The Hot Tub Story

Where to begin...
I ahve a friend that had a cool spa. I kept trying to get him to sell it to me. "No Way", he says. "But I know where one is". "ya just gotta see it", he says. So after kicking it around for a few weeks, I finally went to look at this tub. It was a doozy! We drive up to this ladies home, and there it was, almost ten feet across! Sunk in her deck. Enclosed with a glass sun room. What am I getting into?! It really was a one of a kind tub, I still don't know how many folks will actually fit into this thing! So a deal was struck, I paid a $1000 bucks for the tub, but I had to remove it, patch the deck, and get it out of the sun room! I spent about two weeks getting the tub out of the deck, patching the hole, disassemblying all the plumbing, etc. Now the fun part! It's a shame I didn't have photos of all this! I rounded up a small army of helpers, engineers, and looker ons, and we spent a Saturday dismantling the sun room, moving the tub out and reassembling the sunroom. With the tub out, we strapped it onto a trailer, and drove down the mountain to the Cornstalks Hacienda. In the time I was doing all this work up there, I was also constructing the tub's new home here. I won't call it a deck, it was more like building a hole! Luckily, I had the Bobcat borrowed, as I had to place a dump truck load of sand under the hole in the deck for the tub to rest on. At this point, I was really regretting this decision not to buy a tub at the local building supply house. You know, the kind you plug in and fill up with water! We set the tub with the Bobcat, using like a big forklift. we leveled it up, shoveled lots of sand, and then I began plumbing the tub. After this was complete, I did the plumbing, and the trouble began. There was much discussion regarding the wiring for this project. Popular consensus was that I couldn't re-use all the breakers and wire and stuff that I had brought with the tub, as some said it wouldn't be safe, pass code, etc. I balked! The tub sat there gathering leaves, rain, and frogs for two years! (This is where the two year time limitation for projects began!) After my time had expired, Jennifer threatened to sell my tub! It was almost turning ugly around the Homeplace! Once again, the tools came out, I framed it in, walled it four feet high with vinyl siding, screened the top, roofed it in, and hired a real electrician to wire this monstrosity. Of course, nothing worked after sitting dry for two years! I ordered switches and circuit boards and who knows what else, filled it with water, and fired it up! But then it needed a cover. Luckily, I found a place on the net who custom made a cover from diagrams and measurements that I supplied via e-mail. Quite imressive that a cover this size, ordered on the net, actually fit! Not to mention the glow in the dark ducky that came with the cover! So the tub is running, and now the new deck.