2010 October | Precision Pool Construction Inc.

How to release an air lock in your spa

By JayB on October 20, 2010 / hot tub maintenance, hot tubs and spas, spa troubleshooting / 2 Comments

Bullfrog spas releasing and air lock

Todays post is a follow up to last weeks spa start up article where i briefly mentioned the possibility of a spa air lock. Today we will look at 2 ways you can release an air lock in your spa.

One of the more frustrating problems you can face when trying to start up your hot tub after a fresh fill is an air lock. You’ve spent all that time cleaning out the tub and waiting for it to fill up and when you finally go turn turn the jets on you get nothing. You can hear the jet motors coming on but there’s no flow coming through the system.

Spa air locks come in varying severities and there are a couple of ways to remedy this issue. One preventitive method I talked about in my last post on spa start-up involved putting the hose into the filter well as you re-fill the tub allowing water to fill the spa plumbing easier. This way we can take to try an avoid the hassle of an air locked hot tub in the first place.

Yet even when we try to prevent the dreaded air lock it still happens. Here are a couple ways to release the air lock and get on with enjoying the hot bubbly goodness!

Burp is like a baby:

If the air lock is not severe you can sometimes release it by simply “burping” the system. Before you do this you want to make sure all of the individual jets are completely open by turning the jet faceplate clockwise as far as they will go. This will make sure there is no added resistance on the system and the air and water can escape from the jets uninterrupted.

One more thing before we start turning the jets on is to make sure the heat is off, either by turning the heat off at the control panel or turning the temperature down as far as it will go, this way the heater wont try to kick on when there is no water flow as that can damage the heater.

To burp the system all you are going to do is quickly turn the jets on high for 10 seconds and then turn them off, if you have two jet buttons make sure you do this with each jet zone. Do this 3 times and you should see the amount of air bubbles coming out increase each time you turn them on. Keep burping the jets increasing the length of time you hold the jets on by 10 seconds each time. Eventually the whole system will burp and a huge blast of air bubbles will rush out of the jets. If this happens, congratulations you have released the air lock the easy way!

Now if during your initial attempts you see no increase in the amount of air bubbles coming out of the jets or worse no air bubbles at all coming out of the jets you have a severe air lock and you should STOP the “burping” process. The reason you need to stop burping the system if this happens is because if you continue to run the pumps dry you could damage them. This is when we move on to the next method for releasing an air locked hot tub.

Break out the toolbox

bullfrog spa pack releasing and air locked hot tub

If the burping procedure above is not working we need to release the air lock at its source, for that we need to remove the front panel of the spa. Behind the front panel is where all of your spa equipment is located as seen above in this Bullfrog Spa, most spa cabinets just use 4 Philips head screws.

Air locks happen when we fill the hot tub from inside the tub and water falls into the plumbing from the jets, this pushes all the air that is in those lines back to the spa equipment. This air is then trapped between the suction and pressure sides of the system on either side of the jet motor. Therefore the easiest way to release this air pocket is to crack open the union nuts on the spa motor itself.

Where the plumbing connects to the spa pump will be a big white union nut threaded onto the wet end of the motor. You will probably need a good size pair of pipe grips to loosen the union nut, but sometimes you can loosen them by hand. When you loosen the union nut enough you should hear the air escaping.

Once all the air has escaped out of that union water should leak out and you should be able to start the jets right up without any further problems.

If you have any questions regarding these spa air lock solutions please feel free to leave a question in the comments below or email me directly at: jay@precisionpool.net. Thanks for reading and don’t forget to subscribe to the blog on the top right of this page.

Hot tub start-up…5 tips for opening your spa this fall

By JayB on October 13, 2010 / hot tubs and spas, spa chemical tips / 4 Comments

hot tub star-up

Fall in New England for a lot of homeowners is when it’s time to close the pool and start up the hot tub. There is nothing better than slipping into 101 degrees for hot bubbly water on a crisp autumn night. Today I want to give spa owners a quick run down of the hot tub start-up process.

These guidelines can be used whether your tub has been shut down all summer or it is just time for your normal drain and re-fill.

1. Cleaning the spa surface and jets.

There are many products out there for cleaning the spa surface like Leisure Time’s Spa Fast Gloss, but you can also use non-abrasive cleaners like windex on the spa shell. Avoid using products with bleach in them like soft scrub as these harsh chemicals can harm the spa shell. Also at the time you are cleaning the spa shell you also want to clean out the spa jets. Dirt and grime can get in behind the jets can affect the functionality of the jets, especially rotating jets which have ball bearings in them. Most of these jets can be taken out by turning them counter clockwise and pulling them out. This will allow you to clean out the jet orfice as well as the back stem of the jets them self, this is very important to maintain the life of the jets.

2. Filling the spa

Once the interior of the hot tub is clean you are ready to fill the spa up with the hose. When filling the tub there is one preventative measure we can take to avoid what we call an airlock in the lines; once the tub is about halfway full or almost to the filter wall place the hose into the filter well and try to fill up the plumbing from the filter area. This can help prevent tough air pockets from forming which can prevent the jets from pushing water through the system (more on airlocks below) . A lot of spas will have a water level mark on the spa somewhere usually near the filter well. Generally you want to make sure the filters themselves are completely submerged in water and most of the time a few inches above them. Low water level is often a cause of air getting into the system and can cause the heater not to heat.

