How To Help Remedy a Smelly Spa Cover

The truth is, spa covers start to smell like mildew after a while; this comes as no surprise.  They are big, thick, foam covers that soak up water from rain, snow and hot tub steam.

Oddly enough, when I worked at a pool store, a salesman I worked with had a remedy for his car. He said that when water got into his car, for whatever reason, he would spray the rugs with Lysol and open up all the windows on a nice day and let the car air out.

Good advice I thought.

So, we decided to try this method with a spa cover in the store that had a horrible mildew smell. We took it out back on a nice, sunny day and propped it up like a tee-pee. We then sprayed the whole cover down with Lysol and just let it sit and dry out. We even opened up the zippers in the cover.

The next day, we brought it in and the mildew smell was gone. It seemed to work! We have used this technique and told our customers about it and they all seem to come back with the same results.

Obviously this is not a one time fix. The cover is going to continually soak up water from rain and hot tub steam. My advice would be to do this every time you drain and clean your spa, which should be about every 3-4 months.

To find out how often you should drain and clean your hot tub, use our handy dandy easy online calculator:
Hot Tub Water Replacement Calculator