Doctor Hot Tub

Great tub for the Northern states and Canada. Keep a close eye on your chems. I am seeing more and more salt destruction to equipment. Be sure to get a piece of zinc as a sacrificial metal.

True, the main issue with that spa was it was a low quality spa from a manufacturer not known for quality. I don't see any reason to expect anything more from the St Lucifer than you got from the Sun Leak. I hate to say this...but put your service person on speed dial. What really kills me at my local costco is that everyone of the returned tubs(1 a week) get "chipped". They are not interested in donating them to our charity where we fix them up and find a home for them for someone with severe medical problems.

Can someone give some more information on the models I'm interested in? And also what i should expect on pricing for both (I was quoted $30,000 for both the D1 and H2X, not including concrete, crane, and electrical installation) Here in Wilmington I have serviced about 50 portable swim spas. Always heater or pump issues. A few have even had cracked shells. If I was going to buy one today, I would buy the D1. I am saying this with a Master H2 sitting in my back yard at my other house. The biggest reason I have the H2 was I got it at cost. If you are planing to move soon and take it with you, I would not go the portable route. You should be able to find a local pool builder who can drop a RIO swim spa in thee ground for you with the German Speck/Baud pump system for that 22k range. I would not go anywhere near a Sunbelt, ALPS or Cal Spa swim spa personally. Now as for pricing , realze that the dealer's MSRP is a 40-45% margin. Igot to say....That is a very suspect post by the "person" that had a sunbelt and then bought a Master. I wish I owned the website so I could look at their IP address.

This is never good and I have seen various problems from it. 1st and most likely is your GFI is now toast. Next your SC-30 fuse is also toast. If it's a Balboa board you most likely ruined it. A lot of the time the Neutral will now have power on your board. I have seen this about a dozen times having been done by electricians. Good luck to you.

Do remember that residual "stuff" from your hot tub will then be left in your dishwasher. As far as the detergent is concerned I am not a fan of bubbles.

Hi Doc, you are honestly being way to kind... Laughing... I know ... At this moment I need to be since we are initiating some litigation against them.

Questions: 1. In calculating the Turnover, we currently have a turnover rate of approximately 7 hours, if we are achieving the full potential of the motor. This seems awfully long for a commercial application. 2. The limiting factor seems to be the filter plumbing of 3 pipes at 2 inches each (225 GPM). Am I correct? 3. Could the filter pipe sizing cause enough strain on the motor to decrease the life to 2-3 years, or is this lifespan normal? Any help would be GREATLY appreciated since this organization cannot afford to continually replace a $3,000 motor. Should be more then enough pump. Crazy question but are you storing your chlorine close to the pump or any other chemicals in that pump room? Chlorine fumes will corrode all metal. Is the water properly balanced? I ask because if your seals keep leaking then the water is going to take that pumps windings out.

Whew! I wish you lived closer. No you will not need to bleed the pump everytime. There should be a simple little Peacock valve on the front of the pump or a screw. run your spa with this cracked open until all the air is out. Seems you have figured this part out. A real simple solution most hot tub manufactures do is run a line (3/8 inch usually) off the plumbing someplace and connect that line to the wet end of your pump. That elminates air locks. If your tub does have "slice valves" make sure they are fully open. If your water level is not at the proper place your tub's weir system could be pulling air into the pumps, so make sure your skimmer is not pulling in a lot of air. This is truly an easy problem to fix.

He's correct about the sensor being plugged into the heater. (M series are all this way) The board could very easily be damaged. They do not withstand any kind of heat very well. If it is I would tell you to look at generic Balboa boards since they will be much cheaper then you will find from Cal Spas.

