinity fluctuate, which is another reason many people consider using it for their spa. One downside of bromine to keep in mind is that it quickly breaks down when exposed to the sun.
Saltwater has grown in popularity over the last decade mainly due to the soft, gentle experience it provides. While many believe saltwater is a chlorine-free water care system, this is a common misconception.
These systems use salt cells to keep your water clean. As the water passes through the cells, the salt is broken down, creating chlorine to treat your water.
3. Oxidizer Shock Treatment
Anytime you soak in your hot tub, the water is contaminated. That’s simply the cost of using your spa.
While treating your water with sanitizer can combat normal use, it’s unable to break down some of the material that ends up in your hot tub.
This stubborn contaminant that your sanitizer can’t break down is organic matter, such as oils that are washed off your skin each time you soak. If your water experiences too many of these oils, you may find the surface of your water beginning to develop foam after the jets are turned on.
Organic matter generally comes from:
- Body lotions
- Cosmetics
- Hair products
- Deodorants
- Perfumes
- Residual detergent or soap on your bathing suit
You can take some preventative measures to keep these products out of your water, such as keeping your hair up during your soaks or showering beforehand. However, it’s inevitable that some of these products will end up in your water anyways.
To banish foam and cloudy water that results from an overload of organic matter, you can add an oxidizing shock treatment to your regular maintenance routine.
Oxidizers work to break down organic matter, ensuring your sanitizer can effectively treat the bacteria in your water, keeping it crystal clear and ready to use anytime you want.
4. Enzymes
To further combat organic matter day to day, you can include an enzyme treatment in your water.
Enzymes are essentially protein molecules that help combat organic matter that ends up in your water. Including this treatment in your spa supplies checklist can help reduce the amount of sanitizer needed to keep your water clean and help create a more enjoyable soaking experience.
While some enzyme treatments you would add to your water, much like your chlorine, there is a more effective, less time-consuming option for people who use their hot tubs daily.
Adding an enzyme that’s been designed to be added directly to your filter compartment can help proactively treat your water as it passes through your filters.
This makes it easy to maintain your crystal-clear water while reducing the amount of chlorine needed to support healthy water chemistry.
5. Filter Cleaner
Your filters are the ultimate protectors of your water’s clarity.
Whether you’re using your spa every day or enjoy long soaks during your weekend, your filters are always working to pull contaminants out of your water to keep them from entering your hot tub’s open space.
This can lead to a buildup of grime forming on your filters, which can re-enter your water if you forget to clean them regularly.
Your filters should be cleaned:
- Weekly
- Monthly
- Quarterly
Each of these cleans will be more intensive than the others, and you’ll need to invest in a top-quality filter cleaner to effectively keep them clean. This ensures they can perform their role efficiently, maintaining the crystal clear state of your water each day.
6. Pipe Cleaner
As your water circulates through your system, any oils and contaminants can build up on the insides of your pipes.
Each time your water moves through your pipes, it becomes re-exposed to these contaminants, which can lead to cloudy or foamy water, even after heavy sanitizer treatments.
Over time, this accumulation can make it more difficult to keep your water clean. This can lead to longer maintenance times and increase your running costs as you begin using more of your treatment products.
Including a pipe cleaner in your regular maintenance routine can ensure your water is able to maintain its cleanliness as it circulates through your system, minimizing the work needed to keep it clean and clear.
7. A Hose Filter
Did you know that you can buy filters that attach directly to your hose so you can filter your water before it even enters your hot tub?
It’s true!
Your water is most difficult to balance right after a water change because it’s packed full of the minerals and contaminants that are floating around in your city’s water.
Where you live will influence how hard or soft your water is, which can lead to high levels of treatment products being added to your water right after you’ve refilled it.
Even with these initial water treatments, if it’s improperly treated and falls out of balance, you risk lifting your cover to discover murky water that’s become unsafe to soak in!
Adding a hose filter attachment to your garden hose can make treating your water after a change easier by removing these contaminants before they have a chance to enter your hot tub.
8. Tennis Balls or Hot Tub Sponges
This may seem like an odd addition to the list, however, it’s one of the most cost-effective ways to combat oil buildup in your water.
After you’ve finished your relaxation session, add some tennis balls or hot tub sponges to the water. As they float around, they’ll absorb any oils that have gathered on the surface.
This easily combats the buildup of organic matter and will reduce the likelihood of you finding foamy or cloudy water the next time you want to enjoy a therapeutic soak in your spa.
Spa Supplies For Sale in San Diego
With two conveniently located showrooms, The Spa & Patio Store is your one-stop shop for all your essential spa supplies.
If you’re in the market for a new hot tub or need stunning patio furniture to update your backyard, our shop has everything you need. With an exceptional range of hot tubs, swim spas, and patio furniture on our showroom floor, our experts will make creating the backyard of your dreams easy.
Contact us, or visit your local showroom to explore your options. Make shopping for your spa supplies easy with our online shop.
