True Water vs. Salt Water Systems: Why Nanobubble Technology Wins on Real Maintenance

If you’ve been shopping for a hot tub in Metro Vancouver, you’ve probably heard two buzzwords thrown around a lot: salt water and True Water. They sound like they’re solving the same problem, but they work in completely different ways — and only one of them actually reduces how much sanitizer you’re using.

What Salt Water Systems Actually Do

We’ll give salt water its due: there’s a reason people love it. The water has a noticeably silky, soft feel that a lot of soakers genuinely prefer over traditional chlorine water. That part is real.

But here’s what doesn’t get talked about enough: a salt water system is a chlorine generator, not a chlorine reducer. The salt cell runs an electrical current through salt dissolved in your water to produce chlorine on-site — meaning your tub is still running on chlorine the whole time, just generated in-house instead of added from a jug. It’s not lowering your sanitizer demand at all.

On top of that, salt systems bring their own maintenance list:

• Start-up after every fill is more involved — balancing salt levels, running the cell in, dialling in output
• The salt cell itself needs regular cleaning and inspection, and will eventually need replacing
• You’re still monitoring and adjusting chlorine output, just through a different delivery method

How True Water Is Different

True Water, available on select Jacuzzi models, tackles the problem from the other direction: instead of generating more chlorine, it goes after the reason you need so much chlorine in the first place — biofilm.

Biofilm is the thin layer of bacteria and organic material that builds up on plumbing and surfaces inside a hot tub. It’s a major driver of sanitizer demand, because chlorine has to work overtime fighting through it. True Water uses oxygen nanobubbles — particles so small they’re 2,500 times smaller than a grain of salt — that stay suspended in the water for months rather than rising to the surface and popping like a normal bubble. Trillions of these oxygen-filled nanobubbles continuously scrub surfaces, neutralizing contaminants throughout the entire tub — including inside the plumbing where biofilm likes to hide.

The result: third-party lab testing shows True Water removes 99.9% of bacterial and viral contaminants, while the water itself ends up with less chlorine than typical drinking water. Maintenance drops accordingly — most owners report spending around 15 minutes a month on water care, versus the regular daily or weekly attention a salt system demands.

The Technology Behind It

True Water isn’t a Jacuzzi-only invention bolted onto a hot tub for marketing’s sake. Jacuzzi partnered with Moleaer, the company that pioneered nanobubble technology, working closely with their engineering and product teams to adapt the platform specifically for residential spa use. Moleaer’s nanobubble systems are already trusted at serious scale — more than 4,000 installations across 55+ countries spanning wastewater treatment, agriculture, aquaculture, and lake restoration projects tackling harmful algal blooms and declining water quality in impaired lakes and reservoirs.

It’s also been validated well outside the spa industry. Researchers at the University of Maine, who were already studying nanobubbles for NASA, helped validate the system — relevant because, as one Jacuzzi exec put it in an interview, water is one of the most precious resources on a space station, where every drop has to count. Jacuzzi also ran its own lab trials, deliberately introducing bacteria like Legionella into test water, and found the system eliminated 99.9% of contaminants, often within 15 minutes.

Bottom Line

If silky water is your top priority and you don’t mind the salt cell upkeep, that’s a fair trade-off to make. But if your goal is actually using less sanitizer and spending less time on maintenance, salt water doesn’t get you there — it just changes how the chlorine shows up. True Water is built specifically to attack the source of sanitizer demand itself.

Want to feel the difference? Stop by our North Vancouver showroom and we’ll show you a True Water-equipped Jacuzzi in person.