Ozone is oxygen. When you add an extra atom of oxygen to the standard O2 molecule you get ozone. Ozone can be produced naturally or commercially. After a thunderstorm the fresh rain smell is the ozone produced by the lightning strikes. On the commercial side most bottled water is now sanitized with ozone. But how does it clean?

That extra oxygen atom is super reactive. Oxygen is already a powerful oxidizing agent but ozone is a super oxidizer! Compared to chlorine ozone is twice as effective at sanitizing. This means that an ozonator can definitely help you keep your spa clean and replace some of the other sanitizer you're using. There are still limits on what ozone can do.

According to the The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) , water requires 1 - 2 ppm (mg/L) for 4- 10 minutes. Depending on the style of ozonator you can expect between 10 - 90 mg/hr of ozonation. To see how much ozone you're getting simply multiply your units output by the length of your filter cycle. For example a 90mg/L running for a typical 4 hour filter cycle makes about 360mg of ozone.

What does this mean for your spa? A typical 7'x7' or 8'x8' hot tub will be between approximately 1,155L and 1,495L. The best ozonators currently available on the market today can produce 2,160mg of ozone if left to run for 24 hours. It's therefore possible to have a hot tub run completely on ozone. Keep in mind this only covers the sanitizer portion of the water care and you will still need to deal with oils and physical waste in your spa.

Is this 24hr filtration realistic for most people? Not at all. The type of low speed utilized in most hot tubs is not designed to run that much and 24hr circulation pumps don't flow the water fast enough to sanitize before the ozone denatures back into oxygen. Ozone is a great addition to a spa but it has real limits when dealing with larger spas. If your spa is small, say around 800L or less, ozone can realistically solve your sanitizer with normal albeit extended filter cycles of 8-10 hours total filtration.

For more information on small, ozone only spas contact us today keyword "Ozone."