After likely waiting months for your new hot tub to arrive, it finally has. Your dealer has placed it in position in your backyard, coordinated with an electrician to have it wired properly, and given you instructions on how to maintain both your spa and spa water. It likely never occurred to you to purge your brand-new spa – heck it’s brand new! Honestly, it’s something that more than few spa dealers don’t consider either, though experienced hot tub dealers know it might be necessary. Here’s why.
Spa Manufacturing Is Unique
The reason to possibly purge a new spa is, to my knowledge, unique to spa manufacturing. Unlike every other product that literally is brand new when you unwrap it, a “new” spa is not quite new. It has been “wet tested” prior to packaging and shipment to your dealer.
Wet Testing Your Spa
A typical hot tub will have 100’s of feet of PVC plumbing and may also have 100’s of connections all fused together with PVC glue. All of these connections are glued by hand. Every manufacturer wants to be sure all connections in their spas are tight and will not leak. There is only one way to do this – Wet Test each spa before packaging. Manufacturers will fill their spas with water and run them for a period of time, often 1 – 3 hours to ensure every spa is not leaking.
A typical spa has 350 – 500 gallons of water when filled. Manufacturers are also building dozens to 100’s of spas a day so they have a very quick way to “drain” it. They don’t drain them by gravity as you will in your backyard. They don’t even pump them dry. Nope – these methods are just not fast enough for them to maintain their production speed.
Instead, all the major manufacturers will put each spa is a big “clamp” and flip the spa over, dumping 100’s of gallons of water in seconds. (They do recycle the water.) They will then flip the spa back to upright and move the spa into their foaming department to install the foam insulation. Following that, they will wrap it up and place it in storage prior to shipping to your dealer.
Your New Spa Has Gallons Of Water In It
At this point you have probably realized that flipping the spa is quick but with 100’s of feet of plumbing, the manufacturer did not get ALL of the water out of the spa. Even if they drained away 99% of the water, they still left 3 – 5 gallons of water in the spa’s plumbing. And it will often be a few weeks to a few months before your new spa arrives in your backyard.
The Trip From Manufacturer To Your Backyard
Even in the quickest scenario, it will be 2 – 3 weeks before your spa arrives in your backyard – and it can be months.
First, both the manufacturer and your spa dealer want to ship full truckloads of spas. It’s just too expensive to ship individual spas, particularly in today’s world of high fuel prices, driver shortages, and supply chain bottlenecks. It can easily take a week to assemble a truckload of spas.
Second, it may take another week to get from the manufacturer to your spa dealer.
Third, your dealer needs to coordinate their staff and your schedule to complete delivery. That can take another week to months sometimes.
Lastly, less common since the pandemic sent hot tub sales through the roof, but manufacturers will also build spas during slower periods of the year and place them in storage, ready to ship when spa season hits in the Spring of each year.
Biofilm In Your Brand-New Spa
Three to five gallons of water sitting stagnant in a spa for weeks to months has a predictable result – Biofilm. This is particularly true if your spa was manufactured, and /or stored, in the hotter months of the Summer. The question is not so much, Does your spa have biofilm? Rather, it’s, How much biofilm is in it, and that is highly variable. This leads us back to the question posed in the title of my blog.
Should You Purge Your Brand-New Spa?
If you know months have transpired between when your spa was manufactured and when it was placed in your backyard, particularly if this period included the Summer, I’d say Yes, purge your spa.
If your new spa has been in your backyard for weeks after delivery, again I would say Yes.
If you find it difficult to maintain a proper level of sanitizer in your brand-new spa, purge it. Of course, I will strongly suggest you use our Serum Total Cleanse to purge your spa. It’s the best!
All three of the above scenarios suggest a significant accumulation of biofilm in your spa. However, what if none of the above situations apply? You probably don’t need to purge your new spa but I will still suggest you use our Serum Total Maintenance on a weekly basis to ensure your best experience enjoying your hot tub!
Thanks for reading,
Tony Turbo
