May 8, 2018 – Over the 23 years I’ve been in the hot tub industry, I’ve sold a lot of Hot Spring Spas. One of the wonderful things about the brand we sell is water that stays cleaner longer, requiring far fewer water care products and a reduced need to drain and fill your hot tub completely with fresh water. It’s one of the things our customers love about the product.

Quite a few customers have mentioned over the years during the shopping process that one of the reasons for the hot tub (besides the much-needed therapy & escape) is because they love taking baths. Part of the great appeal for these folks was being able to immerse themselves in a big body of water and eliminate the need to waste all the water involved in taking frequent baths for relief.

A typical bathtub can hold anywhere from 40-110 gallons depending on size and depth. Let’s take a median of 75 gallons per bath and assume someone would take a bath five times a week for therapy. 375 gallons would be used weekly, or 1,500 gallons a month!

Compare that to a hot tub that seats 4 people that, for this example, holds about 375 gallons. A Hot Spring Spa—with proper water care being observed—would normally be drained at the four-month mark. That would mean you would use around 1,125 gallons per year to have a hot tub to soak every single night. To err on the high side, let’s say you used a total of 1,300 gallons to maintain your tub (draining and filling, as well as periodically topping it off with some fresh water when evaporation, etc. occurs).

That would equate to a savings of $16,700 gallons of water per year!

Now: Why this elementary course on water consumption? Recently I ran across an article about water restrictions being implemented in Telluride in Colorado. Drought conditions are looming, and they are making efforts now to be proactive to have water available for the coming season in addition to the snowpack that will supplement the water supply.

The problem here is that one of the restrictions being enacted has to do with people’s private hot tubs in their own backyards. So many people buy hot tubs for a myriad of health reasons: Type 2 Diabetes, arthritis, back issues, insomnia issues, fibromyalgia…the list goes on. When a town starts to encroach upon what you’ve adopted to keep you healthy—without fully investigating the true water savings that is a by product of a hot tub—to me is an overstep.

The mandate may have been made from ignorance. That certainly happens all the time when a crisis emerges that calls for conservation measures. I felt compelled, however, to offer up this water use example.

If you find your own personal hot tub use being forced into extinction by a mandate such as this, I hope you can use this information to demonstrate the water savings that you enjoy by regular hot tubbing over bathtub use. It might be enlightening enough to have folks re-think their restrictions list!