Viking spa

[rick_in_cleveland]

A friend at work is planning to put in an inground spa made by Viking.  It is fiberglass and goes in the ground with concrete around it.  The pipes run under ground and into the basement where the pumps are.  The cover is a tarp that hooks by grommets across the top.   Seems like in California it might work but in Cleveland the heat loss and cost would be huge.  Anyone have experience with this type of spa.  For $12000 it seems a little much.  

[rick_in_cleveland]

Since nobody is responding, here is the site
http://www.vikingpools.net/spas.php

[BubbaGump]

Interesting.  Some look nice, but I am interested in knowing if this is the cost for the product, or is that fully installed?  I dont work in the industry but I would imagine that a cover for that would be very important in your climate...

Looks more like a standard gunnite spa that a pool builder would construct.  Not much on the therapy side I would imagine.

[rick_in_cleveland]

The $12000 quote is installed and landscaped.    From where I sit it looks like the heat loss and heating bill would be astronomical

[wmccall]

The $12000 quote is installed and landscaped.    From where I sit it looks like the heat loss and heating bill would be astronomical

Wouldn't that 12" blanket of snow act like an insulator from the wind?

[Vanguard]

I'm not sure about the energy usage.  Wouldn't you just be hooking this up to a gas heater?  If that is the case, then you probably wouldn't need to keep it hot all the time - just warm enough to keep it from freezing.  I assume your builder is from Cleveland, so he should know how to build the thing to keep it from freezing.  

If you are going to use a gas heater, and that is the only type of heater I'd use on a spa like this, just get a 150K gas heater and you should be able to heat the thing pretty quickly.  You might even go to a 250K heater just to be sure since Cleveland gets so cold.

I can vouch for the quality of product from Viking.  Viking does build very good quality products.  There is a Viking Spas company as well.  They are not related as far as I know.