We've had a house full of people almost every weekend this month and I can barely keep up with the water. I'm shocking after each heavy use session but it still clouds up within a day or two, and my chlorine drops way faster than it used to. I'm wondering if I need to up my stabilizer or if this is just a volume problem that no amount of chemistry is going to fix without a drain and refill. Anyone dealt with this level of bather load in July and figured out a routine that actually holds?
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
Hot tub water going cloudy every few days during this heat wave
- Thread starter soaklife
- Start date
Heavy bather loads in summer heat are brutal on hot tub water. The chlorine demand just compounds - you've got more bodies, higher water temps accelerating chemical breakdown, and probably a lot of sunscreen and body oils loading up your filter. I'd shock more aggressively and run the jets to circulate after, but honestly a drain and refill might just be the faster path at this point if you've been running the same water all summer.
Same situation here a few weeks ago when my in-laws stayed for a long weekend. I was shocking every night and the water still looked like skim milk by day three. Turned out my filter hadn't been deep cleaned in months, just rinsed, and it was so loaded with oils it couldn't do much of anything. I pulled it out and did a proper overnight soak with a filter cleaner and the difference was pretty immediate. I'm not saying that's definitely your issue but if you haven't done a real degreasing soak on yours recently it might be worth trying before you drain. The drain might still be necessary but at least you'd know the filter wasn't making things worse.
Your stabilizer might actually be part of the problem, not the solution. If your CYA is already on the higher end, adding more will blunt your chlorine's effectiveness and make it harder to hold a clear tub even with aggressive shocking. Worth testing that before you chase it up any further.
The thing that helped me most during a similar stretch last summer was cutting the refill cycle shorter than I normally would. I kept trying to squeeze more life out of the water and it just kept fighting me. Once I drained and refilled mid-wave instead of waiting for things to fully crash, the chemistry stabilized way faster and I actually used less product overall for the rest of the month. The other piece is what MattB mentioned about the filter - a rinse is almost useless when you've got that much bather load. If yours hasn't had a real degreaser soak recently, it's probably just circulating oils back through the water at this point. I pull mine and do a full soak every four to six weeks during heavy use season, sometimes more if we've had a lot of people in it.
The thing that helped me most during a similar stretch last summer was cutting the refill cycle shorter than I normally would. I kept trying to squeeze more life out of the water and it just kept fighting me. Once I drained and refilled mid-wave instead of waiting for things to fully crash, the chemistry stabilized way faster and I actually used less product overall for the rest of the month. The other piece is what MattB mentioned about the filter - a rinse is almost useless when you've got that much bather load. If yours hasn't had a real degreaser soak recently, it's probably just circulating oils back through the water at this point. I pull mine and do a full soak every four to six weeks during heavy use season, sometimes more if we've had a lot of people in it.
poolmom_sarah
New member
The filter thing Matt mentioned is worth repeating because it gets overlooked every time. I went through basically the same cycle last July - shocking regularly, water still hazy, couldn't figure out why my chlorine was disappearing so fast. It was the filter. I'd been rinsing it between uses but hadn't done a real soak in probably three months, and with summer bather load it was completely saturated with oils and sunscreen. Once I cleaned it properly the chlorine actually had a chance to do its job.
On the stabilizer question, I'd test before you add anything. Mine crept up over the season without me realizing it and made shocking almost pointless because the CYA was killing the chlorine's effectiveness. With a full house in this heat I'd lean toward the drain and refill honestly - sometimes that's just the faster reset and you can start clean with balanced water instead of chasing chemistry that's already off.
On the stabilizer question, I'd test before you add anything. Mine crept up over the season without me realizing it and made shocking almost pointless because the CYA was killing the chlorine's effectiveness. With a full house in this heat I'd lean toward the drain and refill honestly - sometimes that's just the faster reset and you can start clean with balanced water instead of chasing chemistry that's already off.
The CYA point jdawg made is important. In a hot tub the volume is small enough that your stabilizer can creep up faster than you'd expect, especially if you've been topping off with tap water that has some hardness to it and adding stabilized chlorine on top of that. If your CYA is sitting above 50 or 60 ppm in a tub, you're fighting an uphill battle no matter how much you shock.
My suggestion would be to test your full panel before doing anything else - CYA, FC, pH, and TA. If your CYA is high and your filter is saturated like Matt described, you've got two separate problems making each other worse, and shocking harder isn't going to solve either one. At some point a drain, a good filter soak, and a fresh fill with your chemistry dialed in from the start is going to cost you less time and chemicals than trying to rescue the water that's already in there.
My suggestion would be to test your full panel before doing anything else - CYA, FC, pH, and TA. If your CYA is high and your filter is saturated like Matt described, you've got two separate problems making each other worse, and shocking harder isn't going to solve either one. At some point a drain, a good filter soak, and a fresh fill with your chemistry dialed in from the start is going to cost you less time and chemicals than trying to rescue the water that's already in there.