Swimspa conversion

[Dewdrops3]

Can the BBB method work with my 8'x17'x4' swimspa with an ozonator? we currently use bromine and run the spa at 104 degrees throughout the winter months.

[aylad]

Hi,
I have no idea of an answer to your question, but wanted to let you know that your post has been read and added to the forum. We don't have many folks around this forum that can advise you on running spas, although one of our regular contributors is also a mod at poolspa DOT com's forum.

The traffic on the forum these days is pretty slow, so it may take a few days before you get any responses to your question, but don't give up. In the meantime, you can log out, go to the forum home page, and look in the sig of any post made by me, Watermom, or Pooldoc, and use the google search feature to search the entire forum and archives for other threads that may be helpful to you.

[waterbear]

Do you keep it covered or is it exposed to sunlight? If the first a modified BBB called the dichlor/bleach method will work. This modification is documented on PoolSpaForum.com in the hot tub water chemistry section of the forum. If your swim spa is uncovered and exposed to sunlight then you would want to use straignt BBB as documented here. If it is undcovered (and unheated) in summer and covered and heated in winter then treat it as a BBB pool in the summer and a dichlor/bleach in winter but be aware of a few things :
ozone can increase chlorine demand (the amount of chlorine needed to maintain a certain FC level) because the two destroy each other.
The CYA levels required for summer and winter could be quite different so you might have to do a partial drain and refill to switch to dichlor/bleach. With a 4000 gal swim spa this might not be trivial. In a best case you can get by with no higher than 40 ppm CYA in the summer and can drop it back to 30 ppm CYA in winter so this might not be a problem at all or yo might find that you can manage on the same CYA level in both summer and winter. Your main problem will be pH control because of the increased aeration in a swim spa (like in a spa). This is easily dealt with by lowering the TA to about 50-70 ppm and adding 50 ppm borate if needed. Is your swim spa vinyl or fiberglass (the usual materials)?

[Dewdrops3]

We have a fiberglass swimspa. I really appreciate your guidance.