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| "Want to know why these competitors
cringe at the mere mention of my name" If you travel the net, the common thing these days is for unethical, angry, people to slam each other in the net and make up stories about people who are competitors or even have a different set of ideas. It seems to be the nature of "modern" people. If you don't know this just go to a youtube video and read the postings. (This is the Rosy vs Trump concept) The net is impossible to police against nonsense ( and words I never heard in the Bible). All of the spa forums are paid for by spa, hot tub manufacturing companies, ALL of them. Pretty much all of the major spa brands of sales people don't like me because of my work to educate consumers on hot tubs. The truth is a form of "insult" to most spa companies. It is a "Badge of Courage and Ethics" to be maligned on the internet for being a whistle blower and educator of spa/hot tub consumers. I have spent the last 20 years on the net trying to go against the stream of hype in advertising that leads people in to buying spas that don't even last 5 years without major issues. Or are so cheaply made that you get no features for the money, and after 7 years it goes in the dump, because the cost to repair is far more than the tub is worth. They must figure that by 7 years, nobody will care any more. (We recently took in a 7 year old spa "in trade", and the thin ABS / Acrylic shell is leaking with cracks all over.) Because I make hot tubs, I am not allowed to speak about the condition of the industry. I don't know why, so I do it. My word on hot tubs can easily be tested by studying them and then go see for yourself what is good and what is nonsense, using your intelligence. If you are technically challenged, you would not understand that well. Then you are totally at the mercy of sales and "luck". A lot of suckers believe in "luck". Luck does not exist. Emotions vs Logic does exist. Haven Spas still have the highest resale value of any hot tub. I would love to have a few used one's to sell, but they are so rare. Because of the economy in the USA/Canada, spa factories are closing (over 150 spa factories closed by from 2001 to 2007). Some of them were pretty good and some no so good, but the worst are still making spas and selling to technically challenged people who don't read this site. Consider yourself fortunate to be here. The good news is that I no longer make spas in the US, and we have been forced to make our spas in Europe, and it is a good move. We are now, not only, taking on the European market, we are making some improvements that are expensive to do because of the cost of electricity in Europe. We are keeping the prices down, because we make the whole spa from scratch. Here is a really rough video I made of the vacuum forming machine I designed and built in Europe. We have electronically tested and charted data now on our new spas. We managed to get them to below. 60 Europe Cents per day. That is about 3KWHours per day to maintain. Less than half the lowest of any other company. This is on a full size 90 inch spa. "Belief has never negated the truth." All people who speak the truth about any business and explain factual, backed up with evidence, things to the public so the public can understand are not popular with sales people who make a living selling, (using emotional coercion) weak products. This happens in all industries. The best custom made RV's are made by smaller or medium sized family owned companies. The best Computers, using the latest and most advanced parts, are made in small shops (I build my own computers). You can get an extreme custom computer that has the most powerful and expensive cards, processors, flash drives, extremely fast main PCI drives, and amazing video quality and visual and audio fidelity. But you will pay for it. I have not seen any amazing product that is mass produced, except for some cell phones, but they are expensive. The best guitars are made in small batches, hand made. This is a well known fact. Large corporation spa companies have so much glut in wasted money, that it causes them to make cheap as possible and sell with more hype than a presidential candidate. In Gibson factory they have kept that alive with a "custom shop" with a lot of hand picking (taking production guitars that are exceptional to start with) and hand work. This makes for especially sweet deep toned and rich sounding guitars. With Haven Spas we have managed to rid ourselves of all the wasted money on large food chains, spent on sales, advertising, marketing and rhetoric. We just make a good product and we don't expect to sell 20 thousands per year. Our factory is in the "black", with only one piece of equipment being leased. All the equipment is owned. This enables us to progress to 1000 spas or more and if the economy goes down, we are able to continue. This comes from 20 years of experience with the up's and down's of this crazy industry. Spas are at the top of the food chain. When people are worried about buying a car, or home, they don't buy many spas. Most of the spas you see today are still around because they went into receivership or were close to bankruptcy and were bought out by "vulture capitalists" who buy distressed companies. They keep buying spa companies for very low prices and have been reducing quality to a bare minimum of cost to manufacture. This is worse now than ever 2017. Only one company, Haven Spas (Silver Spas in Holland), has survived and IMPROVED drastically over these years. All the others are, in my expert opinion, close to junk with so many cuts to quality, compared to Haven Spas. Belief has never negated the truth. We just teach people about spas and we know more about hot tubs than any other hot tub company on earth, this becomes obvious when you own a Haven Spa. So, you have to be smarter as well and no fall for "nice polite" sales people who are telling lies to you, even if they actually believe the lies. They are still lies. Belief has never negated the truth. People accuse me of being blunt and truthful and to speak my mind. I guess I am ornery, but that happens when you are me and reach my age and my level of expertise. I am 69 and in excellent condition to use the knowledge I have gained. I keep myself sharp by studying science all the time. However, most of the Haven Spas that are 19 years old now are still running on the original equipment, with minimal service on them and the shells look like new as reported by the owners. I have two of them at my home. As we say: "The proof is in the pudding." or "The proof is in the over 1600 Haven SilverSpas customers' back yards." If you were a competitor, unfortunate enough, to go up against Haven Spas, the only choice you have is to slam Haven with negative rhetoric, based on your own fantasies of what you wish or , God forbid, actually believe is / was true. I have been accused of all sorts of things that are not true. But there are some believers in this, that do so because they want to and their income sort of depends on it. They are telling people that Haven Spas are being sued, by owners. Sandy and I are the owners so, I guess I am suing myself. Is that what they mean? HavenSpas are made totally under my control at our European factory. We now ship them to the USA in very limited numbers. I am in charge of the factory. So, that allows me to make them even better than ever. We now have exceeded all of the older Haven Spas in energy efficiency, powerful jets, longevity and low maintenance. We had to take it up another notch, in order to completely take over the market in Europe and USA. People in the US can buy them but they are shipped from Rotterdam Holland now, until the US market comes back. You will pay more than in the past because of the "dollar" is weak, now. But since we make them from the sheet of acrylic and do all of our own fiberglassing drilling assembly we can offer them at very reasonable prices for this level of quality, that has never been seen before in the spa industry. We have been ETL listed for the entire time, and now we are TUV listed and CE so we can fit in the European standards as well. Since I was the one who turned in this company to the US Consumer Products Safety Commission and to UL for the fires, the largest hot tub company on earth with the most dealers and the most money, you can, maybe understand, why they vilify me so much. All of the hot tub forums are basically owned by this company. If you ever want to know why these competitors cringe at the mere mention of my name, Jim Arjuna, or about Haven Spas; it is because we build actual value