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DK117

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Everything posted by DK117

  1. Hammer, yes, welcome. We have a few members of this community that own Strong Spa's and the tech support manager from Strong frequents this forum. After you review the threads, please do ask questions, there are many pro's (and a few con's) of owning any spa, including this one. DK117
  2. Dr. Spa, did we just lose a week's worth of posts? I suppose it will take me a bit to get used to the new GUI, but I can't find anything from april 21st to this morning. DK117
  3. I seem to remember that the 60 can't come with the faux rock, even with special request to Strong. Something Chad will have to verify. And wow, after all the recent posts on electrical, of course I have to recommend a fully licensed electrician. However I was in the same boat as you ... except at least you can call yourself an enginner, I'm just a dumb MBA. Whatever, the point being I had our house wired for a hot tub outlet when we built the place 8 years ago, so I just had to go from the existing run which terminated on the exterior of the house to the hot tub. I did not pull a permit though I should have, but that would not have allowed for me to position the tub 2 feet from the breaker box. With the vertical run, horizontal run, then interior run to the control box I'm closer to 10 feet, but the code says 5ft from the spa, I'm 24 inches. I suppose that's all irrelevant and just my situation ... my point is that if you already have the electrical run installed, the final connection to the tub and installation of the disconnect GFCI pannel is a rather simple thing. Good Luck, be safe, from what I can tell the Palm Beach is an oustanding option, ask around for the jet/pump power/strength, something we haven't heard from real owners yet. DK117 Edit, the guys who deliver will place the hot tub for you, mine was $240, I think that's about average, maybe a bit high. And while my local dealer was really helpful initially on chemicals, and I still purchase MPS shock from him, I'm using dichlor then bleach ... you can get that from most big box stores for half the price.
  4. Check out the water chemistry side of the forum. I'm still a newb myself. However, with the dichlor then bleach method I'm now testing about once a week or a even less. I completely failed on my first two fills, now I'm approaching month three with nearly perfect water. Everyone will talk about how easy it is, and they are right, but it does take a little bit of practice. This coming from a guy who uses strips vs a test kit. You'll get there eventually, just know, that no matter how much you read on the water chemistry side, nothing can replace your own personal experience. Just way too many variables in each tub. DK117
  5. Personal opinion Evolution CSXi80 $5500 at Costco.com There's a big thread on ownership experiences and the pro's and cons of buying from Costco. If your number one criteria is "under $6500" Costco has to be on your list. As you just got rid of an 8 year old tub, I don't see the Craigslist route working for you. Other option is to go into the local dealers you mention and look for a low to mid range floor model or last year's model. You say you've got a local Strongspa dealership, as I understand it they won't be able to match the Costco price ie the CSXi80 is almost the exact same as the Vienna. Good luck. DK117
  6. Mike, I posted these a few weeks ago http://www.amazon.com/Cables-Unlimted-SPK-...7634&sr=8-7 I'm really happy with these, I hook up the transmitter to our PC headphones jack and output Pandora.com or iTunes. There's not huge bass and the range is closer to 50 feet vs the 150 advertised, but for outdoor background music it's fantastic. DK117
  7. Dr. Spa, I'm pretty sure I've acknowledged that I don't know **** about spas. That link was simply the first in a long line of 110v vs 220v links on Google.com. But if you want to call a 110v spa, with lesser fundtionality and reduced performance quality, that's up to you. If you want to talk investment real estate, I'll go toe to toe with anyone here. We all need an income source to afford this luxury of hot tubbing right? ProPerDoper I bought a $4.7K Costco hot tub, I get the toe dipping financials of entering the hot tub world. My decision was different than yours no better no worse, good luck. DK117
  8. No care to elaborate? There's no relevance between quality of a spa and the voltage it operates off.. It's like comparing apples to astroids. hmm, ok my impression of a 110v tub is a smaller even blow up tub. So your statement is probably correct, however there do seem to be limits on the 110v service. I found this to be a useful resource http://hubpages.com/hub/110_Volt_Hot_Tub So my question to elaborate ... are there many D1's Arctics etc that use 110v? In my rather quick investigation into the market last year, I didn't once see or look at a 110v tub. Just curious, doesn't matter either way, but my consumer impression is that 110v equates lesser quality, and if that really means lesser functionality or reduced performance, then so be it. DK117
  9. Aren't 110v and quality hot tub mutually exclusive? And $3500 sounds high for a 5 year old tub, what do you figure the 1 year warranty is worth? Seems to be priced in at $1000 to $1500. Then again similar tubs on Craigslist carry a certain amount of risk. The risk avoidance premium might just be worth it for you. DK117
  10. I didn't realize we were talking Canadian $. That makes the $5k for the spa, electrical and moving sound reasonable. Since you are friends, I'd still make some kind of agreement where 10 or 15% of the price is withheld to be sure that everything fires up and works properly. Spatech, the currencies are almost the same now. $1 dollar = 1.0271 loonies as of today. Many expect the loonie to be worth more than a dollar by mid year. DK117
  11. I Blue Tooth my Iphone to my AV systems DM port and have 2 outdoor Boston Acoustic speakers under the eaves on my deck. The Blue Tooth digital reciever from Sony was only like 120 bucks and my bro gave me the speakers. Works very cool. I wonder if a couple of those would work from my phone down at the lake? Right now I FM signal to my boombox at the lake and we all know how that sounds right, these that I purchased say 150 feet, but in reality it's closer to 50 feet for quality sound. DK117
