I reported on my wet testing of Emerald, Tiger River, Marquis, and Artesian spas a couple of weeks ago in Duffman's thread. Made it into a Sundance dealer yesterday and wet tested a Bahia, a Palermo, and a Cameo. Not much to say about the Palermo. The lounge did not fit. I floated and I mean really floated. I could not stay in it for 30 seconds, so I did not spend much time in the tub. In contrast, the lounge in the Cameo worked well. That surprised me because I am short and the Cameo is a big tub. The lounge foot jets were a waste for me because my legs did not reach that far. So even without being able to brace on anything, I could stay comfortably in the lounge. Good design. As I indicated before, I used to have a 1998 Sundance Optima. Sundance has changed the jets in the therapy seat from accu pressure jets to fluidix st jets. The new jets are nice, and they pulsate when you have just water and no air going through them. The seat, when the diverter is set on it alone, is still very powerful, but I think with less pressure than the accu pressure jets. Great whirlpool and foot jets with diverter set on them. The other seats and the lounge have vortex and fluidix-intelli jets. Adequate power. I would have to spend more time with these jets to decide if I like them better than the old intelli-jets. They were not bad, but the old jets were large spinners and I liked them alot. The Bahia was interesting. It sat much like an Optima, and the therapy seat still uses accu-pressure jets. Very strong power, and I like the accu-pressure jets better than the new ones in the Cameo. There is only one diverter, and the tub suffers from this. For example, there is no way to get the straight up whirlpool in the foot dome off when its pump is on. That is a specilaty jet and it is a waste of water pressure to have it on all the time. I thought the foot jets were weak. The power in the other three seats was adequqte, but not great. The jets were a mixture of directional and spinner jets. They worked well. The Cameo is in the new 880 series with the higher flow circ pump and new filters. These seem like substantial improvements. All three tubs seemed to be high quality. I think I still lean toward the Atresian Captiva. With three jet pumps, a large circ pump, ozone with a mixing chamber, and molded neck jets, it is alot of tub for the money. Anyway, just my impressions. By the way, do any of you Artesian dealers know how many gallons per minute the circ pump pushes? The literature says 11, but I can't tell if this is for the newer large pump or not.
