Becoming a Hot Tub Care Guru with Alicia Stevens

Dive headfirst into a wealth of knowledge about hot tub care and maintenance with our special guest, Alicia Stevens, the Director of Training for Bio Lab. Get ready to unravel secrets of water testing, balancing, and maintenance, guaranteeing a crystal clear and well-kept hot tub with Alicia's 24 years of experience serving as your guide. Coming up, an enlightening talk about Spa Guard chemicals, the benefits of using Alex software for water testing, and the importance of pH balance and sanitization for your hot tub’s longevity and performance.

Ever wondered about the science behind sanitizing hot tubs using the pH of the water? We've got you covered. This episode takes you through Bio Lab's innovative rapid dissolve technology, explaining how it simplifies hot tub maintenance. Mary, a Bio Lab expert, will enlighten you about the effectiveness of their five new products, packed with cutting-edge technology. We'll also explore the role of enzymes in water conservation and the benefits of liquid solar blankets for uncovered hot tubs.

In the final part of this episode, we discuss the common misconception that merely adding salt to hot tubs solves their problems. Listen in, as we explain why it's vital to take care of the water balance, focusing specifically on maintaining optimal pH levels. We'll also share some key tips on maintaining hot tub longevity and performance, emphasizing the importance of regular, proper maintenance. Plus, get insightful tips on cleaning and drying hot tub filters for more efficient filtering. So, grab your notepad and get ready to become a hot tub maintenance expert!

www.spaguard.com, where you can find all of the SpaGuard info
Alicia can be reached via email @   alicia.stephens@biolabinc.com

CHECK OUT THE NEW RAPID DISSOLVE TABS HERE:  https://vimeo.com/847092060/ba09262b57?share=copy
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Transcript

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 0:26

Hey hot tubbers, welcome to the podcast tub talk with the hot tub lady. I am your host, jackie Johnson, and we have Alicia Stevens from bio lab, the national sales trainer, and she has more education than you could possibly imagine. So please be sure to ask your questions and we're going to help you out with the hot tub water care issues today. So welcome, alicia. Thanks, jackie, I'm happy to be here. So welcome, welcome. And did I say that right, is it Alicia? Alicia?

Alicia Stevens: 1:00

rhymes with Patricia.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 1:01

Alicia rhymes with Patricia Awesome. And if my flinging is watching.

Alicia Stevens: 1:06

do not tell me it's spelled wrong, that's all.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 1:09

Fantastic. I should be able to remember that my mom's name is Patricia. Anyway, welcome. We're super, super excited to have you. And let's just, why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself, how you got to be where you are, and tell us about bio lab and where they are in the industry?

Alicia Stevens: 1:26

Sure. So I am the director of training for bio lab. I've been with bio lab. I'm just now working on my 24th year. I came out of school and took a temporary job actually a summer job with bio lab answering the phones. Anybody's ever called into their tech support helpline to say I don't know how to use this product or my pool's green and I don't know what to do, and you get one of those people out to where I started, actually with bio lab. It was supposed to be a three month gig and 24 years later, here I am. I always I was coming out of grad school and didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, so I was buying myself some time. And you know how the industry is you get in and you don't get back out.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 2:04

So Exactly Once you're in, that's for sure, yeah.

Alicia Stevens: 2:09

So I've worked through a couple of different. I started there and I did some time in R and D and some product development work and I've bounced around a little bit. But in all of that I figured out very quickly that I have a passion for training and education. So I was lucky enough to be given some opportunities by a couple of people that have helped shape my career and I was able to develop that and here I am. So now that's what I do all day, every day.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 2:34

And you do it very well, thank you. I've been in the industry for a very long time, myself and I and if any of you guys have read my book or any of that stuff, you guys all know that I'm constantly spa guard, spa guard, and the reason for that is the quality of the chemicals and, more importantly, it's the education that you guys supply. I've been a hundred percent, I would say I'm a bio guard educated girl. I've learned everything that I've learned from you guys, from calling the tech support, from the training seminars that you've got on, and there's a reason that I am big into spa guard. You let's talk a little bit. You know why should someone use spa guard chemicals?

Alicia Stevens: 3:15

First and foremost, biolab has. We play in a lot of different sandboxes as a company, but bio guard and spa guard are our premium lines and the one of the biggest focuses that we have for those lines is education, and that's educating our dealers, educating the people to sell the products and, by default, educating customers, whether it be through our website. You can get a ton of information from spa guardcom, but also just from the experience of them going into a spa guard dealer and saying hey, I have a question about my hot tub. I have a brand new hot tub. I broke my hot tub, whatever it is, and that dealer being well trained, well educated and able to help them.

Alicia Stevens: 3:57

So our focus has always been that the consumer shouldn't have to figure it all out. We'll do the hard work and you just come in and let us guide you. So that's always been a focus of ours. And then we pair that with quality, top of the line chemicals that do what they say they're going to do. They're well made, they're well packaged, they're easy to use, easy to apply and it leaves a hot tub owner hopefully with no questions at the end of it.

Alicia Stevens: 4:22

And that's that's our goal is we don't want you to have any questions left, because we've answered them all. We don't mind the questions. Feel free to ask them, but at the end, when you're standing by your hot tub putting our Sponyard chemicals in, we don't want you to have questions because we want you to be very confident in what you're doing. So the education paired with just really good quality products and packaging and instructions. And we have top of the line water testing and our Alex software to back all of that up. So we know what's going on in your water and we know what to do to fix that or keep it where it's supposed to be. And that's our focus.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 4:57

And it's. I would not be wearing that today if it wasn't for Spogart and Biolab. And you talked about Alex a little bit, and Alex is the software. For those of you that don't know, it's a software that actually tests your water, gives you perfect recommendations for your water. Tell us a little bit more about Alex and why it's such an important piece of the puzzle for you guys.

Alicia Stevens: 5:22

Sure, alex is the backbone of our Biogarden, spogart brands and it's a software piece. So when we say, test your water, you can test your water in a number of different ways. Right, we offer smart labs through our brands in order to we spin the disc and those readings will feed right into the software. But ultimately, if you're using Alex, you can use it in the field, you can use it anywhere, you can hand input your readings. If it doesn't talk to Alex, whatever. So the testing is something that, while we offer options, you can test your water in a lot of different ways.

Alicia Stevens: 5:54

But what Alex does is it takes those readings, those parameters, and it does a overall analysis of what's going on in that water, takes into account everything that, all the information that you input.

