How dangerous is an overweight foam Spa Cover? Recently a friend was checking the chemicals in his spa. Rather than attempting removing the entire spa cover, he decided to just lift one side enough to get at the water long enough to get a sample. He bent over and supporting the heavy cover with his left arm while attempting to fill a sampling bottle with water from the spa to check the chemical content, and total alkalinity.
As he leaned over further, the weight of the water logged spa cover dislocated his left shoulder and allowed the cover to hit him on the back knocking him into the spa. He was now face down in the spa with his legs pinned to spa by the weight of the spa cover. His shoulder was dislocated and unlike the Mel Gibson character in Lethal Weapon, he was in agony because of a the pain. He tried to move but could not budge the weight of the waterlogged cover.
He began to choke as he swallowed spa water and tried to rise up but could barely get his head out of the water. With what could have been his last breath, he screamed for help. Fortunately he had left the door from the house to the deck open. His daughter and her boy friend heard the commotion and looked out to see his legs sticking out of the spa cover.
His daughter and her boy friend were able to lift the cover off of his legs. His daughters boy friend jumped into the hot tub and pulled him up from the water. They took him to the emergency room where they put his shoulder back in place and treated him for shock.
Women who have experienced both child birth and a dislocated shoulder report dislocating a shoulder as more intense than childbirth. I do not know about that, I suspect that with child birth you can prepare mentally for the pain and with the shoulder it comes at you unexpectedly. But either way I think we can agree the pain is excruciating.
My friend had owned a hot tub for 12 years and had replaced 3 conventional rigid foam core spa covers. While the life on the foam covers had averaged from 2 to 4 years, regardless of manufactures claims, all the covers became waterlogged. He has since bought a Spa Cover that uses air chambers to insulate rather than rigid foam. He is certain that the air filled spa cover will not try to kill him as the other foam cover did.
A lady friend of ours and her husband were in the hot tub with their rigid foam spa lid propped up against the wall. A gust of wind hit the spa cover and it suddenly fell hitting her husband on the head. The blow was hard enough to push them both under the water. Fortunately they were not trapped and they both recovered quickly, or so they thought.
A couple of days later the left side of her husbands face suddenly went DEAD. He had no feeling, sensation or movement. Naturally they both were quite frightened and thought he had suffered a stroke. They did exactly what any of us would do and rushed immediately to the hospital. The doctor diagnosed him with Bells Palsy which can be caused by stress and or trauma like a heavy spa cover hitting him on the head. He later made a full recovery. He was extremely lucky.
Here is something you will never hear from a foam spa cover dealer. Every year people are injured by foam hot tub covers. Most of the injuries have come from a gust of wind blowing the heavy foam cover onto people as they use their spa. Sometimes people attempting to carefully maneuver a saturated foam cover off their spa, have lost their grip and had the hard foam cover slam down breaking the arch of their foot.
According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission people have even been drowned when they have become trapped under heavy foam covers. Maybe now is a good time to search for a better spa cover. With the World Wide Web, you can literally have the world to shop from. Do you really want to risk injury or death trying to use your spa?
Heavy Spa Covers Waste Money. Have you seen this advertisement? It would be impressive if the business putting it out there actually had something different to offer. But since every rigid foam spa cover will eventually saturate with moisture buying another one is just a waste of money. But it seems like every spa dealer is selling the same thing. Right here is where your mother would say, If all your friends were jumping off a cliff does that mean you would too? Just because everybody is doing it does not make it right.
Maybe instead of just buying another cover that you know is going to end up the same way we should look at what went wrong with the last one. What causes every foam filled spa cover to get heavy?
The type of foam used in the typical spa cover is made up of beads of foam bound together to make a light weight rigid board. This sort material is used in all types of construction applications. The way it works is the little air spaces in between the foam beads holds the air still. These foam boards are commonly used to insulate refrigerated rooms, and crawl spaces under a house. However this type of insulation is not designed to be exposed to warm, humid air. Providing it is used in a dry situation, foam board has a predictable insulation value.
If you wanted to produce the perfect environment for a rigid foam board to fail you would need to put it over a source of warm, humid, steam. Why? Because steam can get into those tiny air spaces in the foam. Once the steam cools it turns to water. The water displaces the air until the foam has no insulation value what so ever.
Some spa cover dealers like to give you the impression that wrapping the foam with plastic will stop their cover from getting saturated. Or layers of plastic, or thicker plastic will be the answer. Although this seems to make sense, in reality every cover that uses foam will eventually get saturated. No matter what it is wrapped in once the foam is saturated the cover is not insulating. And the only way to avoid the foam from saturating is to never put it on your spa.
You may have looked outside this winter at your spa cover that was so heavy you could not lift it, and thought it was insulating your spa water because snow would not melt off it. Snow does not melt off a frozen pond either but that does not mean the pond water is warm. When snow falls on a saturated foam spa cover, it freezes the moisture in the cover because it is in direct contact with the foam. Basic science tells us that cold sinks and heat rises. What does happen the steam from your warm spa water hits the bottom of the frozen spa cover. Then the steam cools and turns back into water. The water, now cooled, falls back into the warm spa water, cooling it off.
So before you replace that cover with another one that will just end up in the same condition, I suggest looking for a different type of spa cover. Look for Replacement Spa Covers that will insulate the water from the water surface, without rigid foam.
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Spa Covers has sinced written about articles on various topics from Spa, Home Management and Spa. The Author is a business owner with more than twenty years experience. A former Police Sgt, Pilot, Heavy Equipment Operator, Trained Mechanic that has written technical manuals and short stories. An accomplished motorcycle rider he enjoys riding the back. Spa Covers's top article generates over 823000 views. to your Favourites.
Jeff Sliger has sinced written about articles on various topics from Fitness, Spa and Internet Marketing. The Author is a business owner with 20+ years experience. Please check out Find a review of a different kind of. Jeff Sliger's top article generates over 8100 views. to your Favourites.