Comments on: Saving Pennies or Dollars? Hot Tub Usage

By: charles

charles — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 20:21:34 +0000

keeping a solar cover on the heating tub will make a huge difference in time taken. there are anumber of effective sanitizers on the market. the water should be drained every sixty to ninety days depending on bather load. Clean water is your friend. Trying to go cheap is not smart. Pumps to day are very efficient. A soaler cover is cheap,

By: michael bash

michael bash — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 06:27:10 +0000

Agree with #2. We should focus on efficiency, frugality and economic common sense. The USA (and the world) can no longer afford hot tubs. “Our house was foreclosed; we sure miss not having a hot tub in our car.”

By: Petra

Petra — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 06:22:27 +0000

Aaa… Prodgod just answered all my questions :-)

By: Petra

Petra — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 06:21:28 +0000

I was wondering how hygienic a hot tub is? How do you keep the water sterile-ish if you use it several times? Lots of chemicals?

By: prodgod

prodgod — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 02:06:23 +0000

Because running a hot tub is indeed not a frugal choice, ours has been sitting empty for nearly 10 years. While we definitely miss using it, the cost to run it was considerably higher than $12 a month for us. I’m not counting chemical maintenance – that’s a relatively negligible expense. In addition to the cost to keep it warm, the manufacturer recommended running the filter twice a day, for two hours each time (I only ran the filter for a hour, 2x a day). This increased our energy bill by an average of $80 a month, which, 10 years ago, was much more affordable for us than it is now. If we could power our hot tub for $12 a month, I would have no qualms about continuing to use it.

By: Jamie

Jamie — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 18:32:10 +0000

I think these calcs are way off. The heating energy seems right, but not the cooling. If you assume a 40 degree location, the temp difference is 60 deg F, and an R-value of 18 (from http://www.hottubessentials.com/cover_R_Values.htm), then the Qdot is 3.33 Btu/(hour*ft^2), which means an 8 foot square tub will lose 5120 Btu/day, or 1.5 kWh, or 45 kWh per month. That’s only about $5.50, less than the cost of heating it up. That’s total heating cost of $12/month. Leave it hot.

By: Luke G.

Luke G. — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 17:42:56 +0000

We’ve considered getting a hot tub in the past, but were concerned about the costs of keeping it running.

Forgive my ignorance with regard to hot tubs, but how does not running the heat until you are almost ready to use it affect the chemical needs? For instance, how would that work if it was not actively heated except once a day on the weekends?

I’d hate to slip into a hot, relaxing pool of toxic death because the chemicals stopped working properly… O_o

@Jen (#19)
Trent removed the “other” comments, thankfully.

By: Jen

Jen — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:26:03 +0000

Awww…what happened to all the “other” comments??? Anyway, we have a hot tub, and we love it, and we use it all the time, and our kids love it too. It probably is too expensive to maintain, but we enjoy the splurge.

By: brett

brett — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:58:06 +0000

Man…what i wouldnt have done for a nice little hot tub to jump into this morning.

By: Chuck

Chuck — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:10:45 +0000

In an attempt to get this thread back on track……

In your cost analysis, you seem to ignore certain issues that crop up if you live in areas where the temperature drops below freezing. In order to avoid busting the piping in your outdoor hot tub you need to either keep your hot tub powered up and heated or else drain the tub, and “winterize” the system. Then, before you can use it again, you have to “de-winterize” the system and then refill the tub. The cost of the winterization/de-winterization and the refilling of the hot tub will significantly impact your economic analysis of whether to heat it all the time or just when you use it a couple of times a month.

By: Becky

Becky — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:34:44 +0000

Michele – I’m curious to know a bit more about your situation, as we are contemplating purchasing a hot tub. Your numbers suggest the biggest cost is the maintenance of the tub. How do you heat the tub? Electric, solar, gas/propane? It just seems so cheap with only a $1.00 increase in electricity. Our old home had an in-ground pool and would cost us about a $1,500 on propane to heat it from mid-May to mid-October (cold climate, used a solar blanket). We swam every day, often in the morning and evening, so I know that we would use a hot tub daily too.