I would pull the pump and dismantle the wet end. It's most likely an AO Smith pump so you could probably get parts for it at an industrial supply place like Granger. I pulled mine last week and it wasn't that difficult. I'd probably go ahead and take the motor to a re-builder and have them check it out as well. Even if you have to rebuild the whole thing, it shouldn't cost as much as a new pump. Spaguts.com can send you an entirely new AO Smith pump if you prefer to go that route. They can configure one any way you like. -Joel Cal Spas uses GE motors. Your Wet end is most likely their(cal spas) version of a waterway executive 56 frame pump. We sell them for about 65 bucks to give you an idea. If you could take a photo of it...that would help a lot since Cal Spas uses so many different pumps.

First make sure it is sand and not "scale". So check your chem elvels of course and make sure your not scaling. We use a shop vac with great success to remove sand.

Problems arise if your dealer doesn't stock a lot of parts. A few years ago(5), we had a Cal Spa customer that needed a pump. We ordered the pump and were sent the wrong one. From CA to NC, the whole process took 13 days! Now we sent that one back. Took a photo of his and re-ordered the correct pump again. They would not admit to a mistake and sent...guess what...the wrong pump...At this point we kept the 2nd pump since CAL SPAS charged us a restocking fee for the 1st pump! WOW! Now, many calls to Cali and faxes and we are then told they are waiting for the pumps to come for the manufacture. 6 months went by from the time this poor customer that lived 1 hour twenty minutes from us ended up with the correct pump (under warranty). Now it gets interesting...They denied his warranty claim after getting his pump back...we had to send it to them to make sure they got the right pump. The pump was a year old and its windings were a mess. Their reason was the seal was leaking and that is not covered of course. The small leak didn't cause the winding's to melt. The seal's leak was a drip about 1 a minute. We ended up with a total of 4 pumps. I still have 1 of those today. (now the customer was so upset he made a video, he took his basically new tub up in the air with a huge track hoe, went across some of his tomato fields where he dropped the tub about 90 feet off the side of a mtn. Next he doused it in diesel and lit it up. He then sent the video to Cal Spas. He then went and bough a Hot springs Grandee) what we found out is that Cal Spas just doesn't support its warranty centers and small dealers. I continually watch CAL SPA dealerships get started here in NC but when I go look to see if they are there the next year they are always gone. Over the last year I have run into a lot of bad boards from them in the Victory line. When everything is running, they can be a decent tub. Keep an eye on your pumps seals and watch for leaks. I had some problems with "bad glue" on joints from them also last year. Your dealer will make or break your opinion of that tub.

The older Softubs get up to 115 with a simple modification, so I am sure it has the ability to do it, but has been regulated to stay at 103-104 degrees . Anyone have any ideas other than the woodfire? I little too high mainainance ;-). Doubt someone in this business is going to tell you how since if anything does happen in time, they can and most likely will get sued. I know I will not just for that reason. My liability insurance would vanish in minutes. BTW...is that a bottle of ketchup and mustard next to the the guys in the tub? lol....

karl email me your email address and I will send over what we did for payment. drgordon@hottubdoctors.com. It is in an Excel 2007 spreadsheet format.

The cover came with the spa when they bought it. I hate the companies that sell me a cover. Cal Spas is a nightmare company to do warranty work for. I no longer do. If your dealer is new to Cal Spa then be worried since most will drop them once they wake up and the honeymoon period is over. If your dealer has been with Cal Spa for a few years then they already know what to expect when dealing with them. Cal Spa will always say at first it is not covered under warranty. Once it is running correcty it can be a good spa, although very expensive to fix. Good luck and they paid about 3200 for that spa.

