Hot Tubs, Pointless Metal Frames and Bases
Вставка
- Опубліковано 8 лют 2025
- This hot tub has a thick base and was elevated but the cheap metal frame rusted and fell apart anyway.
Get Chris's help finding the right Hot Tub! Visit hottubuniversi...
Check out my main video on bases to see more: • Hot Tub Bases How impo...
Sales people like telling you your hot tub will fall apart without a good base and that rats and cats and elephants will nest in your hot tub if you don’t have one, these are all used to pull more money out of your pocket.
Disclaimers: www.hottubuniv...
Thanks Chris! Nice to have someone like you who is willing to point out these problem areas. Informed customers will benefit when buying or upgrading their tubs
I forgot to say though ..do appreciate your assistance though I still haven’t seen what you do recommend.
I would never use wood when there is tubs that have stainless steel framing.The one I just bought last year has stainless and I am very happy.My best friend is a bug guy and he has told me how many tubs with wood he has to debug and the wood is rotten and the people just want to throw them away.Yup money down the tube with wood
Seriously shopping and hydropool says steel is best but darn how do you choose?
Hydropool is owned by an equity investment group out of the US that also owns Jacuzzi, Sundance, D1, and a few others.
They are fantastic at really expensive high-end branding, marketing, and advertising that makes these middle fo the road products seem like they are super high end. Really the are generally middle of the road for both performance and overall build quality and sell for a lot more than they are worth.
hottubuniversity.com/great-marketing-vs-great-hot-tubs/
hottubuniversity.com/brand-breakdown/
My Bullfrog has a plastic frame.
Your Bullfrog has an ABS plastic shell instead of a hand-rolled fiberglass one. The shell is not strong enough to hold its own weight with water and people so they have plastic pedestals under it to keep it from falling apart :-)
And how you know that ?
Um, cause that's on their site... and if you ever owned a hot tub manufacturer like I did you know :-)
I never see on their site that their shell is not strong enough and that they need these pedestals from keeping them falling apart
Im not fund of the ABS backed acrylic but its a good solution for factories who due strict enviromental laws can not use vinylester / polyester
Oooh yeah ,
Beside owning a spa i developing spas for over 15 years ..........
Several of my spas won Awards on international shows so i know what im talking about
How many spas you ever developed buid ?
Yes, I have designed dozens and redesigned dozens of bad ones for over 30 years, I have designed, built, sold, and serviced hot tubs and swim spas. I was the founder and part owner of one of the largest spa suppliers to the mass merchant industry. We grew from nothing to one of the top 10 players out there, I closed and signed up deals with the biggest mass merchants in the world and dominated the mass merchant industry and that company still dominates that industry today... I built and designed and sold ABS shells, and good ones...
Thier site clearly states its a pedestal supported ABS shell, anyone who has built and designed spas should understand that this means the shell requires supports for the structural integrity ergo the shell is not strong enough by itself to survive reliably what is expected of it...
Its good you are not fond of ABS shells, we agree they are the second or third rate, I don't get where you are going with this... you are suggesting people sacrifice quality for environmental reasons and that may or not be valid if the product last longer because it is built right waht is the end environmental impact...
Besides my point was about the quality of that system and you state that you agree fundamentally with that stance.
But Chris...you know a quality steel powder coated frame is much better than weak soft pine 2x4s or like Marqm2x2s. I don’t want a hollow tube or angle iron - but a quality solid steel frame won’t rot, won’t get termites . I have pest folks tell me about people having termites in their tubs...drawn to the damp and warmth that have tubed from under the deck right into the hot tub or up a crack in the base. Same with houses ICF - termites tube under the foam and go unnoticed right to the wood. I have slab foundation and they tubed between the block and slab through a small crack and I didn’t know they were there until I was vacuuming and hit the baseboard and it crumpled. Then noticed the funny pattern on the wall where they had been eating the paper underneath and it was telescoping through. Strange but true. I want my tub closed up and I want something besides 2x2s. I have some old 2x4# from the 50s where a shed was pulled down in my neighbor’s yard. We used the wood to build my rafters in my garden shed. We didn’t have quite enough and had to buy some more. OMG what a difference. Even being that old - 50s to 1995 that wood was so much heavier. The new ones felt like paper to concrete. The issue is new wood is grown fast and harvested young - doesn’t have the strength of older wood.
A softwood 2x4 three feet long on end can support about 100x more than any hot tub frame would ever need.
Besides only cheap tubs rely on the frame to support the shell, the good tubs are building hand rolled self-supporting shells so the timber frame only holds the skirts on and takes up a bit of load from the lip...
There is no structure issue with either material except no one uses solid steel they use cheap powder coated tubing and they all rust. I would rather have timber for sure with an antifungal insecticide-treated coating on the bottom rail any day... Quieter, better R-value, and it lasts...
@@ChrisWheatley
Maax Hot tubs insist that their"Galvalume" material will Not rust, the lady who runs the hot tub business in BC says they have not had one service claim call for one of their steel-framed tubs to this very day, still there is a reason why the Top 5 manufacturers in the industry are still using full foam insulation & if you ever happen to have a leak on a higher-end Quality spa, it really isn't that difficult to get to the leak through the foam if you know what you're doing.