Alicia Stevens: 6:06

So it takes into account temperature and readings and time of year and all the stuff that it gathers, and then it gives you a prescription and that's the way we describe it a prescription for what to do to solve any problems that you might have or to just keep maintaining your hot tub or pool if you have one where it's supposed to be. So we always say it'll give you the right product and the right amount at the right time, and that's our goal with Alex is that's what it does. So we take all these confusing numbers that don't always mean anything to someone and we turn that into a piece of paper that says put this product in now, wait 15 minutes, put this much of this product. And we just give a step by step process. So again, when you're standing by your hot tub putting it in, you know exactly what to do, how long to wait before you do the next step, how much you're adding and what to expect from that, and it's you can't go wrong. This is what I always tell my customers when they come in.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 7:00

If you follow this piece of paper, you cannot mess it up.

Alicia Stevens: 7:03

It's pretty self-explanatory. And the cool thing about Alex is it does things in an order, right, but it's constantly recalculating from what it told you to do first. So if it tells you balance your alkalinity first, so you do that and it's going to say, okay, you balance your alkalinity, but in the process we know you put in this much product that's going to impact your pH, so then it will adjust what it would tell you to do to your pH based on what would have happened from your alkalinity. So if you put your alkalinity in and somehow you raise your pH 0.2 parts per million Alex knows that, so it's not going to have you adjust too far in any direction, because it knows what the other chemicals that it's calling for are going to do to the water balance. So when you do it in order, it's constantly compensating for what came before it. So ultimately you get balanced at the end of it. Pardon me, I'm dealing with a little bit of a cold, so I apologize if my voice cracked a little.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 7:57

You're doing absolutely fantastic and I get it. Been there, done that, but what I would? So my customers that are out here, my followers that are out here listening to the podcast, and they've never been into a Spogart or a Biogart dealer when should they go? How do you find this Alex technology? How does someone who's never been in? What do they need to do?

Alicia Stevens: 8:20

So you can go to Spogartcom or Biogartcom either one and there is an option to I think it's at the bottom of the page. You can click located dealer and you simply put in your zip code and it's going to give you the dealers that are within. You can set the radius five miles, 10 miles, your jacket, your South Dakota you might want to set your parameter a little bit bigger when you're part of the country but you put in your zip code and it will bring up any Biogart, spogart dealers that are close to you and then you can just pick and choose. If they're on that dealer locator, then they are what we consider platinum dealers, which means they would have our Alex software, they would be carrying Spogart chemicals and they would be able to help you and yeah, and that's honestly any of you.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 9:07

I get a ton of questions from all of you and I would 100% encourage you to find a someone who has the water testing and specifically the Alex water testing there's nothing better out there. I will always have that lab. Wherever I'm working, that's going to be the case.

Alicia Stevens: 9:27

I tell people when they're like, is it really that valuable? I say it's like going to the doctor and they draw blood periodically to make sure everything's okay and you're bought. It's the same concept. You run the blood through a machine and it spits out all these numbers and then the doctor tells you what you need to do with those readings. And that's Alex is the doctor. It takes all those numbers and it spits out what you need to do.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 9:48

Yeah, and it does really well. Okay, that's probably enough of our Bioguard commercial.

Alicia Stevens: 9:52

Fair enough, fair enough.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 9:54

But we'll keep going and I'm sure I'm going to bring it up again. But I am a big Spogart Bioguard girl. I've done many videos about how important I think that using that quality chemical makes a difference and you should definitely do that. But let's you know for the people that are listening. Let's just start with the basics. Why is it important to balance your water? Why is that where we always have people start?

Alicia Stevens: 10:18

Balance is important for I'd say two, maybe three main reasons, depending on how you want to look at it. First and foremost, balance is key to comfort, right? And so when you have a hot tub or a pool and there's a lot of things about hot tubs and pools that are interchangeable and there's a lot of things that aren't but comfort of the people that are using that water should be top of mind for you, right? You're hanging out in the water, you're soaking in it in a hot tub, you're spending an extended period of time in there, and when your water isn't balanced, that's when your skin gets itchy and your eyes burn and you cough when you get in the water, and things along those lines. So balance, specifically pH, is a huge element of that. We can talk about that, but balancing is a huge element to who's using your water and how comfortable are they. On top of that, you invest a lot of money into hot tubs specifically. Right, they're not a $20 purchase at the Dollar General down the street. You're investing multiple thousands of dollars in something, and when you do that, you want that to last as long as humanly possible. And one of the hardest things for people to understand is that if you ignore your water balance, it may look fine, it may feel fine, but if you're ignoring the fact that your pH is too high or too low, or your alkalinity is out of balance or your calcium is not right or whatever that is, then you're damaging that equipment that creates the inner workings of this volume, might be damaging the shell, and you've invested all this money in something you want to last but you're not doing what it takes to take care of it. You wouldn't do that to a car, right? You buy a car, you put the maintenance in to keep it running. You buy a hot tub, you want to put the work in to keep it going, and that's a huge part of what water balance does, because if it's not balanced, then that's when heaters stop working and leaks start happening and filters start clogging up and surfaces get damaged, and nobody wants that right. They want that investment to last.

Alicia Stevens: 12:20

I think the final piece of water balance is. Our first and foremost concern with any body of water is safety right. We want swimmers to be protected from disease. We don't want anybody getting sick from being in the water, so we want to make sure that when they get in the water there's not things growing in there, there's not bacteria that's going to cause illness, et cetera. And balancing the water is a vital piece to making sure that your sanitizer right, which is it's a number one most important job is to kill bacteria and keep people from getting sick. We want that sanitizer always there and always working, and water balance can have a huge impact on how well it works. How much you use. You're going to use a lot more sanitizer if your water's not balanced properly, which means you're more likely to run out, which means you're more likely to have a problem. Those three things comfort, equipment, longevity, and then just safety and sanitization those are the important reasons why we balance water.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 13:14

And I think with the last one that you touched on a little bit, and this is one people just don't understand If your pH in alkalinity are not in line, your sanitizers they can take up to three times the amount of sanitizer that you need to actually properly sanitize that hot tub. So it's a huge money saver to start with your alkalinity and your pH. That's a huge factor in that.