and use real applied engineering. Then we educate people to the nature of the spa industry and the nature of spas. We educate about the product. No other company at the present time does this because they don't know how, nor do they have the desire or motivation to create or even understand it. I have found that this is not the coward's approach. Most all people who fight for what is right have to pay dearly for it. When you expose these "money machines", then you have to deal with the methods of operation of denial and positive rhetoric, (what has worked in the past for them). I sleep well at night am at peace with myself and enjoy playing music and have plenty, too many friends all over the world who appreciate my efforts to clean up the spa industry. If I publish on the forum that Sandy and I are taking a trip, I get too many invitations for dinner and to stay over at customer's homes. How many hot tub people do you know like me? There is one thing they cannot change; the truth. The truth is that the spa industry is full of sales hype, and what is known as "gotcha-capitalism". It is a downright shame, how these companies operate with ONLY concern for the "all mighty dollar". This has to change because the US is turning from a moral society of laws based on the Judaeo Christian religion, to one of money. It has been heading that way for too long. I believe that the "Golden Rule" is the best rule for life. I have paid dearly for standing up against these "ethically challenged people". All people who stand up for what is representative of a higher love for mankind are scorned by those who are not . I could just keep quiet, but that is not like me, no matter how they vilify me on the net. "I never do anything according to nor listen to people who are more messed up than I am." We go way beyond what is necessary in all our products in every way. In this world I am a contradiction: a businessperson who actually cares about our customers on a personal level. When I took sales seminars, years ago they taught that that was a big NO NO to be personal with the people you sell to. I never do anything nor listen to people who are more messed up than I am. That is the one thing I got out of sales seminars that stuck. When some miserable sales guy is telling you how to get rich by playing mind games, like he did, it turns me off. "If money is more important than the work, then you need to find another job, in my humble opinion." When one of our spas is delivered to one of our customers it is an expression of care and concern in all ways. It is an actual joy to know what it is I am giving to them. It is more important to have a clear conscience than to have anxiety over all the people one might have manipulated, like the "rich sales guy". I could never sleep well nor could I face my Maker if I were like that. Don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong with earning an honest living and doing a good job. If money is more important than the work and the joy of progressing in a good direction in your skills and knowledge, then you need to find another job, in my humble opinion. Life is too short to not enjoy it. Every ask an old person how long their life has been. "I blinked and I was old." "Most of the large corporate business spa companies seem to run on the profit first above and beyond any other concept." Most of the large corporate business spa companies seem to run on the profit first above and beyond the ethics. They actually believe that they must manipulate the truth a bit to get paid and they get paid a lot more than they deserve. The marketing people and the engineers design ways to fool people into a "perceived value" that extracts money from consumers. To the large corporate spa company it is sort of a "vacuum cleaner game" in which the "vacuum cleaner" is the advertising, hype and rhetoric, inferences and implications. Anything that "sucks" the dollars out of the consumer's wallet. "Don't ever buy on emotion or because you feel obligated to the "Nice" salesman." Sales people are taught to take time and to create a false sense of obligation to buy from them. They will take the slow route to make sure you don't leave without buying and that you feel obligated to them for spending so much of the salesperson's time. It is a sales "trick", well known. This condition of the spa industry is only because the spa shoppers do not know much about spas and everybody I talk to seems to want one, as soon as they discover what hot tubs do. So, since there is a demand for a product that most consumers don't have a clue about, the consumers are at the mercy of some of the "nicest" (sarcasm) sales people, who play mind games with consumers and use consumer ignorance while using emotional sales content to extract money. Don't ever buy on emotion or because you feel obligated to the "Nice" salesman. AND never believe they hype of magical (paid for) awards and such. That is the oldest trick in the sales book. If you read my book and this site, you will then know more than any spa salesman. I am hoping to change all this in time. One student at a time. The only thing that works is the truth, but first you have to know the truth, that is the catch. There are plenty of spa owners who think I am a terrible person, because they love their spas that they bought, thinking they were the "best". When they found my writings, it didn't help there situation, because they already spent their "spa dollars". That truly is unfortunate for them, but they seem to want to justify what they bought. It seems to be human nature. Many of them will never buy a spa again, because of the disappointments. I had a fellow contact me after his very expensive Sun#@c$ spa crapped out in five years and he moved and left it at the "old house". He contacted me about 5 years later after the purchase and said, that now he wants a real hot tub. He apologized for being upset with me on the forum when I told him his original spa was a mistake. I lose a lot of people with my blunt approach. Sorry! I really can't help it. Maybe it is a form of Tourette’s Syndrome? One where I blurt out the facts. I am going to make this into an article. It is my story about how I got into the spa industry. I started working in high tech jobs at the age of 18 years old after graduating from high school. My first job was at Lockheed Missiles and Space (Spas) in Sunnyvale, CA. I was very fortunate to work in the research and development at Lockheed. I worked along side of the best that Lockheed had. The engineers and the crafts people were the "elite" of Lockheed, because these prototype projects are what makes or breaks the company. Being a "techno-junky" I fit in very well. I worked on the mock up, and the prototypes of the Deep Quest and DSRV (Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle) oddly enough much of it was dealing with water, steel, titanium, magnesium alloy, aluminum, fiberglass and plumbing. HMM? I have a photo somewhere of me standing in front of the DSRV. I went to college at night and had many nights where I didn't sleep much, studying for tests and deeply involved in electronics, mathematics and engineering subjects. (I was married and had a family to support). Work started at 7 and class finished at 10 PM. I can remember wondering to myself: "How did I get myself into this?" (I still do that today.) I worked and studied hard and became one step below a master in my work, in less than two years at Lockheed. I worked on the actual product with my hands and all the fantastic tools of the trade. When I was tired of getting all the hard jobs that I was not fully paid for I filed a grievance through the union. The union was not really with me on this, but it was my only avenue to get paid for my level of work. Labor Unions usually want you to go through 4 years of apprenticeship then a couple more years before you get paid for the level of work I was performing. At the age of 20 I was given a project that was the most difficult as a "test" to qualify for journeyman. I was given a sketch from an engineer with minimal instructions to build a three dimensional thing that looked like a bird with wings going in several angles at once. I built it and it fit perfectly in less than four hours from pieces of flat metals. It was within 10/1000 of one inch in precision. (My math courses paid off!) It had a half cylinder, with wings and had to support a lot of stress during its use. This device was a support for the valves that were used to pump the water in and out of the bell at the bottom of the rescue submarine vehicle. It had to be lightweight and very strong. That bell fit over the hatch of the