Over the past decades, smart technology has revolutionized how we interact with everything, from our alarm clocks to the cars we drive every day to the ways we manage our personal health. Hot tubs, which traditionally have required manual maintenance and water testing, are no exception, and smart hot tub technology is now saving hot tub owners endless hours and unnecessary stress.

Adding chemicals to your hot tub has long been a stressful task, yet it remains an essential part of hot tub ownership. Proper chemical balance is crucial in maintaining safe, comfortable, and hygienic water, and is also vital in maintaining the longevity of your spa. But manually testing your water with strips or liquid test kits can be a frustrating, daunting task, one that has discouraged hot tub owners for years. Luckily, however, smart technology now offers an easier, more accurate approach to adding chemicals to your hot tub.

Keep reading to get the inside scoop on using smart technology to balance your hot tub chemicals.

Measuring Your Hot Tub’s Health

Spas are constantly subjected to body oils, lotions, sunscreen, sweat, and outdoor elements like rain, debris, and dirt. For this reason, hot tub water can easily become a breeding ground for algae, bacteria, and other contaminants. No need to panic, however. These are a few useful measures to gauge the health of your hot tub’s water:

• Sanitizer Levels: Cleansers like chlorine and bromine are essential in combatting bacteria and algae, but levels must be in a specific range to be effective. Too little sanitizer can cause contamination, while too much can irritate the skin, eyes, and respiratory system.
• pH Level: Your hot tub’s pH should generally fall between 7.2 and 7.8. Too high of a pH (alkaline), can cause scaling and cloudy water. Too low (acidic), will cause skin and eye irritation, and risk corroding your equipment.
• Alkalinity: This is a measure of your water’s ability to neutralize acids and bases — in other words, resist changes in pH. If alkalinity is too low, pH can aggressively fluctuate, causing issues with water quality and crucial parts of hot tub hardware.
• Water Clarity and Comfort: Properly balanced water will look clear and feel smooth on your skin. Poorly balanced water may be cloudy, have unpleasant odors, and can irritate your skin.
• Calcium Hardness: This refers to the amount of dissolved calcium in your water. Too soft of calcium (low hardness) can damage your tub’s surfaces and plumbing. Too hard (high hardness), will cause scaling and clogging.

The Role of Smart Technology

So how exactly does smart technology make adding chemicals to your hot tub easier? Through sensors, mobile apps, and integrated devices, smart systems provide hot tub owners with real-time data, tailored recommendations, and even dispense the exact amounts of chemicals needed.

Here are five ways that smart technology can help you maintain clear, hygienic water:

Automated Water Testing

Testing the water can be one of the most frustrating, time-consuming parts of owning a hot tub. Using traditional test strips or liquid test kits requires manual sampling, often causing inaccurate results due to human error or confusion. Smart technology eliminates the need for this however, utilizing automated testing systems to continuously monitor your hot tub’s chemical levels and water health.

Systems like SmartTub® coupled with Spa Sense allow you to test your hot tub’s water from anywhere, utilizing a system of sensors to provide you with accurate and up-to-date readings through the connected app. Critical parameters such as pH, alkalinity, and sanitizer levels are just seconds away, helping you keep your hot tub running as smoothly and stress-free as possible. 

Can’t remember the last time you tested your water? Don’t fret. Filtration and water care reminders ensure that you never miss a step in the water treatment process.

Real-Time Notifications

A major benefit of using smart technology to balance your hot tub chemicals is its ability to keep you constantly informed with real-time alerts sent directly to your smartphone. This gives you the advantage of knowing when something is wrong with your hot tub far before you’re physically near it.

For example, say you’re away for the weekend and you get a notification that your tub's pH levels are outside the ideal range. Real-time alerts, paired with chemical dispensing technology, will allow you to take quick preventative action, dispensing a pH increaser (such as sodium carbonate) to raise the pH directly from your smartphone. Not only does this save you time and effort, but it also prevents a potential problem from gaining ahold of your tub.

Integrated Chemical Dosing

Manually adding chemicals to your hot tub is old school. One of the most impressive features of using smart technology within your hot tub is its ability to automatically dispense chemicals and pH-balancing agents into the water when necessary. This helps prevent the overuse or underuse of chemicals, both of which can lead to poor water quality.

The best part of it all? You don’t have to do a thing. Smart technology will take care of the heavy lifting, allowing you to sit back, relax, and rest assured your hot tub’s water is always taken care of.