Almost Heaven's Blog

When purchasing a wooden hot tub, size should be one of your first considerations. Too often people allow the space they have available or their current budget to dictate the size of their hot tub vessel. This can often result in the purchase of a hot tub that is much larger than needed. Keep in mind that a hot tub requires constant, daily heat, and it costs the same energy to heat it whether it’s one, two or ten bathers that regularly use it.

When it comes to wooden hot tubs, 8′ diameter tubs account for less than five percent of our sales, even though many people contact us thinking this might be the size they want. The most common size for a wooden tub is either a 5×4 or 6×4 and well over ninety percent of all wooden hot tubs sold are either 5′ or 6′ in diameter, 4’ high.

One of the reasons that people prefer wooden tubs over their acrylic counterparts is because of the much greater depth, and 4′ high tubs are on average already a foot deeper than the plastic spas. It’s the depth we sell most often.
Not accounting for diameter, 5′ high wooden hot tubs amount to less than five percent of our sales, again with good reason. While it’s true that the actual inside depth is only about 4.5′ in a 5′ tub, you spend most of your time in the tub being seated, and for people of short stature and especially children, this depth can be too much.

The exception would be if you plan to do some sort of aqua-exercise in the tub, in which case we could understand the choice of a 5′ high tub. Aside from a full-blown swimming pool, there’s no better vessel for exercise than a nice deep wooden hot tub.

Just keep in mind that with an inside depth of 54″, if it’s filled all the way to the top, such a tub might have water that’s over the head of most youngsters. If children are involved, that’s one good reason to think about buying a tub no deeper than a 4’ model.

If you’re unsure about what size tub you want, you can always call, e-mail, or chat with us. It would be our privilege to help you decide what size tub would best suit your needs.

Several years ago a law went into effect called the Virginia Graeme Baker (VGB) Pool & Spa Safety Act. This act created more demanding safety requirements for suction fittings for hot tubs, spas and pools. The VGB Act resulted because a young girl, Virginia Graeme Baker, drowned in her family’s hot tub after becoming trapped underwater in a broken drain. To read more about this act and Virginia you can visit http://www.poolsafely.gov/pool-spa-safety-act/virginia-graeme-baker/.

Previous regulations from the 1980s assured that all suction fittings were safety fittings, but only so long as they remained complete and undamaged. The VGB Act was intended to mandate safe suctions even in the case of such failures, and VGB compliance became mandatory for all drains and suctions sold after 2008. Recently some drain and suction fittings that were sold as VGB compliant have been recalled because they were rated incorrectly.

Here at Almost Heaven we wanted to make sure to set your mind at ease. We have checked with our suppliers and none of the drains and suctions we have sold are part of the recall.

You can be confident that any equipment you have bought, or will buy, from Almost Heaven always meets the highest of safety standards, but for fittings especially sold prior to the VGB Act, it’s incumbent upon you to make sure that all suction fittings and drains have covers that are undamaged and securely in place.

A story recently surfaced about a Legionnaires’ disease outbreak at the Playboy Mansion that ended up linked to bacteria found in one of their hot tubs.

There’s no excuse for improper water maintenance, and this incident would not have happened had this vessel received adequate attention in that department. To be sure, devices like a metal ionizer automate the process of water maintenance to a certain extent, but even a proper chlorine level would have prevented this outbreak, regardless of the health hazard presented by chlorine (and bromine) in its own. Whoever was maintaining this tub should be replaced.

Our involvement with the metal ionizer came about mostly because of our association with wooden hot tubs. In a natural wooden tub, chemical sanitizers can quickly do serious, irreparable damage to the wood if not used very, very judiciously. Even in acrylic spas and swimming pools, there’s still the effect such harsh sanitizers have on your health, equipment and the environment.

If you want to eliminate the need for halogen (chlorine or bromine) sanitizers, an ionizer device is the only accepted way to do so. Ozonaters actually present a hazard to your health in their own right, corroding nearby metal parts and eating away at your equipment’s ‘O’ rings, and despite this, they only reduce the need for halogens. You still need to maintain a halogen level with an ozonater, but zero halogens are required with an ionizer.

Our ionizer produces copper, silver and zinc ions, which are effective at killing algae, bacteria, fungi and viruses. The copper/silver sanitization process is so safe and effective that, at higher concentrations than what’s necessary for a pool or hot tub, this same method is used to purify potable (drinking) water. Using an ionizer means you’ll never again have to share your dip with harsh chemical sanitizers. This makes your hot tub or pool a healthier place to relax for you, your family and your guests.

Back in the early days of hot tubbing, gas-powered hot tub heaters were always less expensive to operate than their electric counterparts. However, with gas prices steadily increasing year after year while the cost of electricity has remained relatively regulated, this simply is not always true anymore.

To make an educated decision about which strategy is best in your situation, you should do a cost analysis of each heating source – something we’ve helped many of our customers do. Surprisingly many of those analyses have revealed electricity to be the less costly of the two forms of energy. You know that this is obviously an unbiased recommendation since we sell both gas and electric heaters – especially since the gas heaters are nearly twice the price of the electric heaters!

Another consideration to take into account when looking at a natural gas or propane hot tub heater is your climate. Many gas heaters are only rated for outdoor use down to 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and none of the ones we’ve seen are rated for use below freezing. Many dealers won’t bother to tell their customers this, and instead sell them replacement parts when their gas heater rusts out prematurely. The only way to run a gas heater during the winter in a freezing climate is to install it indoors, which requires the purchase and installation of both a flue and an indoor heater hood.

In many cases gas hot tub heaters are more costly to buy, to install, and most important, to operate. Make sure to do a thorough examination of your situation before making a choice as to which is best for you.

On this blog you’ll find helpful information about saunas, steam rooms, hot tubs, and all related accessories and components.  If you have an idea for a blog post you’d like to see here, please feel free to shoot us an e-mail at blog@almostheaven.net