submarine in distress. My "valve support" became the prototype for all of these devices. The engineer actually took the prototype and used it to finish the drawings. They thought that it would end my quest to break the system, but it actually got my raise, so I could take care of my family better. I was at that time being paid twice what my original wages were and I earned every cent. From then on I worked on all the difficult parts of the submarine, using the most advanced tooling and machines. The cheapest part I worked on costs $35,000 in 1968 (equal to over $350,000 today). (All while studying mechanical and electrical engineering at night.) It was the titanium yoke ring that held the steel spheres in place and it was drilled within 10/1000 of an inch spacing on a large circle about 3 feet in diameter and the holes had to be with no tolerance because a titanium bolt was pounded into the holes and had to fit perfectly with no stress on the holes. All of the holes were drilled independent of each other and all of them fit perfectly when assembled. It required tremendous patience and skill. The holes in the mating parts could no be drilled while it was clamped together as "one hole, passing through both. They actually thought it was near impossible. I made a tool to do this job with. It had "High Teague" fasteners which are pounded into the material so they have zero space on the wall of the hole and the metal fastener. Sort of like welding it into one piece with NO movement. I went to school and studied electronics, math science, mechanical and electrical engineering, physics and photography, because I love electronics and photography. When I was 27 I went to work as a videocassette and Television Camera repair person, I went to Sony in Southern California for training. In those days, the Video Cassette machines barely worked and were a monster of circuit boards and motors. They used a servo system to control the speed of the heads against the tape. The brakes were made of leather to pull tension on the tape, just right. The darn things were always just out of calibration. They sold for about $6,000 (about $30,000 in today's money) in those days and the ones we have now, (which have been replaced by DVD) are $100 for a device that runs for years without problems. In those days you fixed the circuit boards on site. There were no spare circuit boards that you just drop in. That came later. We repaired at the bottom line or component level. I am sticking with work projects in this autobiography. Later I worked in Graphic arts in the reproduction of photos and color slides using "analog computers" that produced film separations, using a pulsating xenon light source. I mastered that in about a year. I read every technical book there was on color reproductions. Now we have cameras that product color separations directly on computers. I actually invented a camera that used video basis and made automatic color separations at the original scene, but there was no way to build it at the time. There were no computers that could process the data fast enough before the "people moved" or the light changed. My concept was a direct color separation camera that didn't need to be reproduced from film. I never pursued the idea, darn it! Eventually color reproduction went from film separations with masks to color scanners that used a laser beam to separate colors on a drum. Now, I don't think those even exist any more. By the way, my dad had two patents for clever things in his day. One was a "tram" for aligning automobile wheels "in the field" and gets them within acceptable tolerances on the caster, camber and toe-in. I got into computers in 1974 as I recall. Started making programs for fun and games in BASIC. By 1992 I was programming in "C" and "C++" for fun, just to see if I could do it. I learned it from books and by doing it. I don't have any time for that sort of fun these days. I loved working in "C" compared to the older languages, because your creativity is nearly unlimited by the ability to create functions and libraries and all that good stuff. I used to write programs to figure the harmonic calculations of planetary and asteroid positions in space around a location for a split second of time. The program using a complicated set of algorithms and instructions, would spit out 300 pages of data for one time at one location in 9 pt font from edge to edge top to bottom, showing all the exact degrees between all the planets from a harmonic of 2 to 90. The accuracy of the program was amazing to me. I'll bet you have no idea what I am talking about. But I enjoyed the process of learning to do it. Most people when I told them what I was "working on" thought I was nuts. I didn't care, it kept my brain learning and enjoying science. I actually sold computers in 1980 for a company called OSM Computer company in Santa Clara California for a few months. I could not understand why these business owners didn't' see the greatness of computers for business. They were afraid of them and that greatly limited the sales, until people started figuring out the time saving and the accuracy of business software. We had the state of the art at that time. 32 K of memory and 8 bit processors, and programs that loaded and unloaded from memory while using a 10-megabyte hard drive that was nearly the size of a TV set. It could do all the accounting for any small to medium sized business for about 10% the cost of an accounting department. The accounting departments particularly didn't like me, because they saw it as a machine that was taking away their jobs. The software in those days was precise and very clean. There was no wasted space in the memory of the computer. I went to work for a reproduction company in Monterey Park California in 1980 after busting out in the "computer sales". We did the reproductions for many of the record labels that you are all familiar with. We did the posters for movies, and all sorts of high end graphic arts stuff. It was a fun job. I used to get all the complicated record album covers with tons of color transitions. Every once in a while I'll still see an old "Motown", "RCA" or "Warner Brothers" record album that I did. In 1983 I came to Colorado, and it was like going into the distant past, when it came to "high tech" jobs. It was also a time of economic depression. I got a job working at a large printing company in Denver, while commuting from Boulder. I was a supervisor in the preparation department. But that only lasted a year; the commute was horrible and NOBODY wanted to work for that guy. We had to run ads in Chicago to get employees, cause the "word was out." I did the best I could to keep my guys from getting the "hell" from the boss. We simply were the best prep department he ever had. I quit that job one day after the boss humiliated one of my workers and I told the boss basically that he was not a smart person, nor was he a nice person. I basically told him he was a "dumb a##hole". His company folded in less than a year after that. I worked for a little while in a printing shop in Boulder then went into the electrical field. I was tired of not working steady. I ran a small electrical contracting business from my home. We built a special office and parts storage area and bought a van and everything. It was then that I learned to appreciate spas! We had this old hot tub in the ground that was installed in 1976. It had a swimming pool gas heater on it and pool pump and heater, with four jets. It cost about $100 a month to keep it functional in winter just for the natural gas. It was not energy efficient by any means. But I enjoyed that tub because it helped my back and neck that I have had problems with since I was a child. (The MD's speculate that I had a "mild" case of Polio as a child.) Working as an electrician did not help, but it did aggravate my back almost daily. I had been on a first name basis with chiropractors for many years. Since then I discovered how to put my back in place and started using hot tubs, I have not been to a chiropractor since 1991. Did I tell you that I am a living testimonial to the benefits of spas? Any way, it was while I was an electrician that I really began to appreciate the benefits of spas and I started to repair them "on the side" just from being in the vicinity of hot tubs while doing electrical work….. Sort of like this: the customer would ask: "Do you know anything about Hot Tubs?" Then they would ask me to take a look at it. With both electronics and electrical/mechanical engineering and technician training, it was a natural thing for me. I would "reverse engineer" the control system and fix them. The old