Alicia Stevens: 13:40

And one of the keys that people don't realize is it's very misleading. When you test a hot tub and your pH should be seven, four to seven, six that's ideal for hot tub chemistry and when you start to crawl upward which in hot tubs, ph usually goes high, that's a product of hot water and aeration and just the way the chemistry of hot tubs work. So for all of you that have hot tubs and you wonder why you're constantly battling high pH and bringing it back down, that is just the nature of hot water chemistry and the nature of hot tubs. It's very rare that you have to raise pH in a hot tub. It is not rare that you have to bring it down. But if you're not doing that and you're ignoring that and your pH is climbing, your chlorine I'll just use chlorine for an example just gets less and less active. It's still there and you still test for it, but at a pH of 7.5, which is completely ideal. That's the best pH you can possibly have.

Alicia Stevens: 14:35

The pH of the human eye is 7.5. So if you're in water, you get the water in your eyes. If you're in a swimming pool, you're swimming around with your eyes open and you pick your head up and your eyes are all bloodshot and red. Most people what do they blame that on? Sanitizer Too much chlorine. You're retaining the ice. It's never the chlorine. It's 99.9 times out of 100.

Alicia Stevens: 14:54

It's a pH problem that causes that. But in hot water, as it climbs and climbs, your sanitizer will go from 50% active, which is actually ideal. That's half of your sanitizer working and half of it's getting ready to go to work. That's a good balance. But as that pH climbs we get up to the point where, at a pH of 8.4, you're about 9% active. So now you've got 9% of your chlorine working and 91% of it not working, and that's not effective. You're not effectively taking care of your spot at that point. So you'd have to add more and more to get enough active chlorine. But if you'd simply bring your pH down, you would activate more of what's there and it would be a much more efficient way to sanitize the water.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 15:42

For sure. And thank you for explaining it like that. That's a huge help that I think people are going to understand. I'm going to pop on here just so you know Mary stopped and stopped in. She's loved these two ladies. Great information, Thank you for sharing.

Alicia Stevens: 15:56

Thanks, mary.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 15:57

We love Mary. She is absolutely fantastic. So thanks for that, mary, and Mary knows her stuff as well, so she may pop on here with a good question for us, let's. I'm really excited about this. I'm going to wait till later, but I'm going to bring it on. You told me about some cool stuff that you guys are going to be introducing. Can we talk about that a little bit? Sure?

Alicia Stevens: 16:20

And you're, besides our sales staff, going out and starting to talk about it specifically to our dealers. This is the first time we've talked about it publicly News Working news, yeah. So Spogart has some new technology coming out and we're focused on ease of use and again, we don't want you to have questions. We want you to understand what you're doing and how much to put in, et cetera. So we are introducing this fall what we call our rapid dissolve technology and we are going to introduce we're pretty excited too. This is really cool technology. We've been working on it for a while in our labs and that's one cool thing about Biogart and Spogart is that we have labs in our own buildings. We have our own chemists, we have our own formulations, people, and it's really cool to be able to walk upstairs and say, hey, let's try this. And they're the nerdy, white coated chemists which I love in the death. I can call them nerds because I'm a nerd, but they're up there working on things like this. But our rapid dissolve technology is specifically for our Spogart line. Like I said, we're going to have five products. We're going to have a chlorine product, we're going to have a shock product, we'll have an alkalinity adjuster. We'll have a pH reducer, specifically because hot water chemistry is usually high, and we're going to have a stainless scale control product. All of these are elements that you're going to use on a regular basis in a spa.

Alicia Stevens: 17:42

But each one of these comes in just a small dissolvable tab. You toss it in the filter. It dissolves within about five minutes. You can see it working as it starts to dissolve, it fizzes up a little bit and shows you that it's dissolving Within five minutes. It's in, it's done, and the dosing was so simple. You need one tab. Perhaps you need two tabs, based on your reading and the size of your hot tub, but no more. Where's the teaspoon? I'm going to guess how much I'm going to shake out of the bottle. How much does this cap hold, all of that sort of stuff? So it's just really simple, easy to use and these are tablets.

Alicia Stevens: 18:16

They're not in plastic, they don't have to be unwrapped, there's no waste associated with them. You're just going to drop it directly into the filter and, honestly, you could put it in the foot well, if you wanted to. It's not going to hurt your surface at all. We just say, for ease of use, toss it in the filter and let it go. But yeah, so we have our corn. We're going to have a coring tab, so that would be the equivalent to adding a granular coring. Now you brought it out Instead of needing a floater or a cornate or anything. You just toss the tab in and it dissolves.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 18:45

It's not going to affect your CYA at all.

Alicia Stevens: 18:48

It will have a little bit of cyanary acid in it. That's part of the blend. But when you're using chlorine in a spa, we're not worried about that at all. So you will have. It is a dichloric based product and then the shock is a monoprosulfate. So you're going to go with a non-chlorine shock.

Alicia Stevens: 19:05

You can toss it in a great way to shock a hot tub. Monoprosulfate is one of the best ways to shock a hot tub, very effective. And then again we have our PhD creaser. We have alkalinity increase because in spa or hot tubs hot water chemistry they tend to go in opposite directions and that's another element of hot water and having a cover on a lot. That's what drives that. And then we have our stainless scale control product to protect the surface and the equipment. A pretty full line of balancers with some chlorine and shock thrown in there and just super easy to add and just a tip that you can throw in. I'm so excited you can pour the bottle and toss it in and you're done no cups, no teaspoons, no caps needed. You just toss it in and go. So we're very excited for the technology.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 19:49

So I'm excited for it as well. How about my saltwater customers? Are they going to be able to use this product?

Alicia Stevens: 19:54

Sure, it's all based on chlorine, so it's all chlorine compatible. And what you have to remember about salt, whether it's pools, spa or whatever salt pools, salt spas, are still chlorine sanitized pools and spas. So anything compatible with chlorine would be compatible salt and all of these are built for that. So with salt, that pH reducer tab becomes even more important, because not only is hot water driving your pH up, salt water chemistry also drives your pH up and that's just an element of how you create sanitizer from salt. So the pH decrease. Your tabs become even more important, for example, in those systems. But yes, all of these would be compatible with a salt spa.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 20:36

But the big word anymore is phosphates. How is this going to affect phosphates? Just out of curiosity.