  12. I have seen a few threads on outdoor speakers. I picked these up a week ago and am very happy. We're talking background music, or loud music with a lot of treble. We're not talking base or high end speakers here. But I'm able to plug them into my laptop headphones jack, with pandora.com playing my station and wow, it perfectly complements the spa experience. I'm posting because two weeks ago I paid $155 for these and they are now $120. I have no financial motivation here, just wanting people to have the best outdoor experience. http://www.amazon.com/Cables-Unlimted-SPK-...2511&sr=8-2 DK117
  13. So there you go. $3000 fair price of the tub, $1000 fair price of move plus electical. Question is, how much is the awkward conversation with your wife and friend going to cost you? $1000? Sorry if I'm coming off as an ass. In fact I've been known to avoid conflict like this for a like amount. But to be practical, this guy is moving out of town. He's asking a premium from a friend. $5000 isn't a BAD deal, but it's not a good deal either. In this economy you're doing him HUGE favor. If you can stomach the conversation, at least ask him for $1000 off the $5000 deal. Good Luck, you're going to love the tub. But how much more would you like the tub and one of these? http://www.traegergrills.com/grills/texas.cfm DK117
  14. Spatech will need to respond to your question, but it goes something like this. Spa's lose up to 30% of their value when going from new to used, then $1000 a year after that until they hit the $500 or free if you haul price point. You're looking at a nice, although 4 year old tub. $5000 seems a bit steep. Half that maybe $3K might be in order. Remember you're not getting a used dealer tub with a warranty. Just one person's opinion, let a few more folks respond before you tell off your "friend." DK117
  15. UK, nice functionality, I'd give it a B +. It took a minute or so to get a hold of the tub, I kept turning it upside down, also the rendering is pixilated a bit. A zoom function would really be impressive. However it very much delivers as promised. Good luck! DK117
  16. I've got a 24 inch setback. Smaller than suggested / required, but it gives accessibility and no heat retention issues on the house. -DK117
  17. Usualy there's an upcharge to buy at a road show even though they say it's on sale! Lots of labor to move in and booth rent all added to the price of the tub. To be fair, the only way to avoid those upcharges is to skip the dealer, skip the road show, skip the internet and buy manufacturer direct. DK117 PS I did attend a spa show last year while shopping ... roadies about sums it up.
  18. I'm willing to concede that Hot has put allot of though and anylisis into it. Seems it should be right. Problem is we are not seeing it here. Sure there are high quality tubs that are costing an average of 30 or so bucks a month but only because 5-7 months a year they are at 10-15. Other months they are at 50-60. Any of the value brands including all of the 6-8 that I have owned and ran over the last 10-15 years have been higher, and I see higher all over. 100 bucks is not uncommon with meter proof. and 20-30 in warmer months. Somebody please tell us, or just me, what is missing?????? I'm going to take a swing at this. .135 KWh MN .405 KWh CA .076 KWh WA $100 a month in MN is 740.74 KWh which is $300 in CA and $56.29 here in WA. Hot Water and I aren't seeing anything like that. So let's acknowledge two things 1) KWh costs are vastly different and 2) since the MN costs are the ones in question, it's not $9 a month and it's not $100 (at least that gets us where we can discuss.) I for one cannot tell what impact my spa has had on my KWh used over 5 months. It can't be much more than 10 to 15 bucks a month or I'd notice it on the consumption chart that I posted earlier. So if Hot Water is seeing maybe a $50 a month bill, that's 123 KWh or $16.60 in MN and $9.38 here in WA. Honestly sounds close to what I'm seeing. So, is it possible, that Strong and Spa's in general behave differently in different climates? Hot Water keep me honest, but thus far everything calculated has been linear. What if diminishing heat retention was logarithmic? Wind chill and temps below say 32 degrees require exponentially more KWh than our relatively mild climates? So MN winters actually cause a like spa to use 5 to 6 times the KWh than in CA. I'm pretty sure I haven't and never will be able to test my tub in negative temps so I won't know for sure, but it would explain the huge discrepancies in personal experience vs the analysis being put forth. DK117
  19. I for one do find it quite coincidental that newbie Scott just happens across a two year old thread where a guy claims to have $200 a month KWh expense on a HydroSpa .... I mean CostcoSpa. Worked quite well as reference data in the title fight thread ... no? DK117 Doc, where did that mystery poster newbie Scott post from? Close to me? DK can take back his insinuation later, or not I could care less! Take it easy Roger, the insinuation was but one part of that post, and a funny one I might add. The second and important part was that HydroSpa does not equal Strong nor any other Costco offering. Honestly, I'm thoroughly enjoying the recent posts, but no reason to take this stuff personally. I learned a lot in the first few months on this board, but now I'm here pretty much for entertainment value only. No personal attacks intended. DK117
  20. I for one do find it quite coincidental that newbie Scott just happens across a two year old thread where a guy claims to have $200 a month KWh expense on a HydroSpa .... I mean CostcoSpa. Worked quite well as reference data in the title fight thread ... no? DK117
  21. unmetered, but just as valid as the observation above. CSXi80 installed October 2009. Partial month, KWh goes down. Up for November, drastically increased in December (two weeks in the low 20's) down both January and February. So far 100% of the change in my electric bill can be explained due to climate and normal usage variations vs the tub itself. DK117
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