Before one visits a Hot Tub dealer, it always pay to phone them first to see if they know what they are talking about. For example, do they have a proper showroom or are they merely working out of their garden or a garage. How many working models do they have on display?

Ask them if the spa has Balboa controls and if not, why not, perhaps it is a cheap and nasty import from the east.

Ask what the electricity consumption and running costs will be, Ask them if the spa is fully foamed because, if it is, it is old style construction. Equally, if it has a steel frame that usually means that the shell is weak as it needs steel to support again in my view a very outdated mode of construction. Ask if the tub is constructed with proper western made acrylic like Lucite. Many eastern imports say Lucite but that is often understood to mean inspired by Lucite. There is a lot of difference between inspiration and the real thing it's a bit like chalk and cheese.

The water jets in a Hot Tub should obviously be planned to provide muscle massage, but like all things, they need to be properly designed and thought out. It is not just simply a question of sticking some Jets here and there in the naïve belief that the more Jets the better, as it simply does not work like that.

This is usually the very area of design where cheap imported spas sometimes incorporate bad designs that in many case may look good but in reality are just not good for the end user. When a specific therapy seat is planned, American designers have had very many years of real experience of being able to consider the very many choices and ideas and of course have feed back from many satisfied clients. With cheap imported Hot Tubs, they do not properly consider or give any real thought as to how the human body is going to be positioned in front of the jet patterns. In more cases than not it is as if they just want them only for their cosmetic appearance that is simply to make it "look attractive" a bit like mutton dressed as lamb. Twenty properly designed and thought out Jets will be much better than forty badly designed Jets. If one does not know about jets and how they work one can easily be fooled into thinking that more Jets are a good thing, which is not true if they are badly designed. A multitude of many jets, which may simply look wonderful, can often prove to be painful and sometimes even very annoying. One of the worst lay outs is where the seats have very many, (say twenty to thirty five), small penetrating jets, where all of the water from one pump can be forced through that seat. What may look inviting in the showroom under a spotlight can sometimes simply turn into a form of abuse.

We know a client who had a spa like this some years ago and he has told us that it used to bruise him and he had no control of the water pressure or flow through those Jets. It was of course a cheap import from the east.

If you have a reinforced steel back, perhaps you might enjoy that kind of massage but for us more normal mortals we need fully adjustable Jets so that we may select exactly what we need as otherwise the spa I am describing simply proves to be too much for most people.