Hi neighbor,
In response to your FPF post, "(Luxury problem alert!) Does anyone have experience with a saltwater hot tub? We would love to make the switch and get rid of the chemicals, but I'm uncertain. Any advice/recommendations about it?"
YES, we do have recommendations and a few cautions.
Bernie in a Spool (Spa/Pool)
(Insincere alert!)
Yes, we have experience with a saltwater hot tub.
As ole time Vermonters are like to do
we went on the cheap.
We filled our bathroom tub with lots of rainwater on a very hot August day (no chemicals, i.e. no petrochemicals were used to heat the water). You remember that very rainy day when everyone else was busy filling their wells like we should have been doing, but that's another story.
Perhaps you viewed us (someone caught us on video with their cell phone from the sidewalk) on youtube, under the heading "101 ways to preserve yourself".
We worked up quite a sweat running in and out carrying buckets of water. The faster you run the more rainwater you catch.
Anyway, we finally got the tub filled and then came to the decision on what to use for salt. Now if you are doing this right now in January, skip down to the section below on using snow and maple syrup in your hot tub. Just don’t use any yellow snow!
So as I was saying, by the time we had soldiered enough to fill the tub and proved we were worth our salt we looked like we just stepped out of our neighbor's outdoor sauna.
PS please don’t share this with them, they don’t know we go streaking sometimes at night to open up the pores a bit. Likely they already wonder why their wood pile is going down so fast.
Any oh how, where was I. Oh ya, salt. Now at first, I wasn’t sure about adding salt. You know what they say, too much salt pulls your bone away from the calcium and raises the barometric pressure or something like that.
And, salt stains and eats the bejeezus out of cars, but then again it sure taste good on french fries, onion rings, and in ketchup. Plus it is good for bleaching, and dyeing, that’s how I get the blonde color out of my silver-grey hair.
We were not worried about the salt raising the barometric pressure because we were not planning on getting on an airplane (what with all that Lone Ranger wardrobe requirements due to KOKID virus). In case you are flying high when you get in your hot tub, remember for aviation, pressure is critical. So avoid salt.
Salt, I heard on Prairie Home Companion is the new ketchup. Why just the other day at the JCS I asked for extra condiments and they gave me a shovel and sent me out to the roadside and told me I could take all the salt I wanted. Good deal. Thems nice folks at JCS.
But, you probably don’t want to use used salt. I get it. Some folks like the stuff fresh from the Jericho Highway Department salt pile. It is cheaper by the ton by the way.
Are you still with me? Now, what type of salt? Before I give you our recommendation, let me go over the pros and cons of each type.
1. Table Salt
In Jericho, table salts are communally fortified. This essential mineral is important for combatting community-deficient dirt road disorders. Highly processed, it is stripped of any minerals, and often contains an anti-pothole additive. You definitely do not want your hot tub looking like Raceway road on a fine spring day.
2. Kosure Salt
If you have strict dietary requirements and need lots of vitamin K in your diet, go with kosure, it's sure to raise the vitamin k great for strong bones, and especially helpful when you have too much wine and step out of the hot tub and fall on your fanny. Hey, it happens right?
3. Pickling Salt
Also, called canning salt. Great for when you get canned at work, and come home and get pickled.
4. Himalayan Pink Salt
Harvested in the foothills of Bolger Hill, this pink salt gets its distinct coloring from its minerals mostly rust (iron). Now, this goes well with a cake with pink frosting which matches the pink foam in the hot tub water. Just don’t mix the frosting with the foam (champagne foam and the Himalayan pink salt foam). Oh, remember the Himalayan pink salt has anti-caking ingredients so the cake might fall flat in the hot tub.
No, this is not the dirty salt we shoveled in front of the JCS to put on our onion rings and fries. This is a special salt that is commonly used in some recipes due to the added Indian spices and herbs that are heated enough to add spice and heat to your hot tub water. It has a very pungent odor. If you like pickled eggs with your beer in the hot tub, this salt and its odor are for you. If your water is already sulfurous then you can skip the black salt.
This brings us to Sea Salt. Now some smart California surfer guy came up with the idea of selling us snowbirds sea salt. Guessin’ he figured Vermont ships out super rich super expensive B&J's Ice Cream to CA, he might as well return the favor with fancy salt. They got as much salt as we once had cows. Sea salt dissolves as fast as a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food on a steamy hot tub Sunday. Like B&J, sea salt isn’t an ordinary salt, but one best used as a garnish over the full tub of hot water. You might even consider announcing its presence to your guests who can then ooohhh and aaahhhh as you sprinkle Sea Salt on their naked heads.
Recommendations
With so many salt options for your hot tub, how is one to decide.
But first, a few cautions are in order.
Most Americans consume far more salt than their bodies need. So whichever salt you choose, be sure to bring in lots of folks into the hot tub with you to dilute your body's intake of salt.
Oh, and watch for signs of serious illness (from adding too much salt). Swelling in strange places, persistent thirst after the champagne bottle is emptied, caviar is bland and tasteless, you crave salty foods, you keep floating to the top and bumping into your neighbors. All signs you have over-salted your hot tub.
Well for us it all came down to the cheap or economical. We nearly ran out of water (recall we did not allow our well to fill up on that rainy day). So we had to compete with the fire department at the local stream to get enough water to fill our well.
And we like the folks in the Fire Department so that made us sad. When we arrived home we leaned over the hot tub and cried our eyes out, thus naturally salting the hot tub water. No chemicals, all-natural salt, no anti-caking additives, no pungent egg smell, not too spicy or too hot, and no potholes. We dump in a box of Special K for the vitamin K additives.
So there you have it. We hope you get rid of the chemicals (they really are bad for bees) and make the switch to a ‘salt water’ hot tub.
We get ours straight from the tap.
Your salt-cured and well-preserved neighbor
Bernie
Comments received via Email.
Hi, this is Joe Savio and we have a California Hot Springs hot tub. We got it five years ago and bought it with the salt generation unit factory installed.
The first year was fine but I was told that I ran it on too high output and it ruined the annode cell. It cost six hundred to get it replaced. After that I ran it on very low output and supplemented with granular chlorine. Two years later the cell wore out again.
I have stopped using it and am just using chlorine and have found it to be easier to maintain the water balance.
Hope this helps
Joe S.
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The community we live in changed the pool to salt water. There was no need to drain out all the water. They use a saline chlorinator process. Sounds like chemicals again but when you read up about it is very close to salt that is in a teardrop. No, I'm not a specialist on that subject. You can google it. Personally, I liked it. Nicer on the skin. Hans L. / NC
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