Just like taking care of a swimming pool, a hot tub is just a smaller body of water, but it requires the same three fundamentals: circulation, cleaning, and chemistry. This is all it takes to run a clean hot tub all year long.

1. Circulating Your Hot Tub

Your hot tub may come with a built-in schedule for how often it runs. When it runs, it will usually circulate the water for about 15-20 minutes through some cartridge filters. It’s important that you run your hot tub at least once a day, if not twice.

2. Cleaning Your Hot Tub

This is a really big part of taking care of your hot tub. There are a few things you need to make sure are always kept clean: The shell and the filters.

First and foremost, you need to drain and clean your hot tub every 3-4 months – more often if you use the heck out of it. Think of it like this, you wouldn’t keep your bathtub filled all year and have your entire family use the same water, right? Yes, that would be gross. Drain it and clean it!

When the hot tub is filled with water, you need to keep the waterline and seats clear of scum and debris. This will occur more if you hot tub is outside. Inside hot tubs will experience water line scum, too.

Make sure you clean the inside of your hot tub as often as possible. And again, you should drain and refill the tub every 3 or 4 months.

You also need to keep the cartridge filters clean and there are three methods: rinse, spray, and soak.

You should rinse your hot tub filters as often as possible with warm water or your garden hose. This will keep the filters working properly.

Every week or so, you should use a chemical spray to clean the filters and rinse them afterwards. This keeps the filters nice and clean while you’re running your hot tub. Also, every time you drain and refill your hot tub, you should soak your filters in a cleaning solution. I’ve outlined all the methods in the article and video below.How to Clean Hot Tub Filters: You should clean hot tub filters weekly, monthly, and each time you refill. In this VIDEO tutorial, I’ll you how to clean hot tub filters with 3 methods.

3. Hot Tub Chemistry

Now that you understand how to keep your hot tub clean, it will make dealing with the chemistry that much easier. The chemistry is tricky because we’re dealing with a much smaller body of water than a swimming pool. However, they require the exact same chemicals: pH, Alkalinity, and a sanitizer of your choice. My choice: chlorine.

It’s important that you read through the following article to make sure you understand hot tub chemistry. It’s very easy, but it requires due diligence on your part.

Before you go adding any chemicals, you need to know where your hot tub stands. That’s why testing is so important. You don’t want to overdo it on adding chemicals.

Additional Hot Tub Care Resources

Besides what we’ve already talked about, you should also learn how to take care of the cover and the cabinet.