I spent a week staring at it as it sat on the back of my truck, staring at me like a roadside billboard. Every time I looked out my bedroom window, my living room window that's what greeted me. Driving home from work and turning into my driveway, there it was, like a beacon of WTF... wondering when I was going to do something with it. I'm sure it got more than its share of looks from passersby, too. I couldn't wait to get it off my truck and into place. I wanted to try it out!
That's where friends come in.
I put the word out and got my helpers all lined up for the following Saturday afternoon. As I tend to be somewhat of a "Nervous Nellie" about things, I fretted over it--hoping it would come off without a hitch. My anxiety ramped up a notch when Wendy said the landlord would be showing to fix her toilet (oh no--what if he shows up and sees this giant tub on the back of my truck!) that afternoon. Well, everything went super. Everyone showed up right on schedule, and there were enough of us that it made the move super-easy. It was done in 15 minutes. To top it off, it was in place a full hour before the landlord showed up next door, so that ended up being a non-issue.
It sat in its new home, staring at me out the back door. Now it was time to figure out the wiring and try to find a decent cover for it. At first I was going to put the cover on hold until such time as the tub was fully operational. I just wanted to make sure everything worked before I invested in a new cover. Then I said to myself, "Self... If there's something on the tub that doesn't work you're going to fix it anyway, right? Find a damn cover!" Makes sense. I contacted the place in Seatac where Sue and I bought the new cover for her hot tub. The guy says, "You're in luck. This is the time of year when all our covers are on sale!" Well, believe me--the term "sale" is relative. That became obvious when he told me the price: $350. I'm pretty sure the last cover I bought from them was less than that and it wasn't even on sale. He says, "They're normally $420. Everything went up pretty substantially a couple years ago." Jeez. That's only $80 less than I paid for the hot tub! I thanked him after confirming I had until the end of December to still get that price. Then, after hanging up the phone I remembered Craigslist. I had been checking for covers but hadn't checked for a few days. Imagine my surprise when up popped an ad for an unused (new a year or so ago) cover my exact size! That was a Friday night, and the guy said they were leaving on a trip and wouldn't be back in the area until after Christmas, adding that if I could get there that evening he'd give it to me for $90. The ad had it listed for $125, so I hopped in my truck right away. A gloomy, rainy, dark evening drive to the outskirts of Renton/Issaquah to get it, and the guy let me have it for $80. Score!
I managed to get a little done each day on the installation. Changing the control box over to 110, putting the conduit boxes up, making a power cord--that sort of thing. Then I got to a point where I couldn't string the wiring through the conduit without some sort of fish tape thing. I tried everything too. I didn't want to buy one for one-time use, but fortunately, Wendy's daughter is an electrician, and she dropped one off for me to use a few days later. I got all the wiring strung through and hooked up to a new breaker. I already had the hot tub all cleaned out and ready to fill, so when the power was all hooked up and everything had juice, I put the hose in it and filled it up. It took about 50 minutes to fill... not bad.
When I turned the power on it took right off, humming smoothly. Cool! I went into Nervous Nellie mode again as I fretted over how slow it was heating up. When it powered up the water showed 48. After running for a couple hours it was only up 3 degrees. Seemed awful slow to me! Throughout the evening it ran, making progress, creeping up slowly. The next day I unplugged it when I got home from work--knowing something must be wrong. It seemed like Sue's hot tub got hot way quicker than that! (Of course, I think it was always summer when we filled it.) I did some electrical testing on its circuitry (I found a service manual online) and found nothing wrong. Then I got on the internet and did some more digging and found that it is just slow to heat due to it's heater. Apparently, it's standard 4.0kw heater all right but it only operates at 1.5kw when it's running on 110. Hmm. Okay, I decided to give it another chance. When I got home from work I plugged it back in. I gave it a little time, and a couple days later it was up to temp just fine. I wasn't finished yet though because then I fretted because it kept running. Seemed like too much. Come to find out, it has a default "filter mode" setting that automatically turns the pump on low every 12 hours. But get this: The default is 4 hours! WTF? That means it defaults to running for 4 hours every 12 hours just for filtering?! After digging around, I finally found out how to manually set the filter mode and have it down to running 1 hour every 12 hours. Much, much better.
For those that wonder, it's a Nordic Sport model. It's not your typical hot tub with angled, reclining-type seats built in, so it's not a "fall asleep comfortable" hot tub. It's just got what is basically a circular bench as you can see from this picture (not mine). I guess most of their tubs are geared toward entertaining and conversation. The manual says it's good for 5 people. You could probably put 6 in it if you were really close friends, but the water might go up too high and overflow. That's okay--I don't have that many friends anyway.
I've been in it several times, morning and evening, and I love it.