mechanical/pneumatic controls were easy for me. Litterally hundreds of wires all interconnected with timers, air switches, relays, pressure switches, high limits, and so many variations of design from every company who made spas. I have worked on most every generation of spa equipment and most all the brands of heaters, pumps, blower, control systems made from the early 80 to the present time (except for the newest from Balboa). Right now I am developing a new control PCB and system for our spas. There are no controls out that do everything I want and most of them are WEAK, with too small of components. I rate everything to 1.5 to 2 times overkill. I think it comes from dealing with aircraft that must have overkill in all parts. But this is why, today, we have spas running on the same controls after 15 to 18 years. (This control I don't think will ever wear out. The only time we had an issue with it was an electrical storm with lots of lightening took out the control circuit.) After a while I met Sandy, one of the best days of my life! She is a blessing from God! While we were engaged to be married, she asked me to go check out her parent's hot tub up at the family mountain home. When I saw what was wrong, I decided to change the whole control system and build a new one because it was a typical spa company mess with incorrect relays and wrong switches. That spa was constantly breaking down. The only place in the area that had all the parts I needed was in Denver, so I drove down to Denver and stopped in to buy the parts. While I was at the counter, I showed the fellow behind the counter the diagram and asked him for all the parts. He had all the parts I needed except for the box to put the parts in, but he suggested an electrical parts store to get the box. Then he said: "We are looking for a service manager for our company." It turns out that the guy behind the counter was the owner of the store. Apparently he recognized my skills by what he had seen. I found out later that he was an out of work computer engineer who had lived in Boulder for a while and started fixing hot tubs out of necessity, many years prior to my meeting with him. He became one of the best hot tub and spa repair guys in the state, maybe in the country. He had been repairing and building wood tubs and installing hot tubs for some time and eventually he opened a store and service center in Denver. I can appreciate his genius, and he understood that. "but I really got into the spa business in a "trial by fire" sort of learning lesson" It was a series of events that led me to go to work for this spa store, but I really got into the spa business in a "trial by fire" sort of learning lesson. Everyone in the store was willing to help me learn to do the job, and I had some of the most experienced service people in the state working with me, including a fellow with 16 years of experience and another who was the ex-Sundance spa service manager. After taking care of several thousands of spa repairs, I got to know spas, and what I found out wasn't exactly pretty. I was totally disappointed with most of the spas. It seemed like there was no real brains used in the spa industry to build better spas. I kept seeing the same problems over and over, problems that could be solved with some moderate applied engineering. I came across the concept of thermal closed spas when the store became a Coleman Dealer in late 1994. It was an interesting revelation to me about spa insulation, because before that I had been under the illusion that full foam was the best and most energy efficient. I really believed it at the time. "She lived in the mountains near Denver and it was 25 below zero F for several days that month." One day in late Feb. 1995 I got a call from a lady who had just bought a Coleman model 60 and she called to "complain". She said that her spa had raised her electric bill by $28 (Twenty Eight dollars) and she was upset because "the salesman told here that the spa would cost about $20 per month". I quickly reassured her that $28 was not unusual for winter in Colorado and that the salesman meant to say; "it will cost on year around average about $20 per month.". She lived in the mountains near Denver and it was 25 below zero F for several days that month. This Model 60 had no foam insulation on the outside wall of the spa at all. It had about 1 to 2 inches of foam on the shell and about 1 inch on the floor. The only insulation on the outside wall was 3/8 of plywood and about 1/8 inch of redwood laminated to it. This was a basic Coleman model then and it is far better made that the "new" ones. It was then that I started my investigation on how this worked. That spa was one of the most energy efficient spas I (at that time) had heard of and it cost less to run that any of the full foam customer reports that year. The store had both full foam and the Coleman "Thermo-Lock" spas. In 1995 Coleman had the best product made and in my opinion the 95 was the peak of Coleman's product quality. I was the service manager for the Coleman store and I didn't have much warranty on the 95's at all. 96 started with lots of problems, because Coleman was in financial trouble. It was in the news. They started cutting the quality of the product to make the spa factory profitable if possible. That was the wrong move, in my opinion. I believe if they had built up on the quality, eventually it would have paid off. Coleman Spas in 95 were some of the most expensive to buy, but were so much better than all of the Southern California junk that year. In 96 they went from 2x4's and nearly 3/4 inch skirt to 2x2's and a sliver of redwood on OSB board for the skirt (still a much better product than the rest at that time.). They changed the pumps motors to Emerson, and had all sorts of pump overheat problems. They shortened the skirt, then they came out with copy cat's models of Hot Spring, with no air injection and it just got worse and worse. Cheaper jets, and fittings. The Coleman company was sold and then the spa factory was sold to MAAX of Canada. Coleman spas was gone for good. They are now using the Coleman name but they are nothing like the original 1995 models that were the best as far as construction. I guess it takes a lot of cheapening of a product to make a profit. Since I worked in service and still oversee our service department, I learn by other people's mistakes and by their successes. In late 1996 I delivered my first of the new models from Coleman to Tom, the chief of police in Boulder. It was a 411 model. While we were delivering it on a dolly up the side of his house, the side of the spa caved in and the wood cracked. It was embarrassing! They took out all the 2x4 structure and replaced it with 2x2 and 2x1 at at base. If you want to know why I insist on 2x3, 2x4 and 2x6 (100mm x 150x 100x 170 in Europe now) structure and extra structure on two sides that can be used for dollying the spa, that is it. How much extra does it cost to use 2x4 frames vs 2x2 frames per spa? Last time I checked it was about $30 extra to use full size frames. If you are a bean counting spa company selling 7,000 spas that is a cost of $210,000 extra. Can a spa be made with 2x2's and hold up? Yes, but not as long as 2x4's to 2x 6's. Each and every part of a Haven spa has a history and a reason why we have to have them made the way we do. One of my favorite stories about leak repairs and what really cleared up any doubts about how bad a full foam spa is to repair was this story: I got a call from a lady who had brought out her H## Sp###g spa with her from California. It was shipped by a moving company on it's side. She filled it with water and it was leaking quite a bit, so naturally she called the largest service center in Colorado, where I worked and asked us to come up and fix it. I scheduled her on the "board" and gave the call to Todd, a very experienced service technician. I figured, no big deal, he can handle it. At the end of the day he came back from his service calls and came in and "chewed me out" about giving him a leaking H## Sp###g spa to fix. He basically told me to never give him one of those pieces of #$%$ (excrement) to work on when they are leaking. He said: "Give it to Terry or someone else" (another service tech). I really was quite surprised at his demeanor, until I had the opportunity to fix a leaking H## Sp###g spa myself. Then I understood. It is an awful job, and even worse in winter. I got to dig out enough full foam spas to really appreciate the concept of a spa that is designed to be fixed, instead of thrown out. When Sandy and I started The Spa Specialist., we worked out of my garage doing repairs, then