Hot Tub Buyer Guide
1/ Look for
Hot Tubs for Sale that are easier to repair. The
standard design from 32 years ago is to stuff the cabinet with foam, then place
the equipment in a small box in front of the hot tub. If you place the equipment in a large
container as in a thermal sealed hot tub, the heat is dissipated and the
equipment is easy to access. If you have
a leak in the plumbing, buried in the foam, in a fully foamed hot tub, it is
very expensive to fix.
2/ Look for hot tubs with standard parts. There are several
companies making readily available high quality parts. All of the manufactures
of hot tubs use outside manufacturers for the various parts.
3/ Look for hot tubs that are fully insulated and not fully foamed. A
fully foamed hot tub is not, by any stretch of science, the most energy
efficient hot tub. A fully insulated hot tub may have lightweight foam on the
shell, warm air chamber, and the walls of the cabinet have foam boards.
6/ Look for hot tubs that have good clean plumbing. If the diverter
valve is the first plumbing part after the pump, then the hot tub is poorly
plumbed. If you cannot run all the jets at full pressure at the same time, then
the hot tub has a diverter valve, restricting the flow.
7/ Avoid hot tubs that use a tiny 24 hour circulation pump that
produces less than 18 GPM.
8/ Look for hot tubs with a
flat surface on the upper shell.
9/ don’t be "sold" on a hot tub by a salesman. The hot
tubs they sell are lacking in cold weather insulation, not fully finished, and
are being sold for about $1000 more than a comparable hot tub.
10/ Buy hot tubs that are ANSI/NSPI(Click here) conforming. The largest manufacturer of portable hot tubs does not follow these engineering design rules. That is only because hot tub shoppers do not know anything about hot tubs.