Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Here comes the payoff!

The finally came and the hot tub was delivered!  It came on a big flatbed trunk, I bet they had 2 others on there for deliveries.  The guys that brought it were really good and they had it in place and hooked up in about an hour and a half.  They brought it down the hill on a sled, since it was snowing and cold on Tuesday.

Overall it went in really well, Brian suggested filling it with hot water since it was about 5 degrees out.  He thought it would help thaw it out and make sure it would work.  This is a little in contrast to what they said at Valley, since they suggested using hard water.  But given the situation it seemed wise.


Our directions were to fill it up ad turn on the power and it would know what to do.  However, when we turned on the power all that happened was the pumps hummed...  Yikes!

So we left it for awhile, then tried it again.  Nothing, so I called Brian since I had his number.  He suggested putting a space heater in the cavity of the hot tub, so I ran to target and did that.  I also called our sales person freaking out, so she had her service person call me.  He also suggested a space heater and said he would come out in the morning.  No one seemed too concerned so we tried to calm down.

The next morning (Wednesday), Eric stopped by and really put the space heater in the cavity and closed it up.  I had left the corner cracked because I didn't want it to get too hot or press against any plastic parts.  But that basically did nothing.  Eric said it could take days for the pumps to thaw out.  Fortunately, it didn't take that long.

Jen tried the pumps a couple time during the day, then I did when I got home from work.  Nothing.  Then on a whim I tried it at about 6pm, and pump 1 turned on and the heater started working (heater can only run if a pump it running).  A couple hours later pump 2 had thawed as well.  The temp raised in the hot tub about 3 degrees an hour, so by bedtime it was a balmy 55 degrees.

By 4am the next morning the temp was 100 degrees (I happened to wake up and check Sense and it was not running so I was worried the breaker had tripped or something, but it was just done heating :) ).




 

Wednesday, December 1, 2021

Running Electric for the Hot Tub

 Once the pad was complete for the hot tub I started thinking about the electric.  Initially I was unable to find the spa panel that is required between 5 and 10 feet from the hot tub.  So I contacted the electrician that Christi at Valley Pool and Spa had recommended.  Tyler stopped by and I walked him through what I was thinking.

There are a couple issues with my setup, so Tyler offered to do it as a cash job.

  1. My outside outlet and light out the basement door will be too close to the hot tub (has to be 5 or 10 feet away)
  2. The subpanel in my basement is 60 amps, and the hot tub could pull 50 amps, so he said it might be under powered.  I will be fine, but an inspector might question it.  Mostly what the subpanel supplies is LED lights so it shouldn't be a problem.
  3. I was planning to put the disconnect (spa panel) on the right side of the door and run the conduit over to the other side.  He suggested having it come out under the window on the left side.  In the summer it will be hidden by our Hosta in the winter who cares.
I said OK lets do it, so he said he would get back to me with a quote.  $1600 was the quote.  That seemed high to me, but what could I do.

2 weeks go by and I haven't heard from Tyler, I also notice that Menards has spa panels in stock now.  So I go pick up the needed materials, about $500 (the 6 gauge copper wire was $300 by itself!).

So I put it in myself took a couple hours of wrestling with that big cable, but it is ready.