I thought a few words about filtration might be appropriate. Hot Spring was the first spa manufacturer to incorporate no bypass, 100% water filtration into their spas. Every Hot Spring Spa includes this feature. It means that when you're using a Hot Spring Spa, the water stays cleaner.
To understand water filtration, lets start with some basics. Filtering water means pumping it through a media that allows the water to flow, but stops solids or particles and traps them in the media. The filter media is then cleaned periodically. Swimming pools use sand or diatomaceous earth filters. These filter media are inexpensive and easy to clean. A swimming pool filter is backwashed to clean the media. Back washing is simply running water backwards through the filter and then out of the system. It usually removes a couple hundred gallons of water from the pool which is insignificant when your pool holds tens of thousands of gallons of water. Auto fill valves or a garden hose replaces the water.
Spas don't use sand or d. e. filters because they need to backwash to be cleaned. Dumping "hot" water on the ground is very energy wasteful and expensive. Spas use cartridge filters to remove solids from the water. These cartridges are easy to clean and replace. Almost all spas use these types of cartridges. Most spa manufacturers use a filter with a bypass in their spas so they can accommodate large volumes of moving water when the jets are running. This means when you're sitting in the tub with the jets on, most of the water being pumped against your body is not filtered. Manufacturers do this to save money. They can filter the water adequately with only one filter cartridge. Usually a 2 speed pump is used, with the low speed for filtration. Low speed will run for several hours everyday keeping the water clean.
Hot Spring uses as many as five filters in their spas. They do this to filter the water better. Each jet pump uses two filter cartridges, the silent flo circulation pump uses one. Every drop of water that circulates in a Hot Spring spa is filtered. This means that while you sit in a Hot Spring Spa the water is cleaner than that of a spa using bypass filtration with only one cartridge. You can see the difference if you wet test in our showrooms. We have as many as 6 wet spas in our showrooms and some have conventional bypass spa filtration. I have seen customers sit in various spas in a wet test situation. They usually spend time in different spas, trying the different models and features. When they're finished, the water in the spas with standard bypass filtration has a more clouded look. The Hot Spring Spas are cleaner, the water is clear and sparkling. The spas with standard bypass filtration have the pump running on low speed after each use and will be clear after a period of time. But Hot Spring just does it better.
