Review after 7 months of use (spring, summer and fall): Overall, having and maintaining a hot tub is more difficult than I expected. Big learning curve at the beginning, though easier after that. 1) What You'll Need: the hot tub does not come ready-to-use, at least for most people. First of all, the cord on the pump was not long enough to make it to a socket, so I had to buy a special long extension cord with lower gauge so that it could handle it (I bought a 12/3 cord, luckily they are easy to get on amazon, but not particularly cheap). You will also need all the chemicals (more on this later-- if you are new to pool maintenance, it's not easy): you'll at least need pH/other chemical test strips, washing soda (aka sodium carbonate, aka spa down), spa up (acid), and bromine or chlorine, and "shock" (an oxidant that reactivates the bromine or cholrine). All of this might set you back another $100, but it will last you a while. 2) Set-up: harder than I expected. Instruction booklet could be better. Recommend you do it with someone-- alone it sucked. The inflatable cover, which is not the best to begin with, came damaged (with small holes), and because of unavailable supplies, I haven't been able to get a replacement almost a year later. I'm able to still use it by inflating it more often, but annoying. The connections between the tub and pump can be finicky-- I had leaks in the beginning between the air pipe (the biggest pipe coming out of the pump) and the tub. Water was getting into this tube from the tub into the pump. I finally found a washer that came with the tub and randomly tried inserting it in the leaky pipe, and the leaks stopped, but water still goes into the pump, but a little bit is fine (if you are having this issue, you can probably ignore it). You probably WILL have to play around with things to get it to work. 3) Chemicals: this was my first time maintaining a pool of any size, and it is HARD. Get chemical test strips that have multiple readings-- pH, alkalinity and chlorine/bromine levels. Test strips are hard to read without practice, and electronic pH readers are faulty. This sucks, but you get better at reading them with time. It will take you a while to get the pH right-- so it might be a while until you get to use the tub. One of the biggest issues with chemicals is maintaining bromine/chlorine levels. At first, I tried using only bromine tablets in the little tablet holder. However, I could never get a sufficient bromine reading on the test strips. I learnt online (and this information is hard to find-- there are many forums and blogs with contradictory information, so I figured this out after a long time) that the tabs dissolve very slowly, so they are not sufficient to establish an initial bromine level. I then went instead for bromine powder (even though it says somewhere that they don't recommend this for the tub, ignore it-- there is no logical reason why it is bad) which you directly to the tub water when you fill it (separately you also put tablets to keep the level up). Honestly, I have learnt that most recommendations about tub / pool maintenance out there are wrong, and often also tell you to put less than is needed. Go ahead and double the amount of bromine it says to put. It's for the best. Next you'll need an oxidizer ("shock")-- basically, when you use the hot tub, especially with multiple people or a long time, the bromine gets "used up" deactivating organic compounds from our bodies. So the test strips will read no bromine even though there is tons of bromine in the tub, but in compound form that does not sanitize-- shock fixes this by breaking this compounds and restoring active bromine in the water. Again, it says everywhere that you need to shock once a week- HA! You will probably need to do it after every hot tub use, or every other use, depending, to keep bromine levels up. My advice after many months of use: if you aren't getting the readings you need, just use MORE. MORE bromine, and MORE shock, as often as needed, even every day, whatever-- better safe than sorry. Doing all of this you can keep the same water in the tub for several months (my max was 2). 4) Filters- BEWARE: you MUST take out the paper filters inside the grey filter containers and wash them after EVERY use of the hot tub. I usually use the tub in the evening, so I remove them and wash them in the morning. When you take them out they will look dirty / oily with compounds from the human body :) I wash them nearby with a hose on a "flat head" setting by rotating the filter in the sharp stream of water, and this washes them very well. Why should you do this after every use? if you leave them for too long after a use, say several days, the dirt will bond to the filters and you won't be able to wash them clean, and you will need new ones. If you wash them after EVERY use like I do, they last a really long time (at least 3 months.. maybe more. Again, it says everywhere that they'll only last a few weeks, a month at most, but it must be false info to get you to buy more... but they will last a week at most if you don't wash them consistently). The filters are expensive on amazon but much cheaper at walmart. 5) Energy and water -- I was concerned about these points when considering the hot tub. However, on this front I actually think it matched my expectations. Water where I live is extremely cheap, filling the whole 250 gallon tub costs a few dollars at most, and you do it very rarely (once every few months if you maintain the thing very well). Electricity costs are more variable-- other reviews do a better job explaining this than I will. You can do tricks to cut back on costs: lower the temperature to 98, say, after you are done with the tub, and turn it up to 104 hours before you are going to use it (how many hours depends on the outdoor temperature-- if it's cold, set it to 104 6-7hrs before use, if it's warm, 2 hours might suffice). In the summer, the thing used very little energy for heating (note that the filter / pump is separately moving the water, which also consumes electricity). A few times I turned the heating off and overnight the temperature fell from 104 to high 90s. In colder months, it uses a LOT of electricity, so be mentally prepared for a surprise bill that is $100 more than usual. Overall the energy consumption is similar to a window-unit air conditioner. My strategy of using it in the spring, summer, and fall, and putting it away for the winter seems to work. 6) Emptying and refilling: every few months, and when you want to put it away, you will need to empty the tub. This is HARD. It takes about an hour to drain to a very low level of water which is too low to flow out of the pipes, so you have to PICK UP and TILT the tub. It is VERY easy to rip the handle this way, so I recommend not holding the handle, just try to pick it from underneath. The best way is to open the drain plug on the bottom of the tub which is almost always closed / unused, and then tilt the tub from the other side, so the water can flow out underneath (you will likely need ANOTHER person on the other side opening the plug since the lid will close by itself a lot.. this part is very annoying). Eventually it should be light enough to fully push onto its side. Before refilling the tub, you want to clean the heck out of it-- using rags, I wish it thoroughly with soap, a very light solution of bleach to disinfect, and then water it down many times to get all of that out. Then you put it back right-side-up, reinflate it back to fully firm, and refill... This whole process is very time-consuming, laborious, and challenging in unexpected ways. This is why you want to do a good job with chemicals, cleaning the filters, and so on, to minimize how often you want to switch out the water. 7) The pump AUTOMATICALLY TURNS OFF after some time. This is not such a big problem if you are aware of it, but if you're not careful it can lead to problems: 1) it turnin
