Confessions of a ThermoSpas Employee

Confession…here at ThermoSpas I hear a lot about chemicals…bromine…chlorine…oxide…and to be honest I have no idea what these chemicals do or for that matter what’s necessary to keep a hot tub clean and maintained.  So I sat down with Maggie, our ThermoGuru, for a little chat on chemical basics.  Here’s a recap of what I learned about sanitation:

Sanitary water is a top priority in order to enjoy your hot tub and it is the key to safe water.  A sanitizer has three critical functions:

1. To sanitize, which means to kill all bacteria, algae, disease-causing organisms, and any other uninvited guests – An important job of any sanitizer is to provide a sanitizer residual, a level of sanitizer that hangs around (resides) in the water for some period of time to destroy any newcomers
2. To oxidize, or destroy all the dirt and inorganic matter in the water – A sanitizer can oxidize materials such as ammonia, nitrogen-containing contaminants and swimmer waste
3. To disinfect, or kill living organisms on contact — The difference between a disinfectant and a sanitizer is the “kill time”: a disinfectant kills 99.9% of living organisms instantly, chlorine and bromine are the only two sanitizers classified as disinfectants

At ThermoSpas we have several different chemical systems to treat your water, they all work a little differently:

• ThermoClear – a cartridge (Nature 2 Cartridge) that releases very low levels of silver ion that traps bacteria that is then oxidized by an Activator solution
• 2-Part Bromine – a compound called sodium bromide is first introduced into the water which is not a sanitizer by itself, an activator needs to be added to the water to activate the bromide into a killing form of bromine.
• Chlorine – a classified disinfectant, when added to the tub it is called Free Chlorine,  is capable of killing bacteria, algae, and disease causing organisms
• Bromine Tablets – in this system the bromide and the chlorine are already combined together in a tablet…as it dissolves the two immediately work together to produce sanitation

I’ll be posting more about these chemicals and other cleaning and maintenance tips shortly…stay tuned!