Welcome to our forum.
Contingency plans man.
PackerPaul- What Arctic dealer did you visit? Was it the one in Burnsville by any chance? (about 20 miles south of MPLS)
Call up any "service company" (in a cold weater area), and ask how many frozen spas have you fixed? How many were Arctic Spas?When an Arctic sales person tells this to a customer, they are not selling this feature basied on fear.
On my first Sundance hot tub, I went 1 1/2 weeks in freezing temperatures before it was down to 52 degrees from 104. Mine had foam from the shell to the cabinet. How in the world can a spa without that kind of foam not freeze quickly? That sounds like a load of ..... I can only compare it to my house. I had blown in cellulose and it is from the exterior foam board to the dry wall. Now my neighbor has regular insulation. My house is 25% bigger and my bills are much lower than his. If you don't have good insulation on a tub and it isn't filled in foam then I would worry! They must have quite a story convincing people that a little foam goes a long way. Logic tells you that they are feeding you a really good story. I prefer proof and I have had it proven many times.
The point is not how long the water inside the tub will go before it freezes, FF tub will retain water temp's for days or weeks sitting with no power! The problem is that the equipment area is outside all the insulation, with an uninsulated door between the outside and equipment. What happens with FF design during power or eqiupment failure is that, hours later the water can still be warm inside the tub while the water sitting in the pumps and heater can begin to freeze. Unless it is way way below freezing I have never seen or heared a tub freezing in 3 hours, I would say 6 to 8 hours before freezing starts.
at what point does a TP lose its ability to keep the equipment area warm.