It may be difficult to avoid the lure of a cheap hot tub, but in the following article our in-house hot tub engineer will break down all the reasons buying a cheap hot tub may backfire. Buying a cheap hot tub results in higher maintenance costs than if you went with a high-quality, more expensive, yet reputable hot tub model. Without further ado, take it away Matthew.
Side by side it’s often difficult to tell the difference between one hot tub and the next so we’re often drawn to the most attractive thing: the price. We’ll be looking at the hidden differences between hot tubs, and why you want to avoid the inexpensive hot tub.
It sounds great, who wouldn’t want as much insulation packed into the hot tub as possible, and for that low, low price. It’s a bargain, right?
Well, not quite. While ‘high density insulation’ will keep your hot tub warm, let's call it what it is; expanding spray foam.
Most affordable hot tubs will make use of the cheap and easily installed spray foam. As mentioned, it will keep the heat in but over time can cause issues with your hot tub.
If you ever had a leak, the entirety of your insulation will need to be dug out to access pipework and equipment. Over time foam insulation will also absorb water, meaning it becomes less effective as an insulator – making your hot tub more expensive to run as time goes on.
Lastly, depending on how your spray foam has been “installed”, it may cause issues with overheating. Crowding of the pumps or airflow within the cabinet due to uncontrolled expansion of foam can cause overheating and dangerous conditions inside the hot tub, eventually leading to equipment failure.
When comparing hot tubs, the most obvious difference is often the number of jets. It’s very easy to look at a hot tub that has 150+ jets and think that you’re getting more bang for your buck over, say, a hot tub with 35 jets.
But are you?
The short answer is no.
The long answer? Jets are relatively cheap. It’s an easy and cheap way to make a hot tub look more impressive and powerful to the unsuspecting consumer. 30 jets versus 150 jets, it's obvious which one is going to have a more powerful and effective massage, right?
Well, imagine you have two buckets full of water. If we take a knife and poke two holes in one bucket, and 30 holes in another, which bucket do you think is going to push water out the furthest?
Having all the pressure of the water behind just two jets makes a more powerful stream, as you add more holes, they start to share the same amount of pressure, and each jet gets weaker.
The same principle works for hot tubs. If you have a quality 3hp pump powering 30 jets, they’ll be very powerful but, if you spread that 3hp across 150+ jets they physically cannot be as powerful.
This is also assuming that they’re both using high quality pumps and are plumbed well, which may not be the case if they’re trying to distract you with 200 jets and more lights than the Las Vegas strip.
If you want to try the experiment yourself, just grab a hot tub from B&Q… Sorry I mean orange bucket, grab an orange bucket from B&Q and poke some holes in it.
It’s on the frontline of heat loss and structural integrity but aside from choosing a pretty colour or the shape of its seats, you might not think much about the shell of your hot tub.
The thickness of a hot tub's shell and the quality of its manufacturing is an important part of its durability lifetime, as well as the running costs.
Acrylic hot tub shells are created by heating and vacuum-forming sheets of acrylic over a shell that represents the internal shape of your hot tub. Once the acrylic sheet cools, it keeps its shape and then it can be processed to create the shell of your hot tub.
Hydropool hot tubs are composed of a polyester and vinylester resin, laminated to the acrylic finish. This results in a thick, and sturdy shell that could be used freestanding, without a cabinet and frame and built to be as sturdy as the hull of a boat.
Often, lower priced hot tubs are manufactured with thinner, more pliable shells that require the support of the frame or cabinet. They flex in the footwells where the acrylic has been pulled thinnest, and often, if you shine a light from inside the cabinet you can see it very clearly through the shell. This also means they contribute a lot to heat loss. They can also be prone to what is called “delamination”, the process in which the acrylic layer peels away from the structural resin, leaving you with unsightly bubbles in your hot tubs finish, and eventually structural failures and leaks.
The biggest and best net to cast when trying to reel in a hot tub sale is by offering one with “Bluetooth speakers and loads of lights”.
People love the idea of sitting in a hot tub with some good music and a drink, but why those speakers have to be built into the hot tub is beyond me.
There are two types of hot tub speakers, internal and external.
Internal speakers are built into the shell of the hot tub – external speakers are built into the cabinet of the hot tub.
First, we’ll tackle external speakers, because it’s an easy one. If you’re sat in your hot tub, with the jets running and the water moving...WHY WOULD YOU WANT YOUR SPEAKERS BUILT INTO THE CABINET POINTING OUT TOWARDS THE GARDEN!?
Sorry.
It seems like a surefire way to make your neighbours hate you. You can’t hear the speakers because they’re below the waterline, and they’re facing out into the garden – so what do you do? Turn them up. Now everybody outside the hot tub is suffering, listening to the tinny low-quality speakers at full volume, while you’re blissfully unaware, just about able to hear them over running water.
So, what about internal speakers? Ah, that’s better. Speakers either built into the acrylic shell, or pop-up directional speakers on the edge of the hot tub point right at the bathers in the spa – the perfect listening experience. Who wouldn’t want that?
