Does the 3Bs work for SPAS?

I kept a portable spa (my very first spa or pool...I was a newbie living in Fort Lauderdale then) on a modified 3B program a while back. I didn't know then what I know now so that might explain why I gave up after a few years and swtiched to bromine. At the advice of my spa dealer I chlorinated and shocked with bleach (kept 3-5 ppm CL in the spa) and shocked with a cup of bleach after every use. I knew nothing about stabilizer then and did have a hard time maintaining the chlorine levels. The dealer never said anything about it to me either. If I added the bleach in the evening I would have no chlorine to speak of the following afternoon. I also tended to leave the spa uncovered since it was 10'x10' and putting the hard cover on and off was a 2 person job. Perhaps if I had kept the cover on when it was not in use I would not have had that problem. I also understand now that the constant airation and high water temp was why my alkalinity was alway on the decline so I was constantly adding baking soda but I was using sodium carbonate for pH control instead of borax (Once again, dealer recommendation) so I was constanly fighting the pH vs. alkalinity yo-yo. (add the sodium carbonate to get ph right then Alk shoots up, Add dry acid to get it down, etc.) For some reason the pH in the spa was always decreasing (perhaps from bather load?...that is what the dealer said)

I finally gave up and switched to bromine and used bleach to 'shock' and reactivate the bromine. (Once again, dealer recommendation...and a sound one!) This made it much easier to maintain a residual sanitizer level in the spa but it seemed to make the Alk and pH 'yo-yo' worse. Don't know if it was because of the bromine or some other cause.

One saving grace is that I did not take the dealers advice to use test strips but got a drop based kit. I had already tried test strips in my aquariums and had already learned that they were pretty worthless. He did give me a lot of good advice...for example, he talked me out of biguinde even though he sold it. He said it caused too many problems and he had too many dissatisfied customers that tried it! His first recommendation for sanitizer was chlorine and his secondary one was bromine. He told me the simpler the better and that chlorine was the simplest to do. Interestingly, he did sell ionizers but he didn't push them. When I asked about them he told me that they really weren't necessary. He also had me balance the water (CH and ALk) because the heater in the 'skid pack' had a copper heat exchanger. In retrospect I see that he usually gave me sound advice but was a bit 'pool stored' himself!:(

I DO believe that if I had the knowledge back then that I have now that I would have been much more successful maintaining my spa on the 3 B's (Bleach, Borax, and Baking Soda).

I now have an acrylic built in spa that uses the same pump and filter as my pool and it is maintained on the 3B's, only the "bleach" is produced by my SWG and I keep a stabilizer level of between 60-80 ppm as per the SWG manufacturer's recommendation. It is extremely maintenance free. I have none of the problems that I had with the stand alone spa and it is never covered except by a solar cover when the weather is cold to help keep the heat in. I basically just have to add acid to keep the pH in line but that is because SWG's tend to cause the pH to drift upward.

IMHO, it is certainly worth a try! Since spas do need to be drained and refilled on a regular basis ( or is this because of dichlor being the usually recommended form of spa chlorine and therefore stabilizer levels always increasing? Never thought of that!) , if it doesn't work then you can start over with something different on the next refill.

Hope this is helpful to you.:)