for several weeks, we kept finding tiny silver balls on the bottom of our hot tub and now it seems the hot tub is losing water. my husband suspects we need jet replacements. any thoughts, advice? could it be something else? are these ball bearings? thanks, sammi

 

If the balls are perfectly round, smooth, shiney and all the same size then you have ball bearings, probably from a pump which could also explain a water leak. It is possible that your moving (move up & down, spin or rotate) jets contain ball bearings. If one of them is bad it should be pretty easy to tell.

If the balls are a little rough, have a dull silvery color and slightly different sizes then they may be from a silver ion filter cartridge.

 

pilot dane, thx so much for replying. could this be something we can repair on our own? what would cause this to happen? maintenance, age, natural occurence? my husband maintains the hot tub very well and the hot tub is only 3 years old. i have to admit that we *did* ignore the little silver balls longer than we should have before we got the water loss. sigh. thanks again, sam.

 

Hot tubs/spas are pretty simple. You can fix almost anything on them. They are just big buckets of water with some pipes, a heater and a pump or two.

 

lot of pump company's here will rebuild the pump for you .You could pull the pump out and take it to one there.

ED

 

hahahahahahaha

There's no way possible for them to be coming from a pump. Do you have spinning jets? If so they're from there.......

from the pump.......... that's really funny

 

YUP that's the culprit!

Hi! As a Certified Master Tech. & warranty tech. for a large number of mfgrs including the mfgrs of 9/10 of the pumps on the market, I can assure you that there is no such animal as a spa pump with a ball bearing.

Except for smaller circulation pumps, nearly all have a delicate little spring loaded graphite seal, which does fail and start to leak approx. 3 yrs into operation, and allow water to seep out between the rear of the pump and front of the motor, but you will only notice it by looking, unless it is REALLY bad. In these cases, I have found almost without fail the pump impeller itself has actually cracked, and this is the source of the BIG leak.

The ONLY source for little round silver BB's are the jets in the bowl. Specifically the spinners. These are the "Massager" type, not the manually adjustable ones.

As for the leaks... you can expect a normal evaporation rate of nearly 1"/wk give or take, depending upon your enviroment. If you have a puddle or you have wet foam under the tub, and no one has been splashing or getting in and out lately... begin looking at the seal around the jets themselves, or the other connections in the tub.

One way to quickly ID the source is to add red dye like "Kool-Aid" to the water and wait a week. Be careful to apply a sealer to the surface of the tub first, or you may have a stain problem, but I have never had a problem using this technique.

After about a week, drain the tub and stand it up on it's side. then look for the red spot and start following it "up". where it stops, you have a leak. It may be as simple a fix as tightening the jets, and may be as challenging as replacing a cracked line or fixing a crack in the bowl itself, but I'd lay my money on the loose jet theory.

Even when jets lose their BB's they don't/CAN'T leak outside of the bowl, it is just NOT physically possible.

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i want to thank everybody who has replied to me. this is a great forum and you all are so nice to take the time to reply to people. were you all newbies once who had to ask questions? i'm ashamed to admit that i still have not fixed my hot tub and now it is empty. we are broke. i finally made some calls today to get estimates but everybody wants 90 bucks just to look at the darn thing. finally found one real nice fella who offered to diagnose based on digital pictures for free, but he can't actually fix it for about ten days and we are worried about freezing temps right now. plus all we have is a barbie digital camera. this will all work out. i'm trying to talk my hubby into filling up the tub just to keep it from freezing until we can get a reasonably priced guy out here, hopefully the fella who can come in ten days. i had written my hot tub maker to see what they had to say ... i've never heard of baqua spa sil!

this is a reply from the maker of my hot tub:

"The balls are coming from your roto jets usually caused by not keeping proper PH Balance in your spa that would cause calsium build up on the Jets, which then eats away at the seals that keeps the jets together and or harsh chemicals can cause this too.

A Spa Chemical named: Baqua Spa / Baqua Sil is known to eat away at your equipment & Plumbing in the spa. Majority of the spa Manufactures including Sun West will Void your warrenty if they test your spa and fing Baqua in it.

Sun West Spas"

 

Well, I guess the good news it that the spa does not have a major leak. I am glad you wrote back. I was curious where those little balls came from.

If the balls are from the jets then they hopefully do not affect the spa's operation (holding & pumping water). Your jets may not spin but hopefully you can soak in some nice warm water.

 

pilot dane, thanks for reply. i guess my main question is can we replace these jets ourselves? i'm sure i can figure out what parts to order, but as for the actual labor, would it be foolhardy to try ourselves? i really feel i found a good reasonable guy to do it, but he can't do it for ten days (going to a hot tub kinda conference or something) and we are worried about possible pacific northwest freezing until then, although doubtful.

so whad'ya think? anybody? pilot dane? would you venture to try it yourself if you were us? and what happened to spaguy and dr spa? i noticed there was some banning since i've been gone. guess it happens ... just curious.

sammi

 

I am not familiar with the jets used in your spa but most of them I've seen screw in from the insdide of the tub, so they are pretty easy to replace. The hardest part is just getting a hold of them so you can uncrew the bezel.

I am suprised that using the Baqua system of chemicals voids the warranty on your Sun West spa.

 

jet replacement ----- Do I need to drain H2O? Do I need special tool(s)? Can I just take my large channel locks & unscrew what looks like an outside ring and pull an assembly out (to take to a dealer in town for them to match up for a replacement)? Thanks

 

I would think the water would have to be drained, as ANYTHING removed below water level may leak and drain it for you. Also there may be a nut on the back side that sorta sandwiches the jets to insure a water tight seal.

 

I just looked at my spa and the jets just screw into a pocket/well/bump on the side of the tub. The water does not need to be drained. The spa plumbing leads up to a small tea cup shaped pocket in the side of the tub, then the jet screws into the front of this pocket so the actual jet nozzle assembly has nothing to do with holding water.