Welcome to our forum.
Thanks for the replies.What is a monthly hot tub bill? That's pretty critical too. We have a 3350s.f. home and it's 70degrees and comfy year round with all electric heat and our energy bill has never gone over $110 mo and averaged about $75 before we got solar. It'd be a deal breaker if we suddenly added another 50% to the bill.
We live about 30 miles south of Lake Erie in Pa and we get the combined lake effect snows with brutal artic winds coming across the lake once it is frozen. It is not at all uncommon to see sub zero and we get weeks where it gets –30’s over night. We also have wonderful summers where we used to enjoy star gazing from the tub. With your desire for energy savings you may want to think about putting your tub in a 3 season room or even a 4 season room where any lost heat from the tub would return to the house. We have friends that have tubs in temperate rooms and I think it helps. We wanted the outdoor setting but necessity dictated we build a pergola with a tin roof over the tub for both rain and snow. We used the 4 poles of the pergola to attach easy up and down fabric panels I made to block the wind when needed or provide privacy. I have them made for different heights and quite often spring and fall we might have them about a foot higher than the tub. Just to block the wind from heads. Dec thru Feb I have full height panels and if snow is in the forecast I put them up. Nothing worse than going out to find your cover with 3’ of snow on it. The idea of an outdoor winter tub is very glamorous but maintaining that gets old. Our tub is a Caldera Geneva. It has a dense pack insulation that provides equal insulation to full foam. The majority of heat loss from a quality tub is when you open the cover. Our tub can sit outside and never melt any snow on or around it. So it cant be loosing too much heat. I always tell people we spend on an average $1 per day on tub including the simplified chemicals we use for sanitizing. Summers are less as we keep the tub cooler like a warm pool during the day. Winters a bit more as you need to increase the temp when it gets colder. People often tell me well that’s 30 bucks a month that’s quite a bit. I tell them it equals having a can of coke at work per day. A bottle of wine with dinner will heat your tub for a week etc. Hot tubs have a cost associated with them. We love our time spent in our tub and we would rather have that than something else we could spend our money on. If you asked us would you give up your tub or give up going out for dinner and a movie once a month? We would go with the tub. As a side note once you get out of the tub you will be happy keeping the house cooler.
Very good points! $30 quite a bit? I watched a guy order 2 cups of iced coffee at Starbucks for $13.00 this morning lol
Quote from: BullFrogSpasMN on December 04, 2017, 12:49:51 pmVery good points! $30 quite a bit? I watched a guy order 2 cups of iced coffee at Starbucks for $13.00 this morning lolYep I once had a old guy come up to me when I was filling my truck that I use all the time for hauling things and plowing snow and he was spouting off about how I had to be crazy spending money on gas like that. I let him go on a while and then saw he had a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. So I commented wow you are a smoker are cigarettes still about a buck a pack. He said are you crazy try 8 bucks. I said OMG does a pack last a couple weeks? And he said you are nuts try 2 packs a day. I told him wow that’s over a $100 a week. I don’t spend that on gas. He got really mad telling me I was crazy and stormed off.Everything in life is a compromise that’s for sure. Look at how much people spend on cell phones or cable TV and don’t think twice about it.
I'm going to spread the word: stop drinking coke & wine, stop smoking cigarettes and by all means buy a hot tub!