By: Cheryl

Cheryl — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:26:30 +0000

P.s. Excuse my spelling of “u” and “shuld”. I’m typing this from my cell phone in bed at 6 am with “text mode” in my groggy mind.

By: Cheryl

Cheryl — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:21:43 +0000

Teri, I read something once that went like this,” If the only birds that sang in the forest were the birds that sang well, it would be a quiet forest”.Maybe u shuld cut this man some slack. He has some really good tips that he’s willing to share with others. Ultimately it will be up to him to decide if he needs to take any writing courses to fine tune his passion of writing. Even some very famous authors need editing and grammar correction before their work goes to the publishers.

By: michele

michele — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 06:36:49 +0000

My husband and I bought a 5 person hot tub 1 year after moving into a brand new home, built in 2006. It cost us $4500 with the electrical installation and cement work needed in the back yard. We paid cash because we always dreamed of having one. Now that we are retired, we have one! Yay!

Here’s what we noted:
$2 a month increase in water usage
$1 a month increase in electricity
$12 a month (average) in Chemical purchases
$7 a month (average) in new filters
for a total of $22 a month after a year

We dump the tub every three months and use it EVERY night most of the year. When my husband’s back is in bad shape, he uses it 2-3 times a day, too. We keep it at 90 during the day and it takes 1 hour to reach 104 even in a hard snow storm. We use it for 15-20 minutes a night.
Well worth if for the relaxation and back pain relief…and it’s only two of us most nights. Several times a year, we share it with family, but that does not really count.

By: Anne

Anne — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 04:43:19 +0000

I’ll preface this by saying that I have zero experience with running hot tubs; they’re very enjoyable, but I’ve not owned or maintained one. My question is: what are the health implications of the water dropping below a certain temperature? Is there a minimum temperature a hot tub needs to maintain to be clean?

By: Lori

Lori — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:28:16 +0000

Depending where you live it may not be an option to turn off when not in use and also may not be sanitary to have sitting water. If the weather gets to cold the water can freeze. We have a programmable hot tub and often let it get very cold when not in use, but have it heat up periodically in line with the manufacturer’s recommendations.

By: TLS

TLS — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:06:26 +0000

I use the hot tub (and the sauna) at the gym I belong to. There was a discussion a while back here as to whether gym membership was frugal. Maybe not, but I use the gym frequently and certainly enjoy the hot tub!

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 23:57:14 +0000

There is a big flaw with the coffee cup example. Most hot tubs come with two thermal covers. The first one is a foam type cover you put on top of the water, it’s almost like a backpacking closed foam pad. The next is the main cover that seals the top of the tub so that any more heat does not escape. By doing this, you can turn the tub down to about 90 and it takes very little hot water to keep it hot. Then, an hour before getting in, just turn it up to 99!
We had an outdoor hot tub that came with our house in Madison, WI. In the winter, I figured out the cost to have the hot tub, using it 3-4 times per week in extreme cold, was about $20-25 per month.
It was a great comfort to my wife who has fibromyalgia…the relief it gave her is something I would have paid much more than the $25 per month, so in this case, this discussion is VERY relevant.

By: kristine

kristine — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 22:39:28 +0000

I have no idea the breadth of the audience to which this post was deemed likely relevant. Do that many penny-pinching readers own hot tubs? Scratching my head.

By: Kristin

Kristin — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 22:28:56 +0000

I have friends that have a hot tub at their ski house. When they arrive for the weekend (during the winter in Maine, so it’s cold!), they will turn the heater on but leave it at a lower temperature than desired, as it’s expected that people will be using it throughout the weekend. A little before people actually go in, they’ll turn it up to a higher temperature. They’ll turn it off when they leave for the weekend.

I don’t know enough about the covers Trent recommended, but this approach, when anticipating high usage in a short period of time, reduces both the overall heating required and the lag time of starting to heat and actually using it.