Long story short, SWMBO and I both have medical joint issues and want a hot tub. We saw the softub at a local home show and were really intrigued. Does anybody have one? Can you use salt water in it instead of chemicals?
We'll be buying this very, very soon so any help is greatly appreciated.
PS - We have a deck out back, 8'x16', concrete slabbed with a wooden deck assembled on top.
Check craigslist for a regular used hot tub. They go cheap.
Yeah, I'd hit Craigslist but be wary of the "ran when parked"; insist that you see it working and I would try to bargain for a 7 day trial period as well. Hot tubs don't live forever but they can usually be fixed with a little TLC (calc, new pumps and new heating elements). Also, hot tube can consume a considerable amount of energy so get a darn good thermal insulating cover and be sure to turn the Temperature down if you are going away. Also, buy the filters online and in bulk, they are much cheaper that way.
We're moving in less than six months, we don't want a permanent hot tub.
Javelin wrote: Long story short, SWMBO and I both have medical joint issues and want a hot tub. We saw the softub at a local home show and were really intrigued. Does anybody have one? Can you use salt water in it instead of chemicals? We'll be buying this very, very soon so any help is greatly appreciated. PS - We have a deck out back, 8'x16', concrete slabbed with a wooden deck assembled on top.
I had one that came with a house that I bought. I would not recommended it. The surface of vinyl that touched the water got rough after a awhile making it hard to clean. There was no heating element for the water. It used waste heat from the jet pump meaning that to keep the water warm it ran constantly or took hours to warm up if for some reason it got turned off. It was NOISY. After a using it a couple of times, I drained the water, covered it up and did nothing with for 5 years until we were getting ready to sell the house. At that point I filled it, confirmed that everything still worked and used as part of the marketing for the house sale.
In short, ours was a cheap ineffective POS and I doubt I will ever own another one.
In reply to Type Q:
Thanks for the info. Not what I wanted to hear. 
Gearheadotaku wrote: Check craigslist for a regular used hot tub. They go cheap.
Try to find a fireman who's getting divorced. They always have a hot tub for sale.
Are any of the temporary hot tubs any good? We just want to start using one now but don't want to have to deal with it when we go to move.
@TypeQ - What size was yours? We're looking at the baby 140 gallon 2-person one.
Ours was the 4 person size.
The most annoying features of the thing was how long it took to raise the water temperature and how noisy it was. If you have a place to put it that is away from the house and let run constantly it might work fine for your needs. My wife never wanted to use it because the chemicals didn't get along with her skin very well.
In reply to Type Q:
We plan on using it daily as it's for joint pain relief. It will live on the back porch, which is the furtherst point from the bedroom and next to the kitchen, which has the fridge, ice maker, and dishwasher (ie - noisy already). It sounds like the drawbacks might be minimal for our specific needs. On the chemical front, we're planning on salt water.
Oh, and apparently you can buy a replacement cover from the manufacturer for reasonable if it's gets too hard to clean.
Salt water sounds like an improvement over our set up, especially for joint pain. Ours was located right next to a bedroom that we were using a a home office. Having a noisy pump running a couple of feet away while you are trying to be productive was a pain.
The one we had was used when we got it and that was over ten years ago. They certainly could have made improvements. I would ask to see and hear one running though.
I hope this helped.
In reply to Type Q:
It did, immensly. Thank you! We are trying to find a dealer that has demo models so we can see/hear one in action again.
You'll need to log in to post.
