Last installment of "Life of a Hot Tub Shopper"
Going to try to tie this whole thread up with a nice bow.
Was intitially looking for advice on WET TESTing hot tubs and got a few helpful hints and a little bit of freshmen hazing to boot. Here's what I think my answer would be to me:
SPACE - space between legs and feet of at least 3 or 4 persons in the tub, even if your single or a only a couple; you may want to have guests eventually. Also how well thought out placement of filters & hotseats take away overall space
JETS - different massage styles, strength of jets, are they placed well for what you want to hit?? Don't get overly concerned on the number of jets but moreso on how they feel and how much power the pumps supply the given number. Make sure you open the jets all the way when WET TESTing or you may get a false impression of what they can really do; I think this happened to me when I first started.
SEATING - comfort, fit, molded/designed to hold you from floating away?
FEETWELL - size of wells, space to get around them, jetted or not, strength and comfort of Foot jets
I tested alot of different tubs, more than I do when I buy a car to be honest
Looked at exclusively BIG TUBS at the end, felt they justified their premium prices in most cases and provided perks other tubs just can't.
For full sized tubs I really liked the Sundance Optima, Bulfrog A8 and the Jacuzzi 470 best of the bunch. Don't think I had all the jets all the way open on the j-470 to be honest, which very well would have placed it higher on the list but I corrected this potential error with my final tests of BIG TUBS.
For the XL/BIG TUBS the Jacuzzi was the winner
, then Sundance Aspen a close 2nd and lastly the Caldera Cantabria; never got to test the Hot Spring GLEAM.
but really wasn't set on getting a lounger bc you loose a seat and may have floating issues. I may still go test one out to just to satisfy my curiousity.
Pricing: Have heard some speak of rebates while other dealers say there is no rebate???
Also had some try to push territorial rights, MSRPs they pull out of a hat and sell on reputation instead of discounting at all..
Final Scores of Top 2:
ASPEN: j-495:
Layout - 7
Layout - 9.5
Floating - 9.5
Floating - 9
Jets - 8.5
Jets - 9.5
Footwell - 9
Footwell - 9
Footjets - 9
Footjets - 9