Could where you place your spa effect how often you use it? It may not seem so at first but over time the answer is a resounding, Yes. So, you finally bought that spa, now what. Wait, before you pour that cement pad and call out the electrician think about how you are going to use the spa.
First you should know that most of the serious injuries and deaths involving spas are deck mounted spas. If your are thinking about sinking your spa in a deck, turns out leaving it at least bench high can make all the difference as far as safety. Bench high will still make getting in and out of the spa with ease but your guests or children will be far less likely to step into it by accident. So, safety first, make sure the spa stays at least bench high out of the deck and you will be less likely to end up a statistic.
Next, make sure you leave plenty of room around your spa. It is natural to think putting the spa in the corner or up against the house. But in order to keep debris out of your spa and keep the water warm you are going to need to use a spa cover. Once you have the cover off and you are in your spa it will not matter if the spa is in a corner or hanging off the edge of the deck. However when you go to put the cover back on, in order for that to be easy, you need to have easy access around the spa.
If you think about putting the cover on your spa like you would make your bed it will make more sense. If you have your bed shoved into the corner of your room, you may open up more floor area but making the bed, tucking in sheets is going to be a struggle. With your bed you can grab it and pull it away from the wall. You can’t do that with your spa. No matter what kind of cover you decide to use, it will always be easier if you can get around at least three sides of your spa.
I know what you are thinking. I can open my spa cover standing on one side, and when I put it back on I just push it across the spa. And that may be true of your brand new rigid foam spa cover. Unfortunately no rigid foam cover in the history of man has ever stayed light weight. Once the cover begins to get heavy, it will be a lot easier if not necessary to have two people to take the cover off and back on the spa.
One more thing to mention. As humans it is our nature to get by with as little effort as possible. When you first get your spa, you may have plenty of energy you are willing to expend to get into your new toy. As the new wears off however, you will be less likely to exert yourself just to get a little relaxation. If you are using the typical rigid foam cover, you will almost certainly start to open only one side of your spa. You will flop the spa cover halfway open and just use the one side that you can get at. In my humble opinion, this is the beginning of the end.
What I mean by this is as humans when we begin to justify having half as much enjoyment, or telling ourselves we really don’t want to sit in the soothing pulsating jets of the spa we once were so excited to get home to, we begin to have less quality of life. I am convinced that if we make the right choices now we can keep a quality of life well into our twilight years.
You already bought the spa. That was a big expense and given the way spas are built by most companies these days that spa can last you the rest of your life. Where you decide to place your spa can make all the difference between using it later on or deciding to give it away because you just do not use it as much as you used to. The secret is making it easy to use, not just now, but later when the cover starts to get heavy and when you get older and lazier. When the new wears thin, you can still benefit from a dip in the spa.
Back in the annuals of time, Hippocrates, the father of medicine, thought it important enough to include regular spa use as part of the healthy lifestyle. If you want to live a healthy life well into your later years, using that spa is going to be a part of it. And because we are naturally lazy beings, making that easy now will be a big part of how often we use it later. Like brushing your teeth.
If you still have your teeth when you are old, it is largely because you planned for taking care of them when you were young. You made it part of your daily routine by planning on making it easy to do so. You put your tooth brush in the bathroom where you knew you would end up at some point in the morning. To a large degree you now face the same kind of decision in placing your spa.
If you place your spa too far away, walking out to it in your bathing suit seems far less inviting. I heard one person say he placed the spa as far away as his wife was willing to walk in the nude. I would add that she is going to get older and that distance may be less. Make the cover easy to get off and on. Like I said earlier having easy access to at least three sides of the spa will be important but maybe you should consider that eventually you might add a cover lifter of some sort. Leaving space around the spa will make a lifter a lot easier to add later too.
Having the spa partially sunken into the deck can assist in getting the spa cover off and on because as it gets heavier, and it will, and you get older, you will have less distance to move it. Leave room to fasten the cover easily on to the sides of the cabinet. In order to be as safe as possible your cover should be secured to the spa.
If you have already placed your spa and when you read this you realize your spa is not going to be easy to use, move it now. Drain your spa, move it to so you can walk around at least three sides of your spa. If you have shrubs or other landscaping right up to the sides of your spa so you can not walk around it, move them. Back them away from the spa. If you have a privacy fence surrounding the spa, take it down or move it back.
If you got one of those cute little gazebos or tea houses that fit right on to the spa, take it off. Move it to some other place in the yard. Make it a play house for the kids, a shed for the mower, or a tea house or gazebo, but get it off the spa. Either that or eventually you will get to the point where you can not remember the last time you got in the spa. You will get tired of paying to heat the water you are never in and you will drain the spa and shut it down. It will sit there until your wife decides to reclaim her yard and tells you to get rid of it. That will be a shame considering when you first got it, you could not wait to get into it. And your life was better. Do it now, you will thank me later.
The Author is a business owner with more than twenty years experience. A former Police Sgt, Pilot, Heavy Equipment Operator, Trained Mechanic, and accomplished motorcycle rider he enjoys riding the back roads of Washington on his Harley Davidson, Police Edition. Please visit his website SpaCap.com Spa Covers.
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