Your Spa Ozonator Cleans Your Water

A hot tub is a blessing in many ways. It helps you relax, ease aching muscles and joints, stimulates conversation, refreshes you for the rest of the day or gets you ready for sleep at night. Every owner probably has unique ways to use and enjoy his or her hot tub.

It’s about the water…

One thing every hot tub owner has in common is the need for sparkling clean water. When a hot tub is new, it usually seems easy to get and maintain that pure, sweet smelling water that just feels good to get into. When you first purchased your spa, chemical balance was easy to get, often nothing more than tossing a little ‘shock’ chemical (something like sodium dichloro) into the tub after each use to oxidize the impurities left by the bathers.

What many new hot tub owners do not realize is how important the role of the ozonator is for maintaining clean water. The spa (or hot tub) ozonator is running during pump cycles to inject natural, purifying dissolved ozone into the water. The ozonator is sometimes called an “automatic sanitizer” because it works continuously without the owner’s intervention (or even being aware of it).

Ozone is a powerful natural oxidizer (200 times more powerful than chlorine) that has a number of benefits for the spa owner:

Eliminates or greatly reduces impurities like oils, perfumes, bodily fluids, and organic matter of all kinds.
Kills micro-organisms like bacteria and viruses on contact.
Helps prevent the buildup of algae or sticky coatings on tub walls and piping.
Greatly reduces the need for chemicals and simplifies water maintenance.
Decomposes into ordinary oxygen as its only byproduct. The oxygen actually helps to keep the water sparkling.

Spa ozonators wear out…

Most people don't know that ozonators wear out. Common ozonators (either corona discharge or ultraviolet) last only about 9,000 hours of run time. When they finally fail, typically after about 3 years of operation, their sanitizing power is lost. At that point, the hot tub water is only being cleaned by the chemicals put into it, and a game of ‘maintain that water’ begins, not understanding it’s time to replace the ozonator.

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to maintain hot tub water with traditional chemicals alone. Many owners experience that deteriorating water condition as a feeling of itchiness or slime, and sometimes even develop skin rashes or other reactions to the chemical soup developing in the hot tub. To solve problems, they add more chemicals or dump the spa water.

Even with a good spa water chemistry test, you have to know how to adjust pH, alkalinity, and free chlorine parts per million using a variety of different chemicals whose impact is determined by the density of their solution in water and the prior chemicals already in the hot tub. A lot of times, owners just give up at this point and use the hot tub little or not at all.

Is the spa ozonator working?

Poor water quality is the first clue something is wrong, but owners need to find out for sure if the problem is an expired ozonator. DEL Ozone makes an easy-to-use test kit that gives a definitive answer whether the ozonator is generating enough ozone to sanitize the hot tub. Spa technicians can quickly perform the 30-second test to find out if a new spa ozonator is needed.

By far, the most popular brand of ozonator over the past decade is from DEL Ozone. DEL has been factory installed in about 80% of the spas built with ozonators over that time, so replacing an expired ozonator with a DEL should ensure compatibility with most systems. The Spa Eclipse™ is the standard unit that comes in 110, 220 or dual voltage models, and fits most hot tubs. The more powerful MCD-50 provides reliable sanitation for 3 to 5 years and can sanitize up to 1,000 gallons. The CDS-16 has the smallest footprint and DEL's HO (for High Output) is perfect for swim spas.

Do it yourselfers can order a replacement DEL Ozone ozonator from one of DEL’s online resellers. Each replacement unit comes with complete installation instructions. The job should take the average homeowner less than an hour.

Very often a replacement ozonator will result in a dramatic improvement in water quality. Owners can relax and enjoy the spa experience again.