Alicia Stevens: 20:43

So, with phosphates, the only thing that we really end up having a conversation about, as far as some of the things that we put in, is when you talk about stain and scale control products and I'm glad you're bringing it up, because it can be a bit of a confusing subject when you talk about because the phosphates in water, they cause issues. They cause water quality problems. They're definitely something that we want to keep control of and reduce as much as possible. When you put in a good, solid, the best working stain and scale control product, unfortunately, the best working one that we have is a phosphate based product. So if you really want to, it is the best. Yeah, it's, it is the best. So if you really want to protect your surfaces and protect against scale and staining, then that that phosphate based product is the very best at doing that.

Alicia Stevens: 21:34

So people are like what do I do? You're telling me to do two things that are at opposite with each other, and this is the best advice I can give. And if you've ever heard me teach, if anybody's ever heard me teach, I teach an analogy. It's all day long. That's, that's what I talk about. So the best analogy I can give is if you buy, I should probably say, a 12 pack of Coke, but you do the math right. So you buy a 12 pack of a beverage and you want it to be ice cold when you drink it.

Alicia Stevens: 22:02

What are your options for getting it ice cold? You have three options really. You could toss it in the fridge and wait, right. You could wrap it in a paper towel and put it in the freezer for approximately seven minutes. I don't know why, I know that, but it seems to work really well. I get it pretty cold. Or what's the best way to get the coldest beverages you've ever drank? You put it in a cup of ice, right? That's the coldest. You're out with tailgating If the coldest beer you've ever drank right out of that cooler full of ice. So the ice is the very best at doing that job, right? I may? I'm coming to a point. I promise I really am. So the ice is very best at doing that job. So you go through the day and you have the coldest beer and you enjoy it and it does its job perfectly. But what happens at the end of the day? What do you have left behind? You have water right.

Alicia Stevens: 22:50

Because the ice did its job, but it melted and it left behind something that we don't need the water. We need to get rid of it because it's going to get in the way. But, man, that ice did a really good job, so it's worth it to get rid of the water and then we can start over the next day if we have to. That's what a phosphate-based stain and scale product does. It's the very best at what it does, but it is going to leave behind some phosphate residue. But if you are doing a weekly phosphate removal treatment as part of your maintenance program, you're constantly just emptying out that water that gets left behind in the cooler and then you get the bang for your buck on what you needed it to do. So that's the best way I can explain it. It is confusing because we are telling you to put something in and then eventually, after it breaks down, you're going to take it back out.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 24:10

But what you get in the process is such good protection for the spots worth it, and there's I've been doing this for years, decades, and the stain and scale is way more worth than the phosphates that are left over. It is so worth it, and I was just curious with this new product. If it was, we're still for it to work, it's got to have some phosphates in it.

Alicia Stevens: 24:37

There are options out there that work without phosphates in it. Don't get me wrong. There are some options, but they're just not as effective. If you it's, you can put your Coke in the fridge and wait and eventually it'll get cold. It's just not as effective as the cooler provides. So there are other options out there. But what you get out of the phosphate, it's phosphonic acid based scale inhibitor is so much such a better experience as far as team scale goes that you just you juggle a little bit and then, once it breaks down, you pull out what gets left behind and you're none the worse for the wear. So pulling phosphates out of water is not difficult. Oh, it's super, it's super easy to do and it's just something that, if you stay on top of it, it's part of your maintenance. If that's part of your maintenance program, then you won't see any issues from it.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 25:23

Yeah, that's great. So Mary has a really good question about your new product, so we're going to bring her up here. Does the technology have water softeners built in? Do you know if you can use the natural enzyme in the spa, complete with the salt water hot tub?

Alicia Stevens: 25:38

Okay, so there's a couple of questions. There's a couple of questions in there. The rapid dissolve technology none of that has water softener built into it. It's pretty straightforward chemical technology. So, yeah, none of that has. None of it has. I think she's probably asking about borates etc. So no, none of that is blended in there. Her second question was could you use spa complete and what was the other one, Natural enzyme? Natural enzyme with a salt water system? Absolutely, Both of those products are perfectly compatible with salt water and they can add a ton to your maintenance program. Enzymes are one of the best things that you can add to any water, whether it's hot tub or pool, to just make your life so much easier, Make your water quality so much better. So that's definitely something that I always recommend being part of your weekly maintenance program is adding an enzyme based product.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 26:34

And we actually touched on that in our preview and we talked about water conservation because that's such a big topic. Now People are oh, you can't just waste your water, and especially the people you know in on the coast that that's such a big deal. Tell me, tell me about the products that you have that can make your water last longer.

Alicia Stevens: 26:54

Let's start with enzymes, since we're already talking about them. Enzymes are a technology that they I think they get overlooked a little bit, and when we, when we merged when Biolab, acquired natural, our natural chemistry division, one of them the things they did absolutely the best in the industry at was enzymes. They are known for their enzymes and they're known for their phosphate movers and clarifiers, but enzymes were there such at the forefront of what they do and they had some great technology and we learned a lot about enzymes and what they do and how useful they can be, etc. So we've incorporated that into our Biogard and Spogard line, because the ultimate thing is what enzymes do is they break down non-living organics. So it's very important to say non-living. They don't kill anything and I want to be clear about that. They're not sanitizer in any way, but they break down non-living organics and every non-living organic that they break down is one that Corrine doesn't have to. So from an efficiency standpoint and I'll get back to your water conservation in just a second but from an efficiency standpoint in a world of we Corrine's expensive, we want to use as little as possible, we want to last as long as possible. Adding an enzyme takes away some of the work that Corrine would otherwise have to do, so it doesn't get used up as fast. So ultimately your program becomes more efficient because the enzyme is taking on some of that work that would otherwise eat up your sanitizer residual. So that's one of the first things that they do for your water. What they also do is enzymes will break down non-living organics to the very basics of what make them up Water and air.

Alicia Stevens: 28:37

A lot of times when you put an enzyme in a pluripolar spa, you'll actually see a little bit of a bubble or a foam on the surface of the water Not big foam, but just a little bit of skin, exactly, and it's just little bubbles and what that is. The enzymes are breaking down those organics and they're releasing as gasses and they're. They're just breaking down to the very building blocks of what makes them up. When you break them down that far, you don't have to filter them out. They don't get stuck on the surface of your spa. You don't get a water line accumulation that happens at scum line or the bathtub ring when you're using enzymes. You don't have to do that. So ultimately your filters don't clog as quickly, your water stays cleaner and you can. Overall, you end up draining and refilling less often, which saves water. You end up ultimately making your chemical, your program, the most efficient it can be, which is going to save you on money and overall.

