Today I'm going to show you how I've been keeping my tub clean each time I've emptied it. When it's
time to refill with water, for whatever reason, obviously this is a good time to give it a clean.
You know, why would you miss this opportunity? So that's what I'm going to show you today.
As has been pointed out in some of my other videos by viewers such as yourself, the instructions
that come with these Lay Z Spas are not what you might call comprehensive. The section on cleaning
in the instructions for this St Moritz was all of three lines long! Very little advice - well,
no advice if the truth be told! So, with a bit of research asking a few people I know and using my
own noddle, I've come up with a method that I think works okay. Now, the first problem
that I came across in one of the instructional videos, I think it was on the Bestway channel,
they did say that you could use washing up liquid to clean down the sides and the bottom,
which I did the first time I drained and cleaned it. But, as I'm sure you're aware, dish soap
is designed to get all frothy and loads of lather and what I found was after cleaning the tub
with washing up liquid, even though I'd only put it in water and used a cloth there must have been
sufficient washing up liquid residue in the whole of the tub that the first time we got back in it
and turned on the air jets, we ended up with a massive pile of foam in the middle,
so we had to put a right stack of defoamer in it. My own alternative to that particular conundrum
is to fill a bowl or a bucket with some hand-hot water, into which I dissolve a dishwasher tablet.
Dishwasher tablets are designed and formulated to clean & lift grease and dirt
without lathering up, which makes them perfect for this job. Make sure it's fully dissolved though.
To do this job properly you really do need to get in it. Do make sure to get in barefoot,
don't wear your shoes. Fetch your bowl of warm water, making sure that the tablet is thoroughly
dissolved and get yourself a sizeable cloth. This is actually an old bar towel but I would recommend
a decent sized microfiber cloth, the sort of thing you can buy for washing your car would do
sufficiently well for this job. Squeeze out the excess but keep it quite wet and I suggest
starting at the top giving it a good clean down particularly where people have been touching it,
leaning on it or where bird dirt might have landed on it and then the top of the ribs. Keep
rotating your cloth. When it comes time to do the inside I've found that it's best to rub vertically
because of the shape. Depending on exactly which model it is you've got you may or may not need
to do this but because we've got an air jet model there's a, what you might call a pouch, that runs
around the inside edge of the tub. If you pull that back, then underneath the back of this pouch
is where I find that bits of grass and leaves that have fallen in,
insects and other debris gets trapped, so pull that back and go all round cleaning
that trough. If you find that there's still water left in there and you're picking it up in
your cloth then squeeze it out on the outside. If you're getting value from this video please
like it down by the title. Once you've done all around behind the edge don't forget to
clean around the air jet inlet and these two ports by the same method
Do the inside now. I don't feel the need to use a disinfectant
when doing this. I think that the dishwasher tablet is quite sufficient because after all,
you are putting chlorine in the water which is, of course,
a disinfectant, so i'm not feeling the necessity - necessity - can't say it now, can't speak
and all I've had so far is coffee today. If you'd like to use a little disinfectant, maybe add
a little Dettol or something similar to this water but again make sure that you're using
something that's not going to lather up. When you're doing behind the air jet structure,
go one way round because that way you tend to sweep the debris round and pick it up as you go.
I like to start at the air jet inlet because that gives me a datum point,
that way any debris that I've dragged I'll have swept it all round in the single direction and
hopefully picked most of it up. I normally do that at least twice so this water actually isn't
particularly dirty - it's a little dirty but not very. With the proper levels of chemicals
and keep it clean and disinfected you wouldn't expect it to get too dirty. Before you dispense
with your bowl of water remove your filter from the filter housing, Take your bowl out of the tub
and drop your filter in it, let it soak for a few minutes then come back to your filter
and give it a good swishing round in this detergent water. Then what I do, keeping it in the
water, give it a scrub with a nylon brush that's not particularly stiff - something you might be
happy to use on the alloy wheels on your car because you don't want to damage the paper pleats.
Rub up and down the length of the pleats because that gets the bristles into the bottom of the
pleats and helps to get some of the dirt out. These filters, of course, are never going to last
forever. They're not really meant to be washable filters, but I would imagine if you do this once
or maybe twice, say every couple of weeks, keeping it clean, then I think you can extend its life.
The instructions do suggest that you should be putting a new filter in
the tub every three weeks. That seems quite a lot to me. Here in the UK,
these are around £6-8 apiece, so that's adding considerably to the running costs of your tub.
I can't find anywhere in the UK that sells them but it is possible to buy foam reusable filters
that are washable and that will cut your costs tremendously. I'll put links in the description.
Ditch the dirty water and half fill with just some slightly warm or even cold fresh water having
given the bowl a rinse as well and then give the filter another rinse out in this fresh water.
Running it under a tap, a fast running tap is also quite good but get the tap to run into the inside
at an angle so that the water from the tap is going from the inside of the filter to out which
is the opposite way around to which the water in your tub flows, so that way hopefully it will take
any dirt and debris out of these pleats as it goes. Turn your filter around at various points
to give it the best rinsing possible. Once you're done cleaning your filter
come back to your tub with a bowl of fresh clean water and a freshly laundered towel
and just give it one last wipe down all over
and that will help to get rid of any final bits of dirt you might find & some areas that you've
missed but also it helps to get rid of the soap that will have been left on the whole surfaces.
Don't forget to do all the little nooks and crannies including behind the air jets.
Now you see I found some blades of grass that either got in there while I was doing the filter
or else I missed them in the first place. Cleaning it like this takes about
10 minutes if that, but the benefit you're getting is you're doing a little often so it
doesn't feel so onerous. If you got value from this video and I've saved you some time, money,
hassle please consider supporting the channel and I shall see you next time.