Spa Repair - How Do I Prevent Repairs to My Hot Tub?

As an owner of a spa, hot tub, swimming pool or Jacuzzi, the question of repairs will sooner or later become very apparent. A spa or hot tub is a complex mechanical piece of equipment with literally 100's of parts that can fail. The cost of hot tub repairs, once a spa is out of warranty, will get expensive very fast.

Luckily, you as a home owner can greatly affect the costs of those repairs. Below are some suggestions what you can do to prevent repairs to your spa, hot tubs, Jacuzzi or swimming pool.

Strange noises

If you hear sounds or noises from your spa or hot tub that you have not heard before, there is a problem brewing. It is not one of those problems that will go away if you don't pay attention to it. On the contrary, most notice problems are a first warning from the spa that something bigger is about to break.

For example. If you hear a small grinding noise it is most likely from your pump or motor. Having a spa service technician diagnose and repair that small notice will most likely save you from buying a whole new pump. You can easily save yourself $500-700 by discovering this early on.

Leaks

Spa Leaks = problems. There is no way around that. A spa normally does not leak. Most spas will eventually develop leaks. Detecting leaks can be one of the most costly repairs done to a spa. Spa leaks are many times very difficult to find and you will end up having a repair technician there for hours over several days.

For example. If you see a small trickle of water coming out from under your spa. That could again be the pump seal that is going bad. Having a technician replace the spa pump seal will save you hundreds of dollars verses replacing the spa pump.

Heaters

Water and electricity can be a dangerous combination. The heating element on most spas are submerged in water 24/7. If the heating element was to fail and electricity gets into the water, electrocution could follow. Therefore it is required by law that all new spas are protected with GFCI breakers. A GFCI will shut off the electricity going to the spa, in a matter of thousands of a second, if the GFCI senses that electricity is going into the water.

For example. A home owner has a spa properly protected with a GFCI breaker. One day the GFCI breaker starts to trip. In the beginning it's only tripping occasionally but after a while it trips every day. It is quite annoying. The home owner knows a little bit about electricity and decides to simply replace the GFCI breaker with a regular, non-gfci breaker. Lo and behold, the breaker is not tripping any more, the spa is working find. But, what the home owner has effectively done is to create a possible deadly trap for anybody using the spa. The new breaker will trip at, let's say, 20 ampere (20,000 milliamps). A human heart can stop if as little as 10 milliamps passes through it.

If you are a home owner reading this. Please do NOT, under any circumstance, remove, replace or in any other way manipulate a GFCI protected feed to your spa. If your GFCI is tripping, please contact a skilled spa service company to perform a proper diagnostic. It is not worth saying a few dollars when the outcome can be absolutely disastrous.

Conclusion

The above mentioned problems are just a few of all the items that can go wrong with your spa. The single most important thing you as a home owner can do is to contact your local spa repair company as soon as you hear, notice or see anything out of the ordinary.