Stainless steel jets on a hot tub are rusting

A. Hello Dean,
304 stainless is corrosion resistant, but not corrosion free. After all, the main constituent is iron. These jet rings should have been passivated by the manufacturer before installation in the tub. Chloride salts at the water / air level form on the steel, and it will rust. You could try to remove the rust with naval jelly [on eBay or Amazon] from time to time. Keeping the pH at proper levels helps too! Good Luck!

A. Dean,

For all marine-applications where you want to avoid stains and rust on stainless steel you should have your SS-parts electropolished.
For marine-applications SS 316 should be used - in combination with electropolishing.

So, you are suffering of two "faults" : insufficient material specification and insufficient finishing.

A. Hi Waynette. Although people would like to help, there is so much uncertainty that it may not prove possible. The rings are "silver colored", but we don't know what they are made of or how they were finished. We don't know what this salt cleaning system is. We don't know that this cleaning that he did 2 months ago, rather than an overdose of bromide or something else at some other time, is what actually caused the rusting.

We can hope that the rings are stainless steel and that Mark's advise helps though. Good luck.

Regards,

A. I would assume/hope that any metal parts on a hot tub are stainless steel.

I don't know what "salt cleaning system" means either, but high levels of chloride are known to be damaging to stainless. (Pool water type levels of chlorination are also rough on stainless.)

Your best bet would be to remove the rust and repassivate using a citric acid based product.

adv.
Let us know if we can help.

A. I am not a fan of salt systems. They will do, as you've already discovered, what salt does and that is rust metal objects. We have salt system owners call with their hand rails and ladders, all stainless steel, rusting or rusted to the extent they can no longer use the ladder or handrail.

I've been using an Ionization system which uses silver and copper electrically charged to create silver and copper ions. This ions take care of the algae and bacteria better, yes Better, than chlorine.

If you've ever heard of cryptosystem, chlorine will not kill it. The ionization system will keep your water sanitized way better than chlorine.