Alicia Stevens: 29:34

We want that body of water to be as clean as possible and last as long as it possibly can, and using something like enzyme can certainly help do that. A lot of times people end up draining and refilling their spa simply because they need to wipe the surface down. They get that build up, it's grungy, they want to clean it up, they drain, they wipe everything off. And that's not to say you don't have to drain and refill, you do. It's certainly still a part of spa maintenance. But when you're using something like an enzyme, your water does last longer, your scum line accumulation goes away and you'll end up you rinse less filters, which takes water. You just end up using a lot less water.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 30:11

Yeah, and that's enzymes. It's one of my favorite products. I just it gives. I don't know, the water just is cleaner. I feel cleaner in my hot.

Alicia Stevens: 30:22

And then it's a great addition to it's what I call negotiable water care. Do you have to put enzymes in your hot tub to take care of them? No, you don't have to. Do you have to sanitize? Yes, you have to shock, absolutely. Do you have to balance? You do. Do you have to put enzymes in? No, but if you do, your whole world just got a lot easier and your water looks better and it feels better and it's easier to take care of.

Alicia Stevens: 30:48

I always say it's negotiable, you don't have to do it, but I don't know why you wouldn't. And the other thing for water conservation, quite honestly, is depending on what kind of a hot tub it is. If it's an uncovered hot tub, putting some sort of a liquid solar blanket in can be helpful. Now, it's a little less effective in a hot tub, just because when you break up the surface tension every time you turn the jets on, it kind of breaks that up a little bit, but it can help, especially when the water goes still. It keeps evaporation down. So it helps keep water in the tub and when you do that you fill less often and you again you're conserving the water that you have. That's more for uncovered, maybe attached spas, things like that, but it can certainly make a big difference.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 31:33

So, yeah, it's, yeah, it does make a difference, and if you're not having to add water, then you're not constantly fighting with the balance and all those things, and most of the hot tubs that I deal with are going to be covered hot tubs.

Alicia Stevens: 31:47

Sure, Most residential hot tubs are for sure, but if you ever have those ones that aren't, I always say if you can look out at your water and see steam rising off of it at night, you're losing water. That's water actually leaving your pool or hot tub. So you're going to have to replace that eventually. For sure.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 32:05

So I kind of want to. I think this new, these new tablets that are coming out, sure Does that have a special. You have that as a line. Are you calling that a certain line or is it?

Alicia Stevens: 32:17

It's, we're calling it our rapid dissolve line. So it's Spogart, it's under our Spogart label, but the product names are our rapid dissolve chlorine tab. Our rapid dissolve pH decrease or rapid dissolve. Total alkaline increase or rapid dissolve. I think we call it shock shock oxidizing tabs is called them and then rapid dissolve stainless scale tabs.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 32:40

Pretty simple explanatory. And then, when are those going to be available for the consumer to buy?

Alicia Stevens: 32:47

So our dealers are ordering them now and we're not shipping exactly yet, but we'll be shipping very soon and so, as the fall comes in, hot tub usage picks up because it's cooling off. I don't know about you, but I'm still sweating every day, but maybe not south, but they will be available this fall. Like I said, dealers are ordering them now and they'll be getting them in shortly, so be on the lookout for them. Check out our website. We'll have the information all up on their Spogartcom to read about them, but this technology is so cool and we have some videos on our YouTube channel that show the dissolution and show them at work.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 33:27

You can find those now? Yep, you can.

Alicia Stevens: 33:29

That's awesome, I'm going to give you some links, jackie. If you want to link over with some of your stuff, I'm happy to do that, for sure.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 33:36

And then I'll put that in the show notes for everyone, the links that they can check out these new tablets, because you guys I've been again in the industry forever and this is something that people have been asking for years is just a simple, pre-measured way of doing it, and a lot of people have tried. There's been lots of things. I've seen bottles that you squeeze and it gives you just an ounce or something like that, but you still have to do some math. I've seen the like the tide pod dissolved and they didn't dissolve as well as maybe they should have.

Alicia Stevens: 34:08

And then you get that gummy residue on your filter that gets left behind. Yeah, we, honestly, we looked at all those things. We were in the line of what about this? This Tide pod approach? That was very appealing and it didn't work that well for us. And we've we've put graduated lines on our bottles so you can tell how many ounces your part. All of that stuff, and we have dosing caps and all that. This is really the easiest way, and Alex is gonna make it easy, even easier with put in one tab or two. No, it's that simple, you don't have to. There's no, I don't know how many hot tubs I walk up to and there's like the set of measuring spoons laying there. It's all terrible when you have to do that.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 34:47

It's funny I actually just bought a bunch of them to sell. It's all good. I'm so excited this is the industry has needed this for so long and it's everybody wants. If I'm once a week I get somebody saying why can't I just use this tablet, why can't I just do, why can't?

Alicia Stevens: 35:10

Everyone's looking for the magic bullet of of spa care or pool care. This is the closest thing we've come through the magic bullet and it's just simple. That's the whole point is to simplify and as, when we release this to our sales team, our director of marketing she goes this is disruptive technology. And I'm like just what does that mean? And she goes this will disrupt the industry. When it comes out there, it's going to make a splash. It's different, it's truly new. I think we all want to introduce new things to the pool industry, but ultimately, there's only so many ways you can reinvent the wheel and this is just something. This is definitely something new and we're very excited about it?

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 35:53

Yeah, I'm. I can't tell you how excited I am about it. I am about it, I was gonna wait till the end of the podcast to bring it up, but I was like there's.

Alicia Stevens: 36:00

But if you lose someone now we've talked about it this is great.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 36:05

Yeah, we have talked about it, but you've you've got some good stuff here, so I'm gonna ask this question Are there any specific challenges and trends in the hot tub water that have emerged in recent years at Biolab is addressing.

Alicia Stevens: 36:18

There's a couple things I would bring up there, not necessarily that we are addressing with particular products, but maybe more that we're addressing with education. The first is that saltwater hot tubs are definitely Becoming more and more prevalent, as saltwater pools are still being built at a very rapid clip. I saw somewhere that don't quote me, I'm paraphrasing but somewhere around 75% of new pools are still being put on salt. I know the hot tubs aren't at that rate yet, but we're starting to see more and more of them. Well, it's great technology, nothing you can solve. It works very well. It's very user-friendly for the most part, if you balance your water and pay attention. Let me say that to everyone out there Just adding salt does not solve all of your problems, and that is one point I always want to make is that's the biggest problem with saltwater pools or spas is the conception is I just add salt and I don't have to do anything else.

