How to Clean Your Inflatable Hot Tub

You may be the best damn car cleaner or house cleaner, but when your inflatable hot tub at home looks like Shrek’s swamp, your dead in front of your friends.

You have to know the skill on how to clean a hot tub. When you want clean a hot tub, you don’t want to do it half-baked or resolve to shortcuts - it’s often a bad idea. Bacteria, debris, residue, grime and other pollutants can still be lurking in an improperly cleaned hot tub.

But yes, I wholeheartedly agree that hot tub cleaning can be quite a chore.

However, following this guide will help and show you that to have a clean hot tub is quite easy (even your grandma can do it!). All it takes is some effort, a few much needed tools and about two to three hours of your time if done the right way.

How to Clean a Hot Tub: Tools You Need for Cleaning Your Hot Tub

Before you go into the nit and grit of things, make sure you have the following essential tools with you before you start:

• Garden hose preferably with spray nozzle
• Pump
• Plugs or stoppers
• Scrubbing mitts
• Cleaning towel
• Shop vacuum
• Cleaning solution of your choice

Cleaning your inflatable hot tub product requires three crucial stages and every stage is essential: drain, clean and refill. Each stage requires several tasks which will be discussed below.

Draining Water from Your Tub

The first step you need to do to make your hot tub clean is to first drain its water empty and help rinse out dirty residue. To do that you have to do exactly the following:

1. Turn off the hot tub’s power so you won’t get electrocuted (people literally die because of electrocution, so please don’t skip this step).
2. Remove a drain plug to deplete much of the water in the tub, especially if it's full. Connect the hose to the opened drain so you can redirect where the water leads.
3. To accelerate the draining process and remove the water, use a pump. Position the pump in the lowest area of the tub.

Cleaning the Filters and Emptied Tub

While waiting to remove the water completely through draining, you may clean the tub’s filters. To do so, here is what you need to do:

1. Take out the filter units by unscrewing them from the standpipes. Stick the plugs or stoppers to fill in the holes where the standpipes were. Leave one unplugged.
2. Use the water hose to spray pressurized clean water into the dirty filters. Spray well at it until they are pearly white or until traces of brownish materials are gone.  You can also get and use other tools such as a small brush, especially if you need to clean and rinse hard to reach places.
3. ​Going back to the filtering unit, connect your shop vacuum into the unplugged hole. Make sure it is in “blow” mode. Turn the power on and this should blow out most of the grime that is inside the pipes.
4. ​When you’ve finished draining the water, move on the filter unit. Drain the water from the filter unit using the same hose and pump. When the filters have dried, you can put it back in place again.

Next, proceed with cleaning the tub, both interior and exterior. To clean your hot tub well, you simply need to get a hot tub cleaner tool like cleaning mitt and some towels. You can also make use of cleaning solutions especially if there are hard to remove stains on the surface.

To keep your hot tub clean, follow the steps below:

1. Put on your mittens and wipe the surface of the hot tub, its cover and filter unit to help in removing debris and dirt. Once you wipe and are done using the mitts dispose of them in the garbage can. They aren’t meant to be reused every cleaning cycle.
2. To ensure you are removing all the dirt, apply a second wiping but this time using a cloth towel to make it easy.

Refilling the Hot Tub

1. ​Put back the drain plugs again to the main tub. Reassemble everything to once they were including the filtering units.
2. Attach a running hose to one of the gray holes in the filter unit, fill and add the tub with water from there.
3. ​Whe​​​​​n the tub is filled with water, turn on the power.
4. ​Last step on this stage, switch on the clean cycle.

The Next Crucial Steps

After cleaning your hot tub, the next step is ensuring that the water quality is good and up to standards. This involves doing a test and balancing its chemicals such as chlorine and its levels, adjusting its pH balance, checking for calcium hardness and ensuring the water’s alkalinity is just right.

Because this whole process is entirely a different topic; we have to discuss it in another post. The bottom line is these next steps involve chemicals and is geared on maintaining the quality of the hot tub’s water.

When Should You Clean Your Hot Tub?

Hot tubs are great for relieving the bodies ache and pains while giving us a relaxing feeling. Whether or not you have a hot tub cover, it’s in YOUR best interest to maintain its cleanliness now that you know how to clean a hot tub.

If you want to continue to get the benefit from the soothing effect of using your hot tub, you should have a scheduled cleaning time for it. Imagine if you soak in a clean hot tub with jets spewing fresh and clean water.

Don’t wait for the hot tub’s water to be murky before cleaning it as it can cause microorganisms to grow. Clean it at least one time every 2-3 months based on instructions, or depending on how much you use it.

Moreover, treating its water with chemicals like chlorine or bromine also have schedules that are daily and weekly. Please refer to your manufacturer's instructions or call their local number especially if you may want to use harsh products such as chemicals.