Hot Tub Fires

Steel and Aluminum Enclosures.

Every material used in the construction of electrical enclosures has a fire rating. The worst is plastic with out fiber reinforcement. The best is steel.
The steel that we use is similar to what is found in bar be que grills and gas or electric stoves. It is also the same steel as used in your homes electric service panel. We use metal enclosures on all the electrical control boxes. Why do we spend extra money on this, when all the other cheap spa companies use plastic for high amp equipment? Because we have real life experience and education on the way that electricity actually works, not how it works in the imagination of some really stupid people on this earth.

"Money is more important than life or now a dead consumer is a statistic instead of a person".

If you were to go to Google Alerts and subscribe to "hot tub fires", you will see a pattern of hot tubs that catch on fire. The pattern is plastic boxes on older spas.
There have been 5 in the last six months according to the newspaper articles I have read. There should be ZERO, if these spa manufacturers had any brains and used steel or metal control boxes. Those people's lives are threatened by this, (and as I do more research on this, I'll bet people have died from this. UPDATE, yes several people have now died from hot tub caused fires.)

Here is what happens inside those boxes, because I have seen this many times. The power lugs coming into the spa pack corrode and arc, or circuit board relay starts to fail, it starts arcing like a welder and the arc melts through the plastic and starts the spa on fire. Then the spa starts the deck on fire and then the house. These are things that consumers don't think about. How is it possible for a spa to have a UL or ETL listing and have plastic control boxes, when you can't use plastic on any home sub panel with multiple breakers or multiple connections. The more connections the more possible corrosion, leading to arcing. And any humidity at all will cause corrosion on any connection in the control box. I used to ask my brother, "How is it that people are so stupid?" His answer, "because they are and they are greedy. Money is more important than life or now a dead consumer is a statistic instead of a person".

With steel or aluminum the arc never gets outside the enclosure. I have seen this on three of our Haven Spas in the last 9 years. Most always it is from the electrician, not connecting the power wires to the spa correctly.
They must be tightened and then as the strands compress and settle under the lug, tighten them again to take all the "slack" out of the strands. The strands literally move out as the lug is tightened and it can fool you into thinking it is tight. Go back in a few seconds and you can tighten it more, because the stranded wire strands settle "like spaghetti" as they spread out. Also in wet areas along the coast, you must use an anti-oxidant on the wires or have someone check them every few years for corrosion. Corroded main lugs start fires.

There is no qualified electrician in the US who is allowed to use plastic load centers in your home next to flammable materials. So why is the load center of a 50 or 60 AMP spa allowed to be made from plastic? In Europe they are going to go with ARC breakers that sense arcing, because of the stupid plastic boxes used in homes. Who was the idiot politician who allowed plastic in the EU code? And the EU has 230V and 380 and 400 Volts much more than the USA.

There is no qualified electrician in the US who is allowed to use plastic load centers in your home next to flammable materials. Not only is it not a good idea, IT IS AGAINST THE LAW. So why is the load center of a 50 or 60 AMP spa allowed to be made from plastic? It is because of profits and companies who are only concerned about money and not concerned about a statistic of someone's home being destroyed, or even one person dying, "once in a while".

Every time I have seen a burned out control box made from steel, you cannot tell from the outside of the box what is inside. The outside looks all clean and white, with no signs of electrical arcing.
When I opened up the box, then I can see all the black and burned out electrical parts. With plastic, you mostly can't even tell where the box is or even what it was, after the fire, because as the deputy fire Marshall told me, he could not even tell what "that black charred thing was" with the wires coming to it was. This was after they put the fire out and the spa burned the deck and almost burned the house down.
If the owner had not been home, he would have no house to come home to.

I ran a small electrical contracting business for over 7 years, and the NECA code book, seem to not apply to spas. Why?

I can't stress how idiotic it is to use a plastic enclosure on high current spa boxes. Plastic main boxes are a "time bomb" waiting to start fires "down the road". If you look now, you will see many of them, and in the future, 8 to 12 years we are going to start seeing more fires from spas than ever. Prior to 2003, most spas had steel or aluminum. I think people are getting dumber because of economics and short cuts to save money. Maybe they ARE just dumber and more greedy.

If you understand electricity at all, a steel control box or aluminum is a grounded metal enclosure that shields the electronics from outside radio waves or any arcing influences. It also, AND THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND, grounds out the arc from any electrical connector that touches it and IMMEDIATELY TURNS OFF THE POWER TO THE SPA, because the Ground Fault Protection, trips immediately. As soon as any arc touches the enclosure metal, which is grounded, it instantly turns off the power and stops the arcing. And it is ALWAYS the arcing that kills people.

With plastic enclosures, the GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupter) does not trip, because plastic is not a conductor, so the arc keeps on going, melts and penetrates outside the plastic box. I can't even begin to tell you how dangerous that is on an old spa. As the wires ages and start to have corrosion it will eventually break the connection and create a "distance" between the connection. It is that slight distance where the arcing occurs. When the electricity is turned on, it jumps that small gap and gets very hot. It melts the wires and creates an even bigger gap that becomes a bright "arc lamp". If it were to contact metal the arc would shut off the GFCI.. If it contacts plastic, it melts the plastic and starts arcing on the outside of the box and the plastic will start to burn, even if it has flame retardant in it, because it is a "petroleum" product.

The second best is aluminum, but it still has a much lower resistance to fire escape than steel. But with the advent of the GFCI Aluminum is OK

Why take the chance. We only use metal control boxes on Haven Spas; Aluminum on some models with less current.

Perfect example; older hot tub with plastic control box.

Hot Tub Fire2

HOME

Here is a cheap plastic control that is found on very expensive spas from So, CA. They could have at least left a little room around the circuit board, but that is what cheap corporation. spas look like.

Hot Spring Junk

Large corporations are only about money, and they take chances with your life. This board needs to be placed in a metal box, not plastic. They need to do more to protect you as a consumer.
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This is a real control box made of steel. This is found on our Haven Spas. This is the largest one, but they are all Steel. Look at the difference from the IQ nonsense of that company above. Their spas sell for high prices with cheap everything, from the shell, pumps, and control box. We are in the process of finalizign the testing of our new control box. As soon as the testing is done I will put of photos of it. It now will have a stainless steel metal housing that is both flameproof, water proof and fully grounded protecting consumers. And all the components are OVER kill for safety as well.

Quality Steel and Heavy Switches

Notice that even the heater wires are enclosed in the metal box. All of the equipment we use has the heater wires in the box.
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If you look at this CLICK HERE you will see photos of a heater with the wires in a tiny black plastic box. I don't call that anything but dangerous and guess what? It did catch fire and this company did not change the design much at all. Again, they caught fire in 2012, and I expect to see more of the same thing.

Here is a video of a spa company in the Netherlands who sells some cheap Chinese spas and some Cheap American Spas. "Oddly enough" The fire started in the middle of the showroom where spas were running. These are all nice people, who don't know much about hot tubs.