Down East Hot Tubs

Down East spas are built like cars with engineered plastic coated structural steel frames, pump and equipment mountings. Can you imagine buying a car or washing machine with a wooden frame! Incredibly there are still some quite expensive spas in the market that have frames of untreated pallet quality timber all held together with glue, staples and packed out with furniture foam. Over the years this simply rots warps and settles, resulting in spas bowing or cracking, while the solid cheap furniture foam absorbs water and becomes smelly. Down East does not use cheap urethane foam, all Down East spas are insulated with Icynene environmentally friendly foam that does not absorb moisture, off gas or lose its insulation properties, it is much more expensive but keeps the spa insulated over time.

The best way to check out the quality of a spa build is to ask for a panel to be taken off, not the ones at the front, but one at the side or back. If this proves difficult you can see you will have immediate future problems, if the spa is all gunked up with solid furniture foam this is to hide a multitude of manufacturing sins. This type of spa is called a shower job, as the thin shell of the spa is not structural or supported in a correct cradle but simply packed out with supporting furniture foam, just like a cheap shower tray.

If such a spa ever has a leak this may not show up for months as first the foam of the spa becomes absolutely saturated absorbing the water from the leak, this means any insulation value is lost and the foam has to be hacked out to find the leak.