Well, there you have it. Back to the beginning. An empty hot tub.
As I mentioned in the last post, we mysteriously lost all power to the unit making filtration impossible. I thought maybe I'd keep up with a regimen of periodically emptying and refilling the hot tub, treating the refilled water with chemicals, and leaving it as a Hillbilly Coolin' Tub. I even posted that pic of me relaxing in it.
But it wasn't long after I sat in there for a few minutes and realized that the Fix A Leak stuff was really all over the place and totally polluting the water. On subsequent revisits, though I looked at pride at the success of fixing the leak, apparently, since the water level maintained throughout, I could see more and more particulate floating around in the water with less and less of a "clean" chemical smell. Sure enough, as I drained it today, I could definitely get the aroma of some kind of algae, mildew or mold going on.
So it wouldn't have worked. I knew the advice I had read about draining the tub every other month or so to keep it fresh in lieu of filtration was not coming from somebody who lived in Florida. I can tell you that even if I leave dishes in the sink soaking in soapy water, it'll pretty much smell foul within 24 hours or so. We live in a moldy state.
So I don't plan on refilling it anytime soon. Water is not expensive here, but still, I'm not about to waste it. If I don't trust the safety of the water I'm going to be basically immersing my entire body in, I'm not going to get in it. So at that point am I just keeping water in there for aesthetics?
There's still an inch or so of water at the bottom of the tub that the sump pump couldn't get to. I added a cap full or two of liquid chlorine to retard any microbial growth and I'll let simple evaporation take care of it over the next few weeks or so. Eventually I'll get out there, with paper towels and spray cleaner, and polish the whole shell to make it pretty pretty. Maybe I'll leave it uncovered, or maybe I'll just cover it up with its cover that I have placed in the shed. I'll have to clean that up too since it's kind of dirty.