How much Heat is lost in 24 hours ????

[clover]

With the colder weather now here, it would be interesting if we could poll all of the web browsers here representing a wide range of Hot Tubs FF and TP on how much heat your particular spa loses in 24 hours.  

Nothing too scientific and considerering all the bantering about the heat loss and super efficiency of different Hot Tubs,  IF you lowered your heat request to 80° on your digital readout when the water was at 104°, left everything else as is and came back in 24 hours (or 12 hours and doubled it), what would your water temp be?  

If by chance it was 96°, heat loss would be 8°, on the other hand if it was 80° that would represent a heat loss of greater than 24°.  I think this would be enlightening for all of us and a good representation of consumer comparisons.  Anyone interested?

[tonyp]

The information is useless without knowing other factors such as ambient temperature and wind data.

[Bonibelle]

I think we can make the info useful by defining the parameters ..For example:
Perform the test when there is 0-5 mile/hr. winds and temperatures consistantly below zero.
For my example, using my tub (and I can't do this now because my temps are still too high).
a 450 gallon FF Marquis tub set at 101 with no heat for 24 hours at ambient temp average of 31 degrees. since we can't control the air temperatures we could use a 24 hour average.
The results wouldn't be absolute, but I think this is interesting...
I'll do it as soon as my temps are low enough.
Vinny...I know you are up for this one!!

[Vinny]

Bosco and I did that last year with our tubs. Search back and you'll see the results. It wasn't scientific but it shows something!

[clover]

The information is useless without knowing other factors such as ambient temperature and wind data.

While I do agree this is not a "scientific" analysis and any information gathered is probably meaningless to debate, but I found it very enlightening when my friend and I did it and in spite of your opinion, it was an eye opener to my friend.  I won the bet and he insulated his plumbing.

I guess you could say we both got something out of it.  Isn't that what everybody does here?

[Vinny]

Here is my last post on that sublect:

This is going to be my final post on this subject ... maybe.
 
At 7:00 AM with the air temp at about 27 F and I will assume the overnight temps were a little lower, my tub is at 84 F.
 
My conclusion is: my tub, an Artesian Cayman, a full foam tub in temps ranging in the 20's to mid 30's, will hold it's temp above freezing for at least a week. It dropped 18 F in 64 hours (about 2 1/2 days).  
 
Other thoughts: NJDave with A LOT more experence than I stated about temps above and below the seating area and I will say that I agree to what he said.
 
A couple of things I would like to point out about my tub and NJDave or anybody please feel free to shoot holes into my therory ... this is how I learn.
 
My tub does have tubes that are off the circ pump running to all the pumps (I don't know about my 3rd therapy pump though) that keeps the water above freezing by circulating some water into the pipes. My tub clears it's water from it's pipes every 12 hours so it would exchange the water in the plumbing with fresh warm water unless the water in the pump frooze. I believe my tub gets a little boost from solar heating as it gets about 7 hours of winter sunlight whenever the sun shines.
 
I now have the piece of mind that IF my heater goes out and it maintains electric, my tub will not freeze solid.
 
OK, I'm done!