3. Firing up the tub

Now that the hot tub is filled to the proper level it is time to hit the GFI breaker and fire it up! When the spa first starts up the topside control will probably start flashing and going through its initial start up program. Once it is done doing that you want to get the jets firing and pushing water through the system. Often times when the spa starts up and the jets try to fire you will hear the jet pumps turn on and running but nothing will be coming out of the jets. If this happens you have an airlock in the system, I will be covering air locks in its own post later this week as it deserves its own post, for now lets just say your spa is running and water is flowing freely through the jets as its supposed to.

Once the spa is running and it is starting to heat up go ahead and put your filter cartridges into the filter well. The reason I wait until now to place the filters in is that it is easier to get the flow running through the heater upon start up with the filters out as they add resistance to the water flow, once the spa is heating you are good to put the cartridges in.

4. Balance the water and treat for minerals

A lot of town water or water from wells coming out of the hose have minerals such as copper and iron in them. These minerals can often turn the water brown or green as you are filling it up, other times the water will be clear when you fill it up but cause problems once you add your chlorine or bromine. This is why before we do anything with our spa water we want to treat the minerals with a metal sequestrate or chelating agent. These products prevent the metal ions from oxidizing and turning the water green or brown. These products like Leisure Time Metal Gone and others are very PH sensitive so make sure to test an adjust your PH before you add a metal sequestrate.

So your chemical start-up should look like this:

test and adjust your PH and Alkalinty
add a full bottle of Metal Gone or other metal sequestrate
wait 24hrs before treating your spa water further

5. Sanitize the spa water

Once you have waited 24hrs for the metal treatment to do its thing it is time to add your spa water sanitizer of choice. Now there are a few options for spa water sanitation; chlorine, bromine tabs, and baquaspa/peroxide based sanitizers. I recommend chlorine as a hot tub sanitizer but debating the differences is the topic of a future post. If you are using chlorine granules you want to add 2OZ. of granules to the spa water while running the jets, 2oz. will super chlorinate spas up to 500 gallons.

If you are using bromine tablets this is a two step process; first you want to add 2 oz. of granular sodium bromide to the spa while running the jets. Wait about 2 hours for the bromide levels to increase and then you can add your bromine tablets to your bromine floating dispenser and you are good to go.

Also at this time if you are using a mineral purifier such as a Nature 2 stick or a Spa Frog Mineral stick you can add this to your spa filter well as well. Remember these mineral sticks only last 4 months once they have gotten wet so make sure you replace them if needed or else they are just a piece of plastic sitting in your filter.

I hope this article has helped when starting up your hot tub this fall, to keep up to date on future spa care article please subscribe to the RSS feed up on the left side of the page or sign up for our email list as well.

Also if you are in Massachusetts or Seacoast NH and don’t have time to drain and fill your spa give us a call and ask about our spa drain and fill service 978-388-2585.

Give your pool filter a good cleaning/acid wash….it deserves it

By JayB on October 1, 2010 / opening/closing / 2 Comments

Your filter is a mess right now, a long summer of keeping your pool sparkling clean and it is tired. Now that we are closing up for the season its time to give your pool filter a good cleaning.

When we close an in-ground pool we always take the time to remove the filter element, whether DE or cartridge and give it a good on site cleaning. The last thing we want to do is close a pool down and leave the filter media soaking all winter in old DE and debris.

A lot of times though just rinsing with the hose is not enough and I highly recommend taking this time to give your filter media a good 24 hour soak in a filter cleaning solution or muriatic acid.

There are many products out there that will give your pool’s filter element a good cleaning from degreasers to alkaline based filter cleaners. Most of these are great at breaking down the small organic particles that will clog your filter and cause it to run at high pressure. One such product that we carry is EZ-Clors Enhanced Filter Cleaner.

Another method especially for DE filters is soaking them in a low dose muriatic acid solution. Now obviously when dealing with something as potent as acid you want to be very careful, wear gloves and eye goggles to protect your self. Some pool companies like us offer this service at their store, you can drop of your filter element and we will soak and clean your filter for you, this way you do not have to worry about handling the acid.

Now some simple instructions for the DIY’s:

Make sure before you soak the filter you have hosed off as much of the DE and organic debris as possible, we want the acid to clear out the very small material clogging the pores of the element and caked on DE and debris will get in the way of that and the acid can make some of the debris stick to the filter grids like cement and we do not want that.

Soak the filter in the acid for 12-24 hours and then rinse the filter element thoroughly.

Once you have done this you can put the element back into the dry filter tank to be stored for the winter. Now your filter is being stored clean and is ready to start up again when you open the pool next spring.

Acid washing your filters is not something i recommend doing too often once a year is more than enough. Due to the highly corrosive nature if acid washing is done too often it can shorten the life of the filter element. During the season if you need to clean your filter just hosing it down and using a good filter degreaser is fine.