Well, your expensive speakers are now inside your hot tub – so any time you want to listen to music in the garden, during a BBQ, or sitting out in the sun, you have to have your hot tub open.
Oh, and by the way, they don’t make speakers for hot tubs.
You read that right. They don’t make speakers for hot tubs. They make speakers for boats.
The speakers in your new hot tub are “marine-grade speakers”, and they’re built to deal with wind, rain, and salty-sea air. But when it comes to being trapped under an insulated cover in 37+°C steam with chlorine, bromine, pH adjusters...they really do not last all that long. Everything else about your hot tub has been designed to be a hot tub but boat speakers do not like that hot, humid, corrosive environment. They will rust and corrode. If they’re pop-up speakers, they lose their pop!
My advice: refuse the hot tub with speakers. There are some phenomenal sounding waterproof portable speakers on the market, and if you have a hot tub sales rep who is trying to get you excited about the built in speakers...why is *that* the selling point of this hot tub?
Okay - so they’re pretty and we love them, but they need a purpose.
A lot of LEDs I see on lower quality tubs are crammed in anywhere there's a space. LEDs are cheap to buy, cheap to fit, and cheap to run. So filling the hot tub up with them is a no-brainer when you’re trying to get a leg up on the competition.
Personally, after a point, RGB (red, green, blue) LEDs become a bit gaudy. I prefer the subtle and calming darker colours over white, but if they’re everywhere it becomes a bit too much.
Here are a few good visual tests you can try when looking at hot tub LEDs.
Inflatable hot tubs have their uses; primarily to trial run having a real hot tub. If you’re unsure about committing to buying a solid shell hot tub, I recommend buying a cheap blow-up hot tub and trying it out for a few weeks, to see if you like it, use it, and continue to do so over a few months.
However, there are some major differences to note between inflatables and hard acrylic shell hot tubs.
First and foremost is comfort. Most inflatable hot tubs are built like a big inflatable tyre, with a thin plastic sheet stretched across the bottom – essentially, you’re sitting on the ground in a big rubber ring, a far cry from ergonomic molded seating.
The massage jets are rarely... well, jets. The control box of inflatable hot tubs has a small pump inside that is used to circulate the water for filtering and cleaning, not massage. To imitate the hot tub look, an inflatable will use an air pump to blast cold air into a bunch of little holes at the bottom of the spa and bubble the water – this doesn't do much other than jiggle you around a bit and make the water very cold, very quickly.
Speaking of which, there is zero insulation in an inflatable hot tub – they're practically unusable in winter, and during the other seasons, while they will get up to temperature, once you open them up, get in, and turn on your bubbles, they’ll be cold to the touch after 30 minutes or so.
The filter in an inflatable hot tub is usually very small too, making it difficult to keep clean, as the filter needs rinsing off after each use.
After all that you may be thinking, “That’s fine! I’ll only use it in Summer, pack it away for Winter, it’ll be fine!”. Just make sure you have your puncture repair kit to hand! Inflatable spas tend to become brittle over winter storage and folding and packing them away can create cracks and holes, realistically making them single season use. All that wasted money often makes converts of the blow-up hot tub crowd to traditional hard shell hot tubs.
It would be irresponsible for us to group an entire nation's manufacturing of a product as “poor quality” but it’s unfortunately been a common trend for Chinese manufactured hot tubs – including those that claim to be “British Built" but with no factory in sight and come with suspiciously translated manuals.
Cheap and cheerful products such as these cost in the long run, with issues as those above, little or poor insulation and low quality equipment, paying for electricity, repairs, replacements, and headaches quickly outweighs the cost of a quality hot tub in the first place.
There are, of course, some finely built Chinese products out there. However, the issue with these spas is often technical support. Few spa technicians will touch unbranded, unknown, or “Chinese spas”. The replacement parts are often not available, they can be unsafe or fixing them will simply lead to another issue down the road which they don’t want to take the blame for!
The companies that sell these quick import spas often have little to no experience in the industry, no technicians or technical support, and disappear after 1-2 years. They often can be found sitting in the aisles of big box stores as well… Good Luck getting a Costco employee to double as a hot tub technician. You’re then left out in the cold when it comes to aftercare, and your lifetime warranty seems short lived.
While you may be able to find some great deals on hot tubs, it’s well worth wondering why it’s as cheap as it is. Is it a flash cash-grab hot tub, trying to distract you with 300 spine-blasting jets and an LED lighting set-up that’ll have air traffic redirected from Manchester Airport? Will they let you take a look inside that cabinet, at the insulation, or the thickness of the shell? Or do they just keep saying “Look! It’s got speakers!”
We hope this light-hearted article doesn’t strike fear into your heart. We sincerely just want potential hot tub buyers to be wary. We take luxury hot tubs seriously, and want potential hot tub buyers to have the best experience possible with their purchase- ideally resulting in years of stress-free relaxation. So skip the Range hot tub or the deal that’s too good to be true from ‘Hot Tub Megastore UK Dot Com’. Find peace of mind in the service and aftercare offered by a family team, maybe even come to us at Hydropool North West. If you have any further questions, give us a call or email us.