we opened a, 5,000 Sq Ft store but still had and have a focus on repairing all brands of spas, except we don't fix leaking full foam spas any more and here is the reason: About 15 years ago I sent my guys out to fix an older leaking Hot Spring spa. The spa was a gift from this woman's mother. The mother had decided to give the old H## Sp###g spa to her daughter and buy a new H## Sp###g spa (How foolish is that?). The old one had a "small leak" according to the daughter. It took us about six trips (2 hours each) to finish the repairs on this 10 year old spa. The parts of course were all exclusive and since we had to dig out a huge part of the structure of the spa (the foam is the cheap structure) we had to replace it with new foam at $50 per cubic foot. The repair came to just under $1,000 of hard work. When the customer got the bill, I thought she was going to slap me! She was so angry about the cost, even though I had warned her from the beginning that it was very expensive "I realized that doing repairs on H## Sp###g spas was a terrible idea, especially leaks to repair a leaking H## Sp###g spa." She refused to pay us unless I cut the price on the bill. After I cut more than half the price off the bill, so she would give us something, she was still angry and thought we were crooks. Since we were also trying to get a name for ourselves in the community as good service people, and we were starting to sell spas, I realized that doing repairs on H## Sp###g spas was a terrible idea, especially leaks. It is a no win situation! Even though we did a great job of finding the leak and fixing it, we were maligned for or efforts and hard work! (The serviceman's "curse") We do not repair leaks in a full foam spa of any kind. We learned our lesson. If you want to be looked upon badly, go fix leaking full foam spas and try to make a living at it. Your own customers, whom you did good work for, will spread the word that you are a rip off artist, because, as the daughter in the illustration said: "It was only a small leak! How could it cost so much to fix??" We don't charge anything to fix leaking full foam spas, because we refuse to work on them.! We also refuse to sell them, if there is any use of structural foam. "We don't charge anything to fix leaking full foam spas, because we refuse to work on them!" If you read the reasons for full foam in the H## Sp###g or "DimWits 1" literature, you will see a bunch of reasons, and the last reason they mention is "structural integrity". Their only reason for using such high density foam is to hold the cheap shell from collapsing under the load of water. Their only reason for using such high density foam is to hold the cheap shell from collapsing under the load of water. Why did this come about? So, if a Thermally SealedTM style of spa is as energy efficient, and it is easy to repair, because the parts are not hidden in foam, why use full foam at all? That was a question that caused me to think the spa industry was sorely lacking in intelligence! I found out the reasons behind the concept of stuffing the underside of the shell with foam by doing research into the distant past of early portable spas from as far back as 1977. The way I do research is to ask everybody who has been in the industry for any length of time. I got some of the information on this from people who worked for these early companies. Apparently, back in those days, fiberglass shells used in spas were more expensive and had problems with surface blemishes over time. The standard for fiberglass was to make a lay up on a reverse mold of the tub. This is sort of like placing the fiberglass on the backside of a bowl. A release agent was placed on the mold so that after the fiberglass was cured; you could pull the shell off the mold. In those days there were no "reverse moldings" because the mod was a male and the fiberglass was the female. After the fiberglass shell was taken off the mold it was finished by applying fiberglass swimming pool paint, and was called "gel coat". These shells were actually quite OK and the customers used them for many years (over 10+ yrs) , before they needed to be refinished. When the shell started showing "black spots" or started showing surface cracks, it could be sanded and refinished with a new coating of swimming pool paint. The fiberglass underneath could be used for many years (30-50 Yrs.). The problem was the cost for this type of shell construction. The only places where I saw these shells were in expensive houses and the spas were made in the late 1970's and the early 1980's. You can still get a fiberglass coated shell from a couple of fiberglass swimming pool companies, but they are no where near as complicated in jet possibilities or as beautiful as a modern acrylic spa. "The first very successful portable spas were actually a "garage project"." Those fiberglass spas were all "custom installed" in homes. The equipment was normally placed in a separate room or in the garage. The equipment followed the swimming pool style of a separate heater, separate pump, and separate filter that was plumbed in line. That equipment was and is expensive. It is the same type used in commercial installations only the heaters, pumps and filters were smaller than in commercial spas. My first hot tub was made like this. It had a shell that was in the ground with four jets, about mid back. A 250K BTU natural gas swimming pool heater heated it and it had a single speed swimming pool pump on it and a cartridge swimming pool filter on it. It was also very expensive to use because of the heat loss. It had a "light switch" to turn on the pump. That was all. Considering how rare spa parts were in those days, and how much it cost to build a fiberglass "gel coat" shell, it is no wonder that the first portable spas were made as cheaply as possible. The first very successful portable spas were actually a "garage project". |
 Find our how to install a hot tub indoors correctly! "It was the cheapest way to build at that time, and it still is." Basically the garage project was a sheet of Rovel that was heat formed into a shell. It looked like a "dog dish" with a white inside and the same material on the outside. Then it was plumbed with 4 jets as I recall and a small swimming pool pump and a single element cartridge filter. The underside was filled with foam to save any of the cost for fiberglass. The seat was very close to the ground, so that the water was not held very far up by the foam. The thing that made this garage project work was the spas actually cost less than any other manufacturing method and they worked. It was getting the prices down that made this work. Before that having a portable spa in your back yard was not affordable. It was the cheapest way to build at that time, and it still is, (Now roto-molding is a bit cheaper.) Keep that in mind when you shop. There is nothing wrong with cheap spas, if they are sold as cheap spas. I would never recommend purchasing an ABS back shell with only foam, because the repair costs are immense. The owners are the one's who suffer from both directions, getting ripped off on the actual cost of manufacturing with mark ups of over 4 to 6 times the cost to build, and when it leaks 4 times the cost to repair. Update 2017: It now costs a minimum of $3000 to repair one of these broken leaky full foam spas, and you will not see a dealer doing repairs on them at the customer's house. They come and pick it up for a charge and take it in to the shop. The plan of course is to get you to buy a new POS spa from them when they come and pick up your old spa for "repair evaluation". They sort of hold it "hostage" while waiting for you to decide to buy a new one. Almost, nobody, spends $3000 to $4000 to repair a 7 year old leaking spa that might sell for $1000 on the used market. This method of taking your spa in for repair evaluation is more BS tactics. Since that time (early 1980's) the acrylic with fiberglass backing spas were starting to show up with varying success starting in the early 80's. Before that it failed most of the time. In the beginning of acrylic, the biggest problem was getting the fiberglass to adhere to the acrylic and to stop moisture from getting between the acrylic and the fiberglass shell structure. This is due to the fact that acrylic is just about the hardest plastic and it is extremely "slick" and smooth on the surface. "It is similar to bonding to silicone or oil covered material." In the 1980's the most successful spa company at building fiberglass backed acrylic spas was Pacific Marquis from Oregon. I asked the number one spa shell repair person in Colorado what he thought of the "PacMar" (as