Electrical Bill Nightmare

[avasicek]

Thanks, hot_water, very kind and also very helpful! I dont think the red bull has kicked in yet this morning, not sure I could have typed out an explanation like that this morning =).

One other thing on the deck vs. slab install, and it does relate generally to some of the more less thought out designs in thermal pane set-ups. Some manufacturers, for all their good intentions, really dont consider the many ways a spa can be installed and as such the bottom isnt just not insulated well its plain not sealed to any degree. The spas I had see on raised decks, with no wind protection, and open holes in the base (even on some fairly well insulated) and the wind really did knock the heat out of the cabinet. If you do have holes in the base, you can plug them with foam, put the spa on an insulating mat of some sort, etc.

I know its a pain and not something one would normally want to do, especially this time of year, but it sounds like your on the right course. Insulate better as you've done, close your air valves, keep the cover on (make sure its a good cover - heating a spa with a poor or no cover is like cooling a fridge with the door open). If your in an extremely windy area, may want to consider a wind wall, gazebo, just some sort of sheltering. Also most of these tips can help even the high end spas and installs. Dont know about the rest of the crew here, but every penny helps out my way!

Time for work, take care gang.

AV

[JerimiahR]

Well, it looks like what people have said about the Infinity Sunpeak Hot Tub being an electrical hog is true.

It looks like our electric bill from mid Nov-Mid Dec this year with the Hot tub will be about $270.00. Last year without the tub for the same period, the bill was $153. This year we used 1878 KW for the period, last year we used 1077KW. In summary, the tub used about 800KW this month, costing us an additional $104.00 in electrical bill. For the months of May-Nov though, the tub used an average of 388KW per month, costing us $50.00 additional per month. We have our tub on the Economy mode, with a 2 hour filtering time, every 12 hours.

Seems to me that at least in the New England area, this tub is fine for April-November weather, but is going to be a real electrical hog between Dec-March.

On top of that, many days the temp in our tub will drop to the mid 70's. In order to get it back to 100 degrees, I have to run the heater for about 6 hours during the day for it to be ready, and an additional 1 hour while we're using it. This is both time consuming and of course, if done on a regular basis very expensive.

It's frustrating to pay an additional $100 per month during the winter and not even be able to use the tub when temps remain below 30 degrees.

if you live in a cold climate like New England, this might not be the tub for you.

Granted some of that change in KW usage can be random (watching TV more, etc), but the numbers you've posted are definitely excessive. If that spa is truly using 800KW/month, I'm shocked. Unfortunately though, some brands just don't provide enough insulation to keep the spa efficient in very cold weather.

That's one reason why I'm sold on our Hot Spring spas frankly. This winter (December 2008) I intentionally disabled the heating ability on one of our spas from 6pm to 9am. At 9am when I reactivated the spa the temperature gauge at a local bank said it was currently -20F (twenty below zero). The spa's water temp went from 104 degrees to 100 degrees. We'd only lost 4 degrees on a -20F night here in Montana.

Granted we did this test with our Hot Spring Grandee, which is a 500 gallon spa. With our current power costs up in Montana being $0.10 / KWh we can guarantee our customers this spa uses less than $30/month in electricity on average.

That's just the difference between a heavily insulated spa, and one that isn't though I suppose.

If you're within Costco's return policy as someone else suggested, you could look into returning it. Then you could go out and buy a higher quality spa, finance it, and make monthly payments and probably still be ahead of the game when you compare your energy cost differences.

avasicek brought up a good point about filter cycles cooling the water too. Some spas actually pull in outside (cold) air to inject into your jet lines to make jets feel higher pressure. Others don't. Our spas actually use a 'heat shroud' to pull warm air off the pump and use that to inject into jets. So you're putting warm/hot air into warm/hot water, instead of pushing cold air into warm water.

But not all spas filter the same either. Most of them do indeed use their jet pump to push water for those filter cycles, and so you'll be adding some cold air into the mix. Hot Spring in particular, uses a constant circulating pump to filter continuously, thereby eliminating the need for the larger jet pump to cycle throughout the day/night. Other manufacturers (such as Sundance) are catching on to this method now days as well.