I have had a hot tub for 1 year. We use the Baqua system- which is great for me because I am so sensitive to chlorine and bromine. Unfortunately, we now have a water mold problem. We emptied the tub and treated with high chlorine, flushed the pipes, and the filters, and then emptied and refilled with baqua treated water. Mold came back. We did it again, and the mold came back again.

Help! What should we do? I can't stand the thought of chlorinated water- but is that the only sanitizer that will keep this under control? Where did the water mold come from?

Please advise.

abigail

Abigail, this is not an easy subject, but I'll give it my best.

Unfortunately, some alternative sanitizers end up leaving a film on the internals of the spa. This film could retain bacterial components that create the mold (actually it IS the mold)... A chlorine treatment will only suffice to treat the surface of the film.

The film after treatment, leaches the residual (deeper based bacteria) contaminants because they weren't killed off originally.

So you're kinda stuck with this situation. We're in the process of evaluating alternative sanitizers and even the best enzyme kind of treatments can have the same effect as what you're experiencing.

Only thing I can imagine that would help at this point would be to (if it were mine), dump a gallon of chlorine in the thing, let it sit for a couple of days, run the jets for an hour, drain and refill. Hopefully it would allow enough time for the chlorine to penetrate the built up film and kill the residual bacteria that's present in the spa.

That's what I think you're dealing with, bacteria that hasn't been killed, and is being harbored by film... otherwise scum build up in the system.

When we did the second high chlorine treatement, we used "SpaPurge" that was supposedly going to help dislodge any biofilm that had developed in the pipes. It certainly caused a foam to form in the water before we emptied the tub!

I was reading that water mold is more susceptable to bromine than chlorine. Is this true? Is there any product I can use to clean out the pipes effectively? should I use bromine or chlorine for a while and then see if I can switch back to baqua?

abigaiil