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    Default Total water hardness

    Used to be on this site years ago and just re-joined. I am not able to search for an answer to my question....Do any household products lower the water hardness in my hot tub? If it's already been addressed on this site please accept my apologies.

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    Default Re: Reducing Total water hardness

    Hi Jerri;

    1. There are no products that simply lower hardness, household or otherwise, pool or spa.

    2. You can lower hardness by raising pH till cloudiness occurs . . . and then filtering. But it's a tricky, messy process.

    3. With a spa, unless your fill water is very hard, the BEST way by far is to drain and refill. Spas should be drained and refilled regularly ANYHOW.

    4. I'm not sure anyone has ever taken my advice on this, but still: if you have terrible fill water, the most practical way to clean up the water is to buy a tiny Intex pool, like this 10' x 30" pool on Amazon. (Buy ONLY from Amazon, so returns will be possible. Probably 5% of Intex pools are defective, and will need to be returned)

    With a separate pool, you can do stuff like "lime softening" (Wikipedia), removing most of the hardness and any metals, before pumping some of the 'treated' water into your pool or spa. Of course, that stuff is easy-peasy for me, but seems to confuse the heck out of everyone else.

    Still, if it's a big enough problem, it IS something you CAN do that WILL work. I've got a page here somewhere that describes how.

    5. But . . . in general, I do NOT support spa chemistry. The reason? It's functionally impossible to sanitize spas, and it just irritates the person asking when I give complicated instructions to help them stay safe. And it irritates me that nobody wants to believe the facts about spas, even though they are pretty obvious and well established.

    The only good news here is, if you ONLY use the spa with family members, the chance of getting something via person-to-person transmission is limited. And if you 'nuke' the spa with bleach after each use, the liklihoold of the spa actually growing pathogenic bacteria, like Pseudomonas aeruginosa or Legionella pneumonphila is greatly reduced.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudomonas_aeruginosa
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legionella_pneumophila
    Good luck

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    Default Re: Reducing Total water hardness

    Upgraded membership and moved thread to the alkalinity & calcium section. You may need to log out and back in to see everything.

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