WOW! I have been working on repairing hot tubs now for a little over 13 years. I have in the past had a store and sold Sundance, Great Lakes and Masterspa. We moved two years ago to the coast to open a new store and didn't when I saw the economy starting to slide. We will open a 18k foot store in 2009. Over the last 2 years I have worked on average 5-9 hot tubs a day 6 days a week. I have two other employees doing the same. We have worked on: Hot Tub Manufacture/Warranty repair/Non-Warranty repair/total Sundance (5 year warranty 21 61 82 Strong local dealer/most tubs repair avg. 10 years age Hotsprings(5 year warranty) 03 35 38 Strong local dealer/most tubs repair avg. 10 years age Masterspa(5 year warranty) 0 7 7 No local Dealer Catalinia(7 year warranty) 371 471 842 local dealership sold a few times (most warranty spas-3 years old) Caldera(5 year warranty) 1 8 9 local dealer Vita(5 year warranty) 9 37 46 local dealer D1(5 year warranty) 0 59 59 Strong local dealer/most tubs repair avg. 10 years age Great Lakes(3 year warranty) 1 16 17 No local Dealer Infinity(1 year warranty) 37 41 78 No local Dealer Keys Backyard(1 year warranty) 21 217 238 No local Dealer Nordic(3 year warranty) 0 61 61 No local Dealer Emerald(5 year warranty) 0 9 9 No local Dealer Jaccuzzi (Old) 0 411 411 No local Dealer Jaccuzzi (new)(5 year warranty) 2 0 2 New to area unknown manfacture 0 16 16 No local Dealer Four Winds 1 71 72 local dealer Dynasty(3 year warranty) 0 5 5 No local Dealer Hydro Spa 0 187 187 No local Dealer Garden Leisure 2 233 235 No local Dealer "internet tubs "(1 year warranty) 16 393 409 No local Dealer Cal Spas(5 year warranty) 7 21 28 No local Dealer(complete nightmare) Leisure Bay 0 77 77 local dealer(bigger nightmare) Artesian Spas(5 year warranty) 1 11 12 local dealer Strong 5 99 104 local dealer Coleman(3 year warranty) 0 7 7 local dealer Maxx(5 year warranty) 2 3 5 local dealer 497 2559 3056 What everyone that keeps buying these cheap big box store tubs needs to realize that most are delivered with problems and you better hope that it's one of the manufactures that actually pays us to repair your tub and not one of 5 on this list no repair company wants to deal with since you never get paid. We are owed as of 12/16/08 over 17k from these bix box hot tub companies that are now for the most part not owned anymore by the first company. (one of these companies will keep nameless has on average 5 problems on each spa I have worked on, and these are NEW tubs!!!!) Notice that of the basic companies (Infinity, Keys, Garden, Hydospa, Old Jaccuzzi, Strong and other various cheap internet tubs) that have for the most part 1 year warranties that they make up 1581 repair jobs during this two year period. Those statistics alone should tell you what your odds are of getting to know your local repair person (IF YOU CAN FIND ONE!) and having them on speed dial. IN two years time I have not ever visited a big box tub that was even half as well built as one of the majors. The Catalinia dealer numbers are terrible for one big reason and that is that for the most part the salesperson's said that they didn't need to add any chemicals as long as they had an ozonator. So these tubs were always in acid bath conditions. I use a Range Rover and Discovery as my service vehicals thanks to those cheap tubs. I can only hope that cheap tubs keep getting made. One of these days soon I will buy a new 911 Porsche and the tag will read "cheptubs". I would like to add to "hot water" perhaps you might look at the repair business since in the right market it can be a "print your own cash gold mine".

A better option for you would be to just buy a new Balboa VS 510 spa pack for no more then $500.00 on the internet and replace it yourself. It's a very simple thing to do. I have even tought my 69 year old mother how to replace a spa pack in less then an hour an a half for her.

Jacuzzi and Sundance want their dealers to make a 40% margin and sale at MSRP. SO find out what the MSRP and deduct 40%. Next add $250-$400 for shipping and that should be a very accurate number of what they paid. (I am a former Sundance dealer and almost started selling Jacuzzi 2 years ago.) I discounted a lot compared to any other dealer but would never drop below a $2500.00 profit margin. If the customer wanted to haggle I always suggest another hot tub store since I was always at least a thousand below any other Sundance Spa dealership.