Most hot tub guides hand you the same schedule. That helps once the water is behaving. When it is cloudy, cold, foaming or beeping, you need the page for that problem, in the order that fixes it. Pick your situation below.
What is your tub doing?
Type in your tub's gallons and what your test kit reads. The steps come out in the order to do them: alkalinity, then pH, then chlorine.
Doses assume dichlor at 56% available chlorine and plain baking soda. Check your product label, add half, run the jets 20-30 minutes, and retest before adding the rest. Not sure of your gallons? Find your real number.
Enter at least one reading to see your steps.
Check free chlorine (or bromine) and the filter before buying anything. Low sanitizer or a clogged filter is behind most of the problems below, and a clarifier or defoamer only hides them for a day.
Not sure whether to get in tonight? When cloudy or green water means drain first.
Not sure which one you have?Tap what you see and smell. The symptom finder ranks the likely causes and says if it is safe to get in.
A heater that shuts off is often protecting itself from low flow, and low flow is often just a dirty filter or an air lock after a refill. Rule out the cheap causes before booking a service call.
If it does come to a part, see what a heater costs versus a service call and what pros charge.
A code on the panel?Type it in. The code lookup says what it means for your controller and what to check first.
A used or inherited tub has old biofilm in its plumbing, which is why gunk comes out of the jets on the first fill. Purge and drain it before you start fresh. With a new tub, start at step 2.
Still sorting out the hookup? A hardwired tub needs a disconnect within sight of the tub and at least 5 feet from its inside wall, which is what people mean by the "5 foot rule". Electrical requirements in plain words, 120V plug-in versus 240V, and what the inspector checks.
Usually it is the fixing order, not the chemicals. Get total alkalinity into 80-120 ppm first, then pH into 7.2-7.8, then sanitizer. Chase pH before alkalinity and the two keep pulling each other off target.
There is no best sanitizer, only the one that fits how often the tub gets used and how much testing you are willing to do. Going from chlorine to bromine is the easy direction; going from bromine back to chlorine usually means a drain.
The weekly part is short: test, adjust, and rinse the filter every 1-2 weeks. The bigger jobs run on intervals: a filter soak monthly, a drain every few months, a new filter every 1-2 years. The full schedule lays it all out.
Electricity usually runs $20-50 a month, driven mostly by your climate, the cover and the set point. Chemicals add about $20-40 a month. The monthly cost formula, how to bring the bill down, and why 104°F is the hard upper limit.
Same chemistry, different rules: fewer gallons, a pump that doesn't run around the clock, and a heater that scale damages faster. Inflatable maintenance, chlorine sized to the real gallons, E90, E96 and E03 codes, not heating, and patching a leak.
New guides as they come out, newest first.
