In Hot Water . . .Finally!

My wife and I have talked about getting a hot tub for years.  “It would be good for your back,” she would say.  I was always the one that resisted.  “They’re too expensive and too much work to maintain.”  Or I’d say, “We’d never use it, since we’re so busy all the time.”  Or the curmudgeon in me would say, “If we get one, we’ll suddenly have friends we didn't know we had wanting to visit us all the time to use it.”

Then this past year, my wife developed some back problems of her own.  Her therapist assured her that a daily soak in a hot tub would do wonders, so I knew I had to give in.  So in early August we walked into our friendly hot tub dealer to see what they had.  Neither my wife nor I knew much about hot tubs or “spas” as the salesperson referred to them.  We just knew that we wanted it to be fairly modest in size and price.  We also wanted it to be fairly portable.  We have children in New York and Philadelphia and may want to move closer to them at some point.  We wanted to be able to load up the hot tub and take it with us should we decide to move.

We knew where we wanted to put it.  We had a patio in the back of our house.  Next to the patio we had a 110-volt outlet.  We explained to the salesperson that we’d prefer to use that existing outlet rather than having to hire an electrician to install a 220 line.  She showed us a 5’x7’ model that could come either in 110 or 220.  The price was within our budget, so we ordered it. 

The “patio” where we planned to put it consisted of very old 2’x2’ paver stones set in dirt.  We knew we had to build a better patio to support the hot tub.  Fortunately, one of our neighbors had a retired friend who still did some cement work if the job “wasn't too big.”  About the same time, we realized that we had to move some pipes before he could start the patio, so we had to schedule a plumber.  When we were finally ready for our cement guy to start, it was mid-October.  He did a beautiful job, but a series of rainy days meant that the cement wasn't poured until the last week of October. 

We scheduled delivery of the hot tub for November 1^st to give the concrete plenty of time to cure.  I told my wife we would grill some hot dogs and set up our fire pit to make our first hot tub experience a real celebration.  The delivery guy arrived around 10:00 a.m., placed the spa on the patio, gave me some chemicals and pointed out the panel that had to be removed to “get to the electrical components.”  As soon as he left, I eagerly unscrewed the panel and looked for the plug. I couldn't find it.  I felt around the insulation thinking that perhaps the plug had gotten stuck behind it.  But there was no plug that I could find.  I called the store to get their help.  “Uh, those things don’t have plugs,” the guy on the phone told me.  “They need to be hard wired.  You need to call an electrician.” 

My heart sank.  The salesperson had never explained this to us.  There was no way I was going to get an electrician to come over on a Friday afternoon to hook this thing up. Or was there?  I checked the internet for local electricians and started dialing the phone.  First try – no answer.  I left a desperate message.  Second try – they only did commercial jobs.  Third try – bingo!  It was the electrician’s cell phone and he actually picked up.  I explained my dilemma, but what he said made me realize there would be no hot tub party that evening.  He explained that this was not a small job.  To meet Code, he would have to install something called a “disconnect” and the wiring would have to go directly to the breaker box.  I envisioned dollar bills with wings flying out of my wallet – a lot of them!  He told me he had an opening on November 14^th.  I started whimpering.  “Well, maybe,” he said, “I can see if the job Monday would be willing to wait.  I possibly could do it then.”  I texted my wife, telling her the hot tub party would have to be postponed till Monday. 

Monday came and the electrician showed up right when he said he would, which was nothing short of amazing based on my dealings with contractors over the years.  He worked steadily and finished hooking everything up by around 1:00 p.m.  Unfortunately, the spa didn't work.  The display lit up, the light turned on, but the pump didn't seem to work at all.  We spent the next couple of hours on the phone with the store trying to figure out why it wouldn't work.  Finally, the store sent out a tech person who diagnosed the problem.  The manufacturer set up the spa to run on a 110 line, but they had installed a 220 volt pump.  The tech guy said he would be back the next day with a part to get it to run.  I sadly texted my wife to postpone our hot tub date another day.

Early the next day, I got a call from the electrician.  He asked me if I knew that with a 110-volt hookup, we could either heat the spa or run the jets, but we could not do both at the same time.  He wondered if the store had explained that to us.  I was incredulous.  It was like I was having a bad dream.  He suggested that I ask the tech guy when he showed up.  If true, and if this was unacceptable to us, he could redo some of the wiring and change the wiring in the hot tub to convert it to a 220 spa – for an additional fee, of course.  A little while later, the Tech guy showed up and confirmed what our electrician had said.  I told him that no one at the store had ever explained to us that this was one of the drawbacks of a 110 spa.  I told him that I was going to have the electrician convert everything to 220, and that I expected the store to pay for it.  Once again I texted my wife, “No hot tub today.”

I called the electrician.  “We can get back over there on Thursday,” he told me.  I began to wonder if this whole hot tub idea had been a mistake.  Maybe God was trying to tell us we didn't deserve this kind of luxury.  Maybe we should just call the store and tell them to take this thing back.  But then again, we had already spent a small fortune on a plumber, a cement contractor and an electrician. It nearly equaled what we had spent on the spa.  We knew we were in over our heads so to speak and had to see this thing through to the bitter end.

The electrician showed up as promised on Thursday morning.  Before he was finished, I had to go to a local elementary school where I volunteer in a reading program.  I wondered what new problems I’d find upon my return.  When I got back home, the electrician was gone.  I walked back to the hot tub and lifted the cover.  I saw bubbles coming out of the jets and the display indicated that the water had reached a temperature of 85 degrees.  I texted my wife, “I think we’re in business!”  I talked to the electrician and he confirmed that the spa was working fine.  Ultimately, after some negotiating, the store agreed to compensate us for the extra we had to pay the electrician.

We dispensed with the hot dogs and fire pit, but did get into the spa that evening – a mere 6 days after it had been delivered.  We've used it nearly every day since and are really enjoying it.  There’s a quote from the movie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel that comes to mind as I finish describing this experience:

Everything will be all right in the end, and if it’s not all right, it must not yet be the end.

Regarding our new hot tub, everything is all right, so it must be:

The End.