Alicia Stevens: 37:13

That's not valid. So if you if anyone is listening that has a saltwater spa, balance is key. With saltwater spa, ph rises even more than a regular spa. So you've got hot water. That makes pH rise. You've got aeration which is the core of a spa, right, making pH rise and then you've got saltwater chemistry making pH rise. If you have a saltwater pool, you have to be doubly conscious of your pH. You may be adjusting it two or three times a week. That's just part of it. When you have that technology along with that, salt water is a little bit Less maintenance on a. You don't have to constantly add sanitizer, which is great, like we caution everyone just to make sure that, even if you're not having to add your Choring tabs or whatever on a regular basis, make sure you're still testing, because you do want to make sure that you're balancing everything else. So we we love salt. We have no problems with salt. We don't sell a salt system ourselves. We would rather just support the salt systems that are out there. So we have no problems with salt. But it's more of an education on the things you really have to be aware of with that.

Alicia Stevens: 38:19

The other thing that I have been not combating but maybe addressing in the industry over the last few years I do a hot water chemistry class at a lot of the trade shows, and it's because we don't get a lot of spa Education at trade shows, so I always want to provide something that's outside the norm of what you get. But part of what I focus on is Spas are not just little pools and so they're not. Some of the concepts are certainly the same. Right, you have to sanitize and kill bacteria and shock to break down contaminants. That concept is still the same. But spas have so many different elements to them that cause the chemicals to react differently, to cause your maintenance program approach to be completely different to keep up with it.

Alicia Stevens: 39:08

So I caution people, especially if they own a pool. First, don't treat your spa like a tiny pool. It's not the same. You have to look at it more often, you adjust more often, but it and it's just a different thing. So temperature makes an impact, aeration makes an impact, beether load makes a huge impact. Typical, I think the numbers I use are two people in Two people in a thirty five thousand gallon pool are the same as a 200 people in a 350 gallon spa. I'm like I don't like 199 other people to get that close to them, but you're people, you don't even think about it. So they're low to high, so it's just different.

Alicia Stevens: 39:50

And that's one thing that we spend a lot of time educating on is that's the importance of draining and refilling periodically. That's why enzymes are so useful to you, because the amount of bather waste Introduced to a spa is just so much more than what you find in a pool. So those are the two big things that we focus on, and Proper balance is something that we've been chasing for a long time. The rapid dissolve technology is part of that trying to chase it. But one thing I will say and we talked about this before we went live, jackie is we talked about how we chase these Parameters that we're trying to balance our spas to, and I say you heard me say earlier 7.5 is the perfect pH. It's the perfect pH, but there's a range there for a reason and don't chase your tail, for lack of a better way to put it Trying to dial that pH directly into 7.5.

Alicia Stevens: 40:43

Get it in the range for hot tubs. We usually say 7.2 to 7.8 is fine for a hot tub, anywhere in the rain, if anywhere in that range, and you're okay. We have people at panic because they're at 7.6, not 7.5, it's fine, we're. It's not rocket science, we just we want to get it into that range, and hot tub chemistry does tend to fluctuate very rapidly Just because of the small body of water that it is. So don't don't focus in on getting it to 7.4, or your alkalinity has to be at exactly 125, or whatever that is. Get it in the right range. Pay attention to the range, but that range is there for a reason, and that's what those the rapid dissolve tabs. We're gonna help you, very simply, get it in the range and keep it there, and that's all we're trying to do, because that's all you need to do to keep it maintained. Now you start getting out of the range.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 41:34

That's when the problems happen, correct and that's and I've always said we on the swimming pools, we with the alex, you can get what they call a perfect swimming pool, like you. Sure, five stars, yeah, nothing has to be changed. And we would actually have contests at the store. We'd have a big poster board and sign people up. And In all my years of testing hot tub water On alex, I think there's been one time that there was zero recommendations, because that water changes so much and there's so much going on, even from when you pull the water sample to the time you drive to the dealership.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 42:08

Sure, going to change on that. So that's why we do ranges for sure on that. And To all the swimming pool owners out there and I get this question a ton is why can't I just use my pool chemicals in my hot tub For a couple of?

Alicia Stevens: 42:23

reasons. In some cases what's actually in the bottle is the same thing in some cases not all cases. So you're rolling the dice on which product? Is it one of them that's the same or is it one of them that's a little bit different. But what you find a lot of times is Dosing becomes difficult for a pool product.

Alicia Stevens: 42:48

We're going to put it in pounds, you're going to put in two pounds per 20,000 gallons or whatever that is. So I don't know about you, I hate math, it's not my thing. So to take two pounds per 20,000 gallons and try to dial it down to a 400-gallon spa, there's a whole lot of math to go wrong in trying to do that In the smaller sizes. Then you're dosing in teaspoons and tablespoons and ounces, and it's a lot more accurate. The other thing I will say is this is that pool chemicals come in very big containers and all chemicals have a shelf life to them. So it's very easy to say oh, I'm going to get this big bucket of pool-coronating granules and I'll just scoop it in a teaspoon at a time. Four years later you're scooping in a bucket that lost its shelf life a year ago and you wonder why you're not getting a chlorine residual. In some cases you are using the same thing but the dosing is going to be broken down very differently.

Alicia Stevens: 43:46

On spa chemicals, but in a lot of cases there's a lot of changes that get made to products to accommodate for hot water, to accommodate for aeration. Our enzymes that we put in pools are not the same enzymes that we put in hot tubs, because they're built for hot water, for spas. It's just, it's safe to say if I'm buying a hot tub product, it's dosed appropriately, it's the right product for hot water, for aeration, for all these things that make that hot tub not just a little pool. So really the answer is, in some places, yes, you could, but you're rolling the dice on which, what places those are, and it's much better just to say, hey, I'm going to stick with the spa products. I know they're made for hot water.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 44:28

You've got the dosaging and you've got the packaging and all of the things. And, as you were talking about this chlorine that loses its shelf life and the big thing too, is test strips lose their shelf life. Sure, those have to be replaced once a year.

Alicia Stevens: 44:41

There's an expiration date right on the bottom, for a reason.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 44:44

For sure. But like I live in South Dakota and it gets crazy cold and all these cool new steps are coming out and they're like you can store your chemicals out there and it freezes what about storage of your water care?

