Important Hot Tub Supplies: Spa Shock

Using spa shock to shock your hot tub is extremely beneficial. Have you ever thought about how the water in your hot tub remains there for weeks to months at a time? Keeping it sanitary will bring you peace of mind and it is simply the smart thing to do. Spa shock is a large dose of oxidizer that shocks the water into a clean state. Here’s what happens when you shock your hot tub’s water:

Kill Bacteria

Hot tubs are hot spots for illness-causing bacteria if they are not kept clean. The three specific types of bacteria that arise in hot tubs include the following:

• Pseudomonas Dermatitis: causes hot tub folliculitis
• Legionella: causes Legionnaires’ disease, a severe type of pneumonia
• Non-tuberculous mycobacteria: causes hot tub lung, a granulomatous (chronically inflamed tissue) lung disease

Prevent these bacteria from thriving in your hot tub by keeping the water balanced and sanitized. Spa shock will help give sanitizers an extra boost and kill anything that might have been forming in the water.

Remove Organic Contaminants

Each time you get into your hot tub, anything that has come into contact with your body that day gets in the tub with you. That includes lotion, shampoo, sunscreen, dead skin cells, hair, etc. When you have a few friends in the hot tub with you, you can multiply those contaminants a few times too. Shower, or at least do a quick rinse, before getting into the hot tub. Your sanitizer will attack the rest, but shocking your hot tub will do even more. 

Remove Chloramines or Bromamines

That chlorine smell isn’t actually chlorine, it’s the chloramines. Chlorine kills bacteria and removes organic contaminants, producing waste products. Those waste products are chloramines, which give off the “chlorine smell.” Until you get the sanitizer level back where it needs to be, you will be breathing in the chloramines. Spa shock will bring your sanitizer levels up and get rid of the chloramines, therefore getting rid of that smell. If you use bromine as your sanitizer, the waste products that result are called bromamines. Although they are not as noticeable as chloramines, you still want to keep the bromine level steady and shock regularly so you don’t have to breathe them in.

Rising Sun Pools & Spas

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