Always shock your spa first time around!

We had a customer in the shop today which has prompted this small article.

They recently purchased a spa from another local company which was delivered and installed about one month ago. They were given a chemical starter kit which contained all the essential pool / spa chemicals required and shown how to use it.

The spa had clearly been sitting around in a warehouse for quite some time and had been water tested by the manufacturer before it left the factory. What happens with spas and hot tubs in this situation is that water gets retained within the pipework from the water test and can develop some bugs / algae / etc.

The customer filled the spa up and just started using a normal dose of chlorine without shocking it first and as such the entire family (and some friends!) have come out in horrible boils, spots and rashes ALL over their bodies. One of their girls is said to have over 1,000 spots all over her body. Upon going to the doctors they were told it was caused by the water.

The mistake here was that you must always ensure you flush through you pipe work with a shock chlorine in the water on the first time you fill a spa / hot tub to ensure that all the nasty bugs have been killed! Only once it has been shocked should you then start you chlorine / bromine treatment and finally climb in!

Shock chlorine is readily available in granular or liquid form - it’s not worth risking it.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Pool, Tub and Spa Maintenance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.