Alicia Stevens: 44:58

It depends on the chemical. Honestly and that's where I would caution everyone you can pull an SDS sheet, which is a safety data sheet, right for chemical. We have them. You can find them on our website and it will tell you do not let it freeze or free. It'll give you some information on that. Ultimately, most chemicals are fine if they freeze and then thaw and you shake them up to make sure. If you think about a chemical, it's not just one element in the bottle, it's a lot of different elements that are mixed together. So when it freezes, sometimes it separates and when it thaws you have to make sure you mix everything back up again. So in most cases it is fine if it freezes, but in a few cases there's things that you don't want to freeze. So I'm never a fan of just leaving things outside. I don't think that's. It's not good on the packaging, it's not good on the integrity of the packaging and I would much prefer chemicals be in a place where they're just not going to freeze.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 45:59

And I would agree with that as well and I think the heat's kind of hard on them sometimes too, especially.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 46:02

I agree, especially this summer has been brutal and I think it's been really hard on some of the chemicals that are out there. We've got a couple of comments here. Kayla says go Biogard, go Spogard, thank you, kayla. So she's really excited about the new stuff. And Frank says great information today Thank you, you're doing good there, what? So we had a really good, really good question. What is the one piece of advice that you would give anyone for looking to maintain their hot tub and longer lifespan for optimal performance?

Alicia Stevens: 46:36

One piece of advice. I'd give about 25 pieces of advice.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 46:40

You can give whatever you'd like For longevity.

Alicia Stevens: 46:44

specifically, my best piece of advice would be balance. That's going to impact the life of your equipment. Everything that water touches it can be very destructive too. So balancing pH is absolutely the most important piece of water balance that you need to focus on. It moves the easiest and it causes the most damage in the least amount of time. Ph balance is the key to equipment longevity, followed closely by calcium balance. Quite honestly, calcium balance.

Alicia Stevens: 47:17

If you don't have enough calcium, water will find calcium. It wants a certain amount and until it has that amount it will actively seek it out and dissolve it. It finds it in your spa surface and your equipment and your heater finds it anywhere that it possibly can. So water without enough calcium eats away at your equipment until it balances itself. Not good for equipment longevity. On the flip side of that, especially for saltwater spas, water with too much calcium will spit it back out. It can't hold on to it. So when it spits out calcium, it causes scale, whether it's calcium carbonate-based scale, which is most of the scale we form, or calcium phosphate-based scale. If you have a lot of phosphate in the water, that scale will then coat the inside of your heater, which makes it less efficient, which makes it wear out faster. It will coat the plates inside of your salt cell very easily.

Alicia Stevens: 48:11

The inside of a salt cell is a terrible environment for preventing scale. It's a great environment when performing it, but it's very hard to prevent it. So if you have a salt system and your calcium is too high, then you're going to constantly be battling. It's going to build up on the plates of the salt cell, which will reduce the life of the salt cell. As to work harder, you have to dial it up further and ultimately it won't last as long.

Alicia Stevens: 48:34

So from a longevity standpoint, balance is absolutely the best advice that I can give, and with that I'm a big fan of. I don't care what your calcium balance is, I don't care whether you have metals in your water or not. You should be using a stain and scale control product every single week because it gives you that layer of protection to keep calcium from falling out of solution, to keep metals from causing staining and water changing all the time. Adding a stain and scale control product on a weekly basis just adds a layer of protection where you don't have to think about it and you'll find you're not scaling up your heater or your salt cell and you don't realize it because you're not paying close enough attention. So that's my best advice for longevity.

Alicia Stevens: 49:22

But along with that, just overall, get on a routine and stick with it. But also understand that if you usually use your spa twice a week and your kids come home and all of a sudden it gets used seven days in a row, you're going to have to do different things to it. You have to add more shock when you use it more. You may have to refill your chlorinate or add more chlorine or whatever when you use it more. So don't expect every week to be the same week with the spa, simply because the more you use it, the more things change, the more you have to balance.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 50:00

And going back to your analogies, it's just like a car. I had a funeral this week and I ended up putting on 1200 miles in 36 hours. I now have to change the oil sooner than. I would have if it would have been my normal three month routine. Sure, if you use it more, you have to do more.

Alicia Stevens: 50:22

That is a great analogy. And you're putting miles on your spa, you're putting miles on your equipment, et cetera. So that's a really good analogy. And I always say to get your spa to last, you have to do the maintenance that it takes. And the same analogy for a car you change the oil, you rotate the tires, you flush the systems, you do your 30, 60, 90,000 mile maintenance and because you're doing that, that car is going to last longer and run better. With the spa, you balance the water, you use your enzymes, you remove the phosphate, you do all the maintenance things, so that you're doing the things that are going to make your spa last longer your 30, 60, 90,000 mile maintenance, for lack of a better way to put it. That spa is going to run better, it's going to last longer and that's ultimately what we all want.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 51:11

For sure Nobody wants to buy it again.

Alicia Stevens: 51:14

No, not any sooner than they have to. Not to say that spas don't wear out. They do, although I have to say, my parents had an emerald spa which doesn't even exist anymore, right that thing. When it finally gave it up, it was 25 years old.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 51:30

Oh yeah, we just traded in one not too long ago. That was 1989. We traded in and took it to the dump, but it was still running.

Alicia Stevens: 51:41

But they cared for it, they balanced it, they changed the oil and rotated the tires and that's bogged last in a really long time.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 51:49

But on the same note, I've also seen hot tubs have been out there less than two years that they didn't balance and they leak everywhere because all the pipes are cracked because they were sort of acid, the entire time and that's pH, pH, pH.

Alicia Stevens: 52:05

I say I get teased at work. I am a nerd. They're like you could talk about pH for a half a day. I'm like, yes, I could, and you would all do well to listen because it's such an important piece of the puzzle as far as just making things last longer and making things work better and, like I started with, making bathers comfortable in the water that they're sitting in.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 52:27

And I agree 100%. Which takes me to my thing that I'm famous for is clean your filter. Clean your filter.

Alicia Stevens: 52:34

Sure.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 52:35

What do you have to say about that? A?

Alicia Stevens: 52:36

couple of things. So hot tubs are, they're cartridge filters, right? Cartridge filters don't last forever. Just because they still look like they're fully functioning, they don't last forever, yeah. But I have people all the time oh, how old is your filter? I don't know, it's not bad. Maybe five, six years old filters. Two years at most, that's my opinion. I agree with that, and that's if you have another set and you're rotating. Yeah, so two years at most on the filter. You should be cleaning them periodically, I like, depending on usage. Again, you use your spot seven times a week for an hour at a time. Clean your filters once a month at least, pull them out, rinse them off, et cetera.