we called them) shells. His comment was he hardly ever sees one, because they don't seem to de-laminate or crack much. At that time they seemed to hold up better than anyone's shells. Even before the modern bonding agents were available they managed to get the fiberglass to stay in contact. From what I understand it required a lot of handwork on the shell to prepare it for the fiberglass. They sanded and chemically etched the acrylic to create a series of tiny hills and valleys and rough surface for the fiberglass to bond to. I believe that the first layer was carefully applied hand laid sheets of fiberglass cloth pressed into a coating of resin and catalyst. These were some of the best spas you could own. I used to keep a 1988 Pac Mar in my store to show people. It had set outside for 15 years at that time, in Colorado(!) and the shell was perfect. Today you will still hear cheaply made, full foam, spa companies telling spa shoppers that acrylic spas crack and de-laminate. That is no longer true for most all of the companies using vinyl ester resin bonding methods. The "de-lamination" is a thing from the past. Acrylic is the best surface material available today for spas. It has the most history for longevity and durability. A structured fiberglass shell is required to have a thermal pane type of spa. So how did I learn all of this? I read articles that I got from salesmen and from newspapers. I interviewed many service guys and pool and spa surface repair people, and I learned by looking and examining all the spas that I repaired, looking for what works and what doesn't. I even talked with several spa factory owners who have a lot of historical information. "most of the design concepts used in the spa industry now started in 1982 and have not changed at all, until The Spa Specialist came along." Then I started looking outside the spas industry for better design and engineering information, because most of the design concepts used in the spa industry now started in 1982 and have not changed at all, until I came along. Most spas "cavitate" to some degree. Cavitation is where the pump suction side is blocked by filters or by too small of plumbing pipe or by too many turns on the pipes. As the pump is pulling in the water a vacuum is created. When you have warm water and artificially (by the restricted suctions) elevate it to equivalent to an altitude in atmosphere of 20,000 feet of vacuum. That vacuum when extreme will turn the water to vapor. The temperature of spa water also helps. Basically at high altitudes (lowered pressure) water boils at a lower temperature. A spa with blocked suctions creates extreme vacuum. Water pumps DO pump water, NOT water vapor, so this beats the pumps and harms the motors by overheating them. It also destroys jet pressure therapy. "Because I was new to the spa industry, I was beginning to wonder why consumers were buying these badly engineered tubs." When I first saw a set of filters that were caved in on the sides, I could not believe it was possible. There were no design books that said to build a spa that way. One day while I was working the counter at the Denver Hot tub store, The Colorado Hot Tub Exchange, a fellow brought in a set of two filters that he placed on the counter. They looked like "hour glasses" with the sides all caved in. I turned to my boss and said; "how is that possible?" He said; "they were "H## Sp###g filters" and he had "seen that before". Apparently H## Sp###g is the only Spa Company who does that nonsense to their customers. (For one reason only: cheap manufacturing.) To me it was a "sin" to do that to customers. Because I was new to the spa industry, I was beginning to wonder why consumers were buying these badly engineered tubs. Everybody was telling me that H## Sp###g was a good company, but I have never thought so, from the first day I was introduced to them in the repair business. I have talked with many spa repair people across the country and all of them think these spas are bad, pain in the rear, to fix. The common complaints are the cost for parts and fixing leaks is a terrible experience and the ridiculous tiny circulation pump or "circ pump" as the people in the trade call it. "The first time I saw a tiny "circ pump", I said to myself: "What is that doing on a spa?". because "it looked ridiculous to me." The first time I saw a tiny "circ pump", I said to myself; "What is that doing on a spa?"; because, "it looked ridiculous to me". I have written many factual articles on what I have learned about them, including a part in the Q&A page. The articles on filtering and the ANSI article as well as on filtering correctly. My article of "Low Flow No Go" was published in a trade magazine and I got calls from ethical spa factory presidents thanking me for it. I don't know of anything more worthless than a pump that does so little and is sold with such implications and nonsense. I have spoken with many service people and they all "like them". One fellow said that he "put his kid through college by fixing them." I had a customer tell me that the owner of a spa store in his area said the same thing. So, with a background of fixing spas and seeing the good and the bad of spas and spa designs I went out looking for a spa company to get spas for our store, which we had planned to open March 1, 1997. What a difficult job that was! You had to have been there to see all the poor products. Everyone was using cheap Vico ; "uprated" pumps and the controls were a hodge podge of mediocrity. The spa industry had just come out of a recession (like now, the worst recession ever 2006 to 2012 today) and the spas showed it. "It can only go so far before consumers start telling all their friends "what junk hot tubs are." They kept making them cheaper in order to sell at lower prices and maintain some profits. It can only go so far before consumers start telling all their friends "what junk hot tubs are." (Well! written in 2008 and spa stores are dropping like flies on RAID. It is not a coincidence. With the economy and the reputation of crappy hot tubs, no wonder? Over 150 spa factories and builders are gone, and all of the rest have been sold, some even twice now. ) The other problem was spa companies were copying H## Sp###g in order to use their sales pitch. We found out that the PacMar store in Loveland, CO was for sell. It sounded really good so all of us took a trip to see it. When I walked in the showroom, I could not find any PacMar spas, I saw copy cat full foam with ABS crap, with a M#rq%$#s is logo on it. Thin ABS/ Acrylic with full foam, no air injection, cheap Vico 48 frame pumps running "hotter than hell" and a tiny circ pump. I thought to myself (and told Sandy later): "The devil owns M#rq%$#s Spas now." It was a poor product in the theme of H$t $pr#nG# Spas. I called up my friend who worked at the Westminster M#rq%$#s store and asked him how the spas worked. They were so poorly designed that they constantly froze the jet pumps, because when the circ pump was heating the spa, no water was moving in the jet pumps. So, they froze. I was talking with him and he said: "Oh! Yea I just had a customer's spa freeze last night." He also informed me that the circ pump "kept seizing" and that was also causing freeze damage. He told me they they had a "very hard time keeping the spa water clean on the showroom models. He told me that he was leaving the M#rq%$#s store because of the poor quality spas. I used to work with him at the Coleman store. (M#rq%$#s seemed to get smarter and now have a better product, but I could never sell them until they keep progressing and become a thermal closed design; getting rid of those ridiculous diverter valves that fall apart and make noise.) I recently talked at length with an ex M#rq%$#s executive and he told me all the regrets they had over their intense efforts to copy the H$t $p###g plan, including their marketing programs. It was a huge failure and almost caused the demise of the company with all the warranty issues. I see it as a win for greed, to destroy something that was a pure work of art and craftsmanship from the original people who created PacMarqs. I know how hard it is to make a good product and I appreciate what they had back in the 80's. "Many called just to thank me for the "only real hot tub and spa information". " We finally found a spa company in Ohio that was making the best product I could find for the money, Hercules Spas. I was elated when I flew out to see these spas. They were comfortable and very well made. They used Waterway equipment and Hercules controls. Hercules had been in business for 38 years at that time. Great shells! There were no