I'm fairly new to the hot tub thing, but I don't get why changing water is that tough? I just changed ours out last week using the regular method of connecting the garden hose to the drain, opening it up, and letting the water run into the yard. Now granted I'm on acreage, so running a 500 gal pond of water into my yard isn't a problem. But doing it this way takes 3 -4 hours to drain, then I do all the cleaning and stuff, then refill it, which takes about an hour using my garden hose. Yeah, it's a whole afternoon, but is it that much easier using a utility pump? I have one, but just never felt it was worth the trouble of using it.