If you own or manage a short-term rental with a hot tub, you want the water in that hot tub to be perfect for every guest, every time. There are lots of sanitizing systems to choose from. Almost all of them are expensive and have their own set of challenges, especially for a hot tub at a rental property. My aim in writing this is to provide a simple, inexpensive and for lack of a better way to put it, totally foolproof way to keep the hot tub perfect for every guest.
There are a couple of important points I would like to address, based on our experience helping our customers that have rentals. First and foremost, get the right hot tub for the property! If you have a house that can accommodate 12-16 guests, and a hot tub that fits 4-6 people, get a bigger hot tub! If you don’t, the water will always be cloudy, there will always be foam, the hot tub will always be dirty. Some people want to go fast and cheap, so they buy a 110V plug-n-play hot tub from a big box store, either in their town or online. If you have a rental that accommodates 2 people, that should be fine. If you have a house that accommodates 6-12 people, that’s bad. First, 110V plug-n-play hot tubs take 1-2 DAYS to heat up after you fill them. That’s bad for business! If you have guests that make the hot tub disgusting, you’ll need to drain, clean and fill it before the next guest. If your hot tub takes 2 days to heat, and your new guests are there for 2 nights, you’re giving some money back since they can’t use the hot tub. Again, bad for business. The short-term rental market is huge, and it seems like it’s only getting bigger. Do yourself a favor and get a full-size, 240V hot tub from a reliable company.
I can’t say it enough, GRANULAR CHLORINE.
If you’ve read our other blog about using chlorine as your sanitizer for your personal hot tub, this is the same thing. The first thing this system requires in order to work properly is a good cleaner. You have to have the right people on your team, and make sure they cross all their t’s and dot all their I’s. You also need to make sure the hot tub is drained and cleaned every 3 months. Even in the winter months, even in freezing temperatures.
This information is for most short-term rentals, where guests stay 1-3 nights. Here are the simple sanitizing instructions:
For a 4-6 person hot tub, have your house cleaner add 2-3 tablespoons of granular chlorine between each guest. If you have a 2-3 person hot tub, have your house cleaner add 1-2 tablespoons between each guest. If the hot tub looks good, they should add a lesser amount. If the hot tub smells musty or the water is cloudy, they should add a greater amount. THAT. IS. IT. That’s really all it takes. Chlorine kills everything it needs to kill, and it only stays in the water 24-48 hours.
This information is for short-term rentals where guests stay for more than 3 nights:
I have a good friend that came up with this idea, and I think it’s great. Provide your guests with little cups of chlorine and have them add one each time they get out of the hot tub. You can get little plastic cups and lids from Amazon and put one tablespoon of chlorine in each cup. Everyone has an instruction book or instruction card for their guests, so you simply add this information to it. If you want to explain all about hot tub sanitizing for your guests, you can let them know that the chlorine works quickly and goes away quickly. Chlorine is a gas, so when the granules dissolve the gas is released. At that point, the chlorine kills as much as it needs to until it reaches the surface of the water. Once it reaches the surface it is released into the air. Your hot tub cover doesn’t seal completely, so those gases are not trapped between the surface of the water and the hot tub cover.
There is one other thing you can add to the mix, if your hot tub is stubborn. Bromine tablets. If the water is always cloudy no matter what you do, supplement the chlorine with bromine. Bromine and granular chlorine are totally compatible. The reason I use the term granular chlorine specifically is because there are multiple different types of chlorine. You wouldn’t want to mix bromine with chlorine tablets for pools, for example. There are two ways you can incorporate the bromine tablets. We have some customers that simply put the tablets in the filter area. There is usually a basket over the filter that gets the most water flow, so they drop them in there. We also have customers that have cedar tubs with equipment separate from the tub. Those customers put the bromine tablets in their hair and lint trap. Lastly, you can put them in a bromine floater. All the links for all this stuff are below.
So, to summarize, add the right amount of chlorine between each guest. If the water is stubbornly cloudy, supplement with some bromine tablets. Again, that’s it. You shouldn’t need to worry about the pH and alkalinity between cleanings, because it should not get too far out of range to bother anyone’s skin.
Here is the link to the chlorine:
Here’s the link to the bromine tablets:
Here’s the link to the bromine floater, if you need it:
I hope this helps lots of people!
Thanks for reading,
Hot Tub Mark