better spas at that time. We still see them and service them today and they look great. I am proud to have sold them and our customers still thank me for the Hercules Spas. Now 16 years later I still get email from the owners. Shells holding up great. Some replacement pumps and controls, but the idea was to have a product that could be repaired. In the summer of 97 I put up the SpaSpecialist.com website. About 20 years ago, this month, when the Internet was very young, I set up this web site. I didn't know much about HTML, and how this all worked, but I knew it was something great. I had no idea that The Spa Specialist was going to become the " Oldest and Best Internet Spa Company". We quickly became number one on the search engines for "hot tubs". Now you have to look under "quality hot tubs". When I first put up the site, I used Word Perfect for the Mac on my old Performa, using a 14.4-K modem and it took "forever" for the pictures to load. The pages were crude by today's standards, but they had a lot of content for people to learn from as they do now. Only now the articles are many and my research has gotten deeper into the thermodynamics and hydraulics of spas. I thought that the web site would help to educate the folks in the Denver metro area. It did that; but I was totally surprised at the numbers of people I talked to from all across the US and from Europe, even South Africa. Many called just to thank me for the "only real hot tub and spa information". One day about two months after the site was up and running, a fellow from Vermont called and I chatted with him for about an hour about the spas in his area. I had no intention of selling him a spa. He called again a few weeks later after shopping the local Vermont spa stores and we discussed spas at length again. It was on the third call, about three weeks later, that he asked me: "Have you thought about shipping a spa out of state?" I told him that I had thought about it, because of all the phone calls from out of state, but I had no idea how to go about shipping them and delivering them. To make this story shorter, he and I both worked together and figured out how to get a spa shipped and delivered. It takes a bit of extra work to pull that off. Since I have never been afraid of hard work, we started selling more and more spas, one by one; to customers all over the country and we learned what it takes and what it costs to do that. It was averaging over $1,000 per spa, even when we doubled the spas on the truck. When you consider the quality of products we have to offer, and the low prices for them. The customers have always been more than willing to wait and to pay for the cost of shipping and delivery. (before the fall of the industry we use our own trucks and crew as much as possible to deliver the spas. We did it because it is more economical and the service is first class. Now we ship direct from Rotterdam, NL and still have lower prices on our spas. ) We sold the heck out of those Hercules spas and still have many satisfied Hercules spa owners. In late 98 I found out that the owner, and president had died (a while back) and the son an accountant had taken control. They basically ruined the spas and we did not have the time or the money to rebuild them. I was terribly depressed at that time. It looked like The Spa Specialist was a goner, because all of the other spas I researched were junky and I could not, ethically, sell them. Hercules spas disappeared quickly after that. Who would have thought that a 41-year-old company would go away so quickly? How Haven Spas Were Born Whenever I get depressed about something, I start working. I never give up. The sure cure for depression is to work at something you enjoy. At that time I had no products to sell that excited me, so I started going through all my files on spa factories. It was grueling work. I would find a company that sounded promising only to find out they were doing stupid designs or short cuts to their spas. It seemed hopeless :(. One day I was going through my files again and I found these photos taken of the backs of some spas. A fellow had dropped in for a few minutes about four months earlier and talked briefly with me and left the photos. It was an odd sales presentation, because the brochures were awful, but the photos revealed something very interesting to me. It was a smaller spa factory in Anderson, CA. I took out a magnifying glass and examined the photos like "Shirlock Holmes". I was impressed with the construction and the parts. I called to arrange a visit to the factory and discuss details. It just so happened that we were delivering our last Hercules spa in Watsonville, CA and that was only a five-hour trip to Anderson, CA, "What impressed me was the construction of the spas." When I arrived at the factory, I noticed that it was out in the country, near farmland. It was an old wood mill that was converted into a spa factory. It was not a brand new shiny steel building, but it was more than adequate. What impressed me was the construction of the spas. I asked the owner Rob, why he was using 2x4's instead of 2x2 frames like other spa companies. He said that they had too many problems in shipping. I asked him why he was using 56 frame motors. He said the "48 frame motors over heat all the time." I asked him why he used the Acrylic with vinyl ester resin and hand rolled fiberglass shell. He said because he tried other shells before and it was "disastrous". I saw many things I liked, but the spas were still not exactly what I wanted. He had learned the "hard way" what it takes to make a good spa and his basic design concepts follow mine. I was elated that we could come to terms about our spas. Plus he was and still is a really nice man and it was a family business, not some screwed up large corporation with a lot of wasted human resources. His factory is very efficient and his overhead was low, so that is the combination for quality. (The Haven Spas that are getting older now, 19 years, are a testament to the joint efforts of Rob and Me. We take what he builds to my designs and refine them, each on is custom made and "tweaked" to run perfectly.) "So, even if we delivered a Haven spa to the house next door to the *Phoenix dealer at that time, it is a Haven Spa built to our design specifications, exactly and that dealer could not have it." I gave him a list of things I needed to build a spa to my specifications and he said he could do it. I asked him about private label on our spas for several reasons. I did not want to step on his dealer's territory, and I did not want anyone else to have our spas, since it was my designs. It took a lot of work to get them the way I want, and I am not going to give that away. So, even if we delivered a Haven spa to the house next door to the Phoenix dealer at that time, it is a Haven Spa built to our design specifications, exactly and that dealer cannot have it. The function of the jets, the cooling system and the heating system is different. The air controls and turbo air are different. The drawings for the plumbing layout is different. The cabinet construction is different. The control box is the highest grade there is. It is a Haven Spa! (Now, 2010, it is a HavenSpa build in our own factory in Holland! From "scratch". And nobody has those molds, because we own them. ) Right now, today, you cannot find a better made spa nor a better designed spa. You can sit any spa side by side in a "Spa Challenge" and the other spa will loose the test. I guarantee it. To me the spa industry is about 35 years behind the times in the basic designs. Basically that makes Haven Spas 35 years ahead of them. We only want Haven Spas to go out that are as perfect as possible. Right now the wait for a Haven is nearly 6 months in the USA, if you order in April, but that is for a reason. There is a back log at the factory and each Haven Spa is a special order item, custom made. And it takes some time to ship from Rotterdam port. *Phoenix is now closed. The owner retired and we bought the rights to and the molds of all the spas. "If you want it fast and low priced, we can't do that; never will I allow junk like that." If you want it quality at a low price, with custom attention to detail, we can do that, but you need to learn to wait or buy a model we have in stock, but it will still take a month to get even if it is in stock, because you have to wait for a trip in your direction or pay extra for shipping. We tell people up front, that if you want it fast don't bother to order a Haven spa and I mean that. I am through with trying to rush spas, because I am a people pleaser. Then find that there is something that was