Cottage Q&A
QUESTIONWhat is the best way to deal with the water when we empty our hot tub at the cottage?
ANSWER
Way back in 1991, when hot tubs were just beginning to proliferate in Ontario cottage country, Cottage Life wrote about the fact that emptying them at cottages posed huge problems. The Environmental Protection Act classified used hot tub water as sewage, meaning it had to be disposed of like any other "grey water." For most cottagers, who aren't hooked up to municipal sewage systems, that meant through a septic system. But hot tubs hold hundreds of litres of water, so emptying one all at once would flood most systems.
At the time, the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) had not yet addressed this problem officially, so we passed on its unofficial advice about environmentally responsible disposal methods, which involved making sure the chemicals (especially chlorine) were neutralized, then carefully disposing of the water on land, far from lakes, wells, and septics.
This time around, we took your question to Scott Barrett and Rob Lyon - both regional program coordinators for the MOE. (Lyon is also a Jack Lake cottager and a hot tub owner.) "We kicked around the problem for quite a while," Barrett says, "and we came up with a procedure we think is workable for cottagers with septic systems." First, you should know that the definitions haven't changed. Used hot tub water is still grey water. As such, it must be disposed of via a sanitary sewage system. It cannot, legally, be discharged directly onto land or into water, no matter how careful and environmentally responsible you are about it. These regulations, by the way, have been moved from the Environmental Protection Act. They are now part of the Building Code Act and are administered by the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.
Now for the practicalities, which Barrett and Lyon suggest should work for cottagers with full-fledged systems, the kind with septic leaching beds. A couple of days to a week before emptying a hot tub, they advise, you should stop putting chemicals in. Turn off the heater and allow the water to reach ambient temperature. Aerate the water by turning the jets on for a period of several hours, with the lid off, in order to reduce the chlorine levels as much as possible. Then, using a small submersible pump or the like, pump the hot tub water slowly, or in small batches, into the septic system over a period of several days, in order not to overload the system.
* Published in the Winter 2002 issue of Cottage Life
