Cajun Engineering

....and now we come to the fun part. Wiring it and testing the internals. I went to the local bigbox store electrical section and got heavy gauge wiring and a spa-pack 50amp GFCI along with miscelaneous stuff - Romexes, conduit, etc. One of my buddies from our local church works for a company that installs three-phase medical equipment, so he knows his way around 220v. He came over on Christmas Eve day and we spent the time wiring up the breaker and running it out to the hottub.... ....and that's where we ran into trouble. He has a good voltage meter and used it to trace down several shorts. Apparently, the heat exchanger tested good but both blower motors tested as having dead shorts and so did the "Whisper Power Unit" (see pic). With my luck, the darn control panel on the top edge wont work either and I'll have to replace that too. So right now we have a huge hottub that looks nice but doesn't work. I reckon my next step is to have a spa tech come out and diagnose the exact problems that need repair or replacing. I need to do that first cuz I'm on a tight budget and need to know how much I have to budget for.

....and here's the After pic of the cabinet & framing refurb. I got an outrageous quote from Cal Spa for a cabinet refurb kit. So I reframed and re-sided it myself. 1) I cannot believe that Cal Spa would use non-pressure treated wood for the cabinet and internal framing. Hello! It's going to be in a wet environment! They also unnecessarily increased the cost of building the darn thing because they used a non-standard size lumber for the bottom runner. I had to rip down a 2x6 to create 2x3 runners. Idiots! 2) I replaced all four runners and also an internal bottom crosspiece that holds up the equipment platform or shelf or whatever you want to call it. I replaced about six rotted vertical upright pieces using pressure-treated wood 1x1's. And I used PT-rated exterior screws, not the cheap staples Cal Spa used. !Oy Caramaba! 3) I got a piece of much thicker piece of PT plywood to replace the totally rotted material that Cal Spa used for the equipment platform. Cal Spa had the equipment resting on some kind of plastic liner. All it did was allow water to stay trapped between the platform and the plastic liner, accelerating the rotting process. Buffoons! 4) I increased the strength of the entire internal framing by adding 1x 1 horizontal crosspieces between each vertical upright. 5) I had ripped off every square inch of the cabinet siding. None of it was worth saving. Also got my Sawzall and pawl out and pried out every single staple and nail that was sticking out. So while ambling thru Lowe's one day I saw their soffitt material. Bingo, Jed's a millionaire! I cut that into sections and used s/s screws and finishing washers to attach each panel to the hottub. See pic below.... (to be continued...)

Hi Y'All - Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! First time post but an old hand to posting on forums. Glad to be here. When we bought our house last Summer, we had an opportunity to get a "free" hottub from our realtor's son - an eight-seat CalSpa, built in 2002 according to the plate. After downloading the owners manual from the Cal Spa site, the control panel indicates it is a 2100 Series. The catch was that I had to hire a professional moving company to move it from his back deck to our place the next town over. That was an ordeal in itself and cost me $5 Hundy. Here's the hottub after moving. Cabinet was all shot. On two sides, the internal framing was rotted. Didn't know if any of the internals were working. (to be continued....)

https://www.homedepot.com/p/48-in-x-96-in-Textured-Redwood-Grain-Fiber-Panel-Siding-29055/202190402 A friend gave me his 8-seat CalSpa if I moved it off his back deck. The shell, plumbing and electrical are all in working order. But the internal framing, the bottom and the exterior wood are all rotted. I read on the internets that hottub mfgrs build their units upside-down, with the shell on the bottom. They add the plumbing, electrical, framing, insulation and exterior and then they flip 'em right side up. Plan A - I reckon I'll flip my hottub over, remove the exterior and then replace all the framing with pressure-treated 2x2's, one piece at a time. Once that's done I'll attach pressure-treated plywood (not that OSB junk) to the bottom framing. Then for the exterior cabinet I was thinking of using composite siding (see link above - $20.42 for a 4x8 sheet at Casa Depot). Good idea or bad idea? Plan B would be to Engage Cajun Engineering Mode and take vinyl siding, cut it to length, apply it oriented vertically as the exterior. It would be an easy install on the large radius corners too. If any insulation is needed, I can always get a couple sheets of cheap siding insulation - the stuff where there is foil on one side and styrofoam on the other side.