missed, or we had to hold back the spa for more details and refinements. An old time salesman once told me: "If you want fresh oats, we have that. If you want used oats that have already been through the horse, go to the other stores." I changed it to: "If you want used oats that have already been through the male bovine, you will have to go to the other spa stores." If you want "fresh oats that have not been eaten by the bull............. we offer that." :) The sad fact is, most shoppers are like this, otherwise sales people would not make so much money. My articles and web sites have been read by millions of people all over the world. I estimate based on an average of 1100 individuals a day reading the site that it has been deeply read by at least 10,000,000 different people. All of the defamation we get from "poor losers and mentally ill people" creates interest and we find people with intelligence that way. Only unintelligent, emotionally driven people buy on emotion, and only unintelligent emotionally driven people will listen to these, ridiculous, stories and actually believe them. They wind up buying some mediocre spa on some fantasy sales pitch, designed to push emotional "buttons", and the fit their customer profile, and not a HavenSpas customer profile. I used to feel sorry for them as victims, but if they don't have the capacity to understand the facts and can be sold on emotions and buy on impulse, then they are not our customers. The sad fact is most shoppers are like this, otherwise sales people would not make so much money. Our good record with our customers stands as a testimonial to our ethics and the products. Our customers are much more intelligent than your average shopper. We have three customers out of thousands who are really dissatisfied, and the dissatisfaction is warranted. It was a series of screw ups that lead to this, and it was when we had employees that were not as competent as I had hoped they were. There is not much you can do to rescue a botched spa customer. We did, however, make it right with even those customers, but it took some time. However, the near perfection in customer support and service we have done, makes three seem OK. It is still not OK to me that even one customer has had poor results from their interaction with Haven Spas. I was posting on a message forum about the sales tactics used in hot tub stores one time and how disgusting it was. I reported that I took sales seminars and left feeling ethically violated by these "teachers". There is only one seminar that I took was based on making friends with customers and developing a long term relationship with them. All the rest were "psychological mind games" used to manipulate people's emotions to buy and buy NOW! This is what is taught to this day in many sales seminars and you need to be very aware of these tactics and NOT BUY from these fools, so that your children will not have to endure and deal with this. If you stop buying from these slick ethically challenged people, they will stop teaching this crap. When you buy from liars, you are supporting this degradation. The problem for you is that they seem so nice and they don't believe they are telling you lies. It doesn't matter if you fall in love with them, don't buy on impulse and never buy at home shows and carnival like displays, unless you already know what you are buying. This salesman came on this forum for hot tub consumers and admonished me for telling people the truth about his sales tactics. He thought I was the crazy one for caring about consumers. Really! He said; "Why are to doing this? This will reduce sales in hot tub stores and is not productive." Since when is the truth a bad thing??? This is what you are up against as a spa shopper. If you take the time to read my site and understand what I am saying, you will be better off in all your purchases; not just hot tubs. I teach people to think about what they are promoting and supporting. To focus on the actual product, and not the sale pitch from that "sweet talking" sales person. Consumers need to grow up and get real. If you have emotional problems that you think can be solved by buying things, you need help. "If you have emotional problems that you think can be solved by buying things, you need help." This nonsense is used all over because, you as consumers fall for this "happy horse poop". These vultures are all over the message forums and are professional sales representatives working for the spa companies. They get paid to use marketing rhetoric on the suckers on the forums. (We do not allow any people who show even slight ethical problems on our forum.) Hot tubs are machines, they are not anything else. They follow the laws of physics and all of science. Yet, the last thing a spas sales person wants to know is that they have been selling a poorly made product for years and years. I got sued by one of the sleaziest spa companies on earth, This company is so bad that other sleazy spa companies look good. And other spa companies complain about how this company has effected the spa industry as a whole by their terrible reputation. The normal quote about this company from service people is: "They may make crap, but they sure sell a lot of it." Yet, the last thing a spas sales person wants to know is that they have been selling a poorly made product for years and years. One of my good customers in Southern California, has several friends who own these crappy spas that are not running and cost more to repair than they are worth. He told me that when he said he was looking for a spa, they told him, to "never buy a hot tub. We bought what was supposed to be the best and it has been nothing but repairs and problems." Being an intelligent person, who wanted a hot tub, he did the research, took his time, went to all the local stores as I told him to do, then contacted some of our customers and has not had any issues with his Haven. It just runs and runs and his electric bill "hardly shows any difference". I really don't know how I became the moral voice for the consumers of the hot tub industry I really don't know how I became the moral voice for the consumers of the hot tub industry, but what started out as a love of hot tubs has turned into a "crusade" to stop greedy "ethically challenged" hot tub companies who have no love for humanity. The lust for money is the source of all sorts of spiritual harm. Please, don't fall for the sales garbage of slick corporations, and "ethically challenged" sales people. Some of these "ethically challenged" sales people actually believe they are doing something good, but that just equates to how much they don't know about spas, have blinders on. They even promote themselves as "Christian" while they rip people off. People will often times delude themselves into ideas like a cheap piece of plastic stuffed with foam and three way diverter valves with cheap 48 frame pumps and tiny bullet jets is a good thing to sell for 4 times what it is worth. If you want to stop this social degradation from going on farther and help stop seeing your children ripped off or worse having your children learn this sort of "capitalism", then just continue to support and buy spas and things from these people. What legacy do you want to leave for your children and grand children and great grand children and so on???? Can't we stop this crap now? "gotcha-capitalism" How is it possible for a person to not have a conscience, or care about the effects their words and actions have on others. These nice (sarcasm) sales people seem to be everywhere. Why can 't we learn to "Love One Another", the only commandment that counts. It is also the only commandment that is common to about 100 different religions that I have looked into. March 2011. update: Well we are now making the Haven Spas in Europe and we have made them to an even higher standard, because we control all facets of the design, manufacturing and all the quality controls. The new spas are just amazing. We had to bring the thermally closed design up a few notches because the cost of electricity is far more than the US. We have now data on 60 Euro cents a day. ON a 400 gallon spa. You can still buy a Haven Spa but it is going to cost you more now. You waited too long, or maybe just long enough for us to nearly perfect (I don't think perfect is possible, and I have been working on that for a long time.) Spa. Quieter, Less costly to own, more powerful therapy. We even have models with dual multi-speed air pumps now. We have left the competition in the "dust" so to speak. They are so far behind us on quality they will never catch up, before we own the European market. James Arjuna |