Alicia Stevens: 53:18

The key with cartridge filters and this is again pool or spa, but definitely relevant for spas is when you pull them out and you clean them. Right. That's a fabric and if you picture a paper towel, water will flow right through it, but the paper towel will catch all the stuff that you're pouring through it. So when you get it wet, the pores that the water flows through they stretch out over time. That's what happens to any fabric, right? So water's flowing through it, it's catching dirt, debris et cetera, and those pores are getting bigger and bigger because that fabric's getting soggy and it's just stretching out from wear and tear.

Alicia Stevens: 53:54

When you pull that filter out and clean it, if you will let it dry as part of the cleaning process, let it dry completely. Those pores that are getting stretched out and less effective with the filter will then shrink back up as that fabric dries and it pulls in tight and those pores recover in size. So if you just let it dry completely and then put it back in, it's a much better filter than if you just rinse it off, clean and put it back in wet, which is where two sets of filters come from right. You pull one out, you have a dry set waiting, you put it in. You don't lose any time. You start filtering and then you can clean what you've got, set it out, let it dry completely and then it becomes what you swap out when you're ready to clean the next set. But such an overlooked part of the process is to let it dry completely and it makes such a huge difference in how well the filter works.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 54:44

In all my years nobody's ever explained that to me. I have learned something today from the podcast. I've always told people and I always told them not to put them or let them dry because there's less chance of foam. But that makes total sense to me. That your filter is going to filter better if you let it dry.

Alicia Stevens: 55:04

It does. So now I will say this yes, cleaning the filter is key. If you're using enzymes, you'll find that you can clean your filter less often because you're getting so much less build up in the filter itself. So that's a big key to using enzymes is cutting back on what the filter actually has to catch and how important is the actually using a cleaner or a degreaser?

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 55:28

How important is that?

Alicia Stevens: 55:30

So this is what I will tell people when I get asked that question a lot, because nobody likes to chemically clean their filter. It's a pain, they don't understand why they do it. So for rinsing a filter for hot tubs, I'd rinse a filter, just pull it out, rinse it off the garden hose, put it back in once a week, just get the gunk off of it, rinse it. But this is the again. I use analogies, right? So I always tell people this say you're summertime and you've been outside all day long working in your garden and you come in and you're hot and you're sweaty and you dirty and you get in the shower and you rinse off. Are you clean? You're cleaner, right, you're cleaner than you were. But are you clean? No, how do you get clean? You use soap, right. You need soap to really get the dirt and the grime off from what you've been doing all day Chemically cleaning a filter is soap, it's shampoo for the filter.

Alicia Stevens: 56:28

Yes, you can rinse it off and get it cleaner and that's great. But every once in a while, once a month, depending on how often you use it you kind of add a little bit of soap, a little bit of shampoo to that filter to get a little bit more of a deep clean, and that's what chemical cleaning is. So you just want to make sure that you don't have to do it all the time. We don't want you to do it all the time, but on that schedule once a month, once every six weeks, depending on usage. Then you want to make sure that you're using the soap, because otherwise you're just in the shower, rinse it off and you're still stinky when you get out.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 56:59

That's again. I'm gonna get you a shirt this is Queen of the Nile Because they're good. It helps people remember why you need to do it and it helps explain it.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 57:11

And you do that incredibly well, so we are at a point that we probably should wrap it up. I know we could go for another hour and a half. No fun, I was having a good time. I'll give you the opportunity, anything that we missed, anything that you would really like to bring up and just have some parting words or something that you would like to share.

Alicia Stevens: 57:29

I just the last thing, a final thought. For lack of a better way to put it, I did another podcast. They always say final thoughts. So final thoughts is if you own a hot tub, it doesn't have to be scary. There are plenty of resources out there that are waiting to help you, and when you go to a Spogard dealer, for example, they are trained to take all the scary parts out of it for you. The key is understanding what you need to do and when you need to do it, and with Alex and things like that make that as simple as possible.

Alicia Stevens: 58:02

So if anybody's out there saying I don't wanna get a hot tub, I'm afraid of taking care of it, we can help you with. There's plenty of resources to help you with that. So find a good dealer. You can find that spoggardcom and go in. Don't be afraid to ask questions. That's what they're there for. Delers are well trained and they're ready to help you. Our new rapid dissolve technology is gonna make things so much easier. We are very excited about that. Hopefully, in the next two or three months, maybe we can jump back on here, jackie, and talk about it, absolutely.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 58:30

As a product out there. I would love to try it for a little bit and just have some conversations about it, because I think this is gonna be a game changer in the whole hot tub, all of it. I think it's. I'm super excited for you guys. I think it's gonna be great.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 58:44

I'm looking forward to the journey, for sure, so I'm gonna have to write another book, but that's okay because you guys do it so incredibly well and I think this is a really good product that the industry has needed for a really long time. And, like I always tell people, when it comes to buying your hot tub, make sure you buy it from someone that you like, because there's a relationship that is going to happen there. If you find a spoggard dealer, you're going to create a relationship with those people because they are going to teach you how to use those chemicals and it's a game changer. It's a matter of you using your hot tub and not using your hot tub.

Alicia Stevens: 59:20

And we want you to use your hot tub without reservation. That's our goal. So whatever it takes to get people to the point where they're confident in what they're doing, that's what we're here for, for sure, guys.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 59:31

thank you all so much. We will have Alicia O'Rimes with Patricia. We will have her on again as soon as the new product is out. But thank you guys so much. Make sure that you guys join the private Facebook group. Clean your hot tub filter. Love to have you there and we can check you out there. All the links that we talked about are in the show notes.

Alicia Stevens: 59:51

When Jackie Yaw of you dropped my email address in there too, just in case anybody had additional questions. I am always happy to answer them.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 59:59

OK, fantastic. And that is the one thing about Spoggard is they will always answer your questions. They have a great support staff and that's how I learned. What I learned was calling support and then the best website for them to go to get information.

Alicia Stevens: 1:00:13

Spoggardcom. Very simple, yep.

Jacque The Hot Tub Lady: 1:00:16

So very simple. All those links will be down below. And thank you guys so very much and we will see you again next week. Thanks, jackie, thank you.