Out With The Old

So several years have passed since our used tub experience. We were ready to spend the big dough and buy ourselves a new one. After much research we we found what we wanted. We bought a new Beachcomber model 620 something something which probably stood for too many jets and lights you will never use.  I finally took the time to learn water science, and prided myself on getting it right the second time around. Still, it was a pain in the a$$, every few nights the same routine, dumping in chemicals, balancing the water etc etc.  So goes the life of a spa owner, or so I thought......

P.S. That's me changing the filters and all the chemicals in the tub.

But before we go into that, a quick ha ha story. Embarrassing at the time, and it took me a year to look back and laugh at it.   We actually bought a smaller new tub at first. It was more affordable and suited us better.  The dealer told us to come down and actually sit in it, or better yet, come after hours with a bathing suit and try it out.  That seemed like a bucket load of work and we were too shy to put him through it so we just ended up buying it "untested". 5 Days later it was delivered and brought to our back yard, which in itself was no easy task.  We levelled, plumbed, wired, and filled it and looked forward to its breaking in the next day.  Well....we hated it, and everything about it. We couldn't even will ourselves to like it. I drew the short straw and made the call the next day.  The dealer was very gracious. I felt like an idiot.  To make it less painful on him we bought the next model up. Bigger, faster, more jets, more lights, and it made toast too. In the end I won. Wanted a bigger tub anyways.

That tub served us well, as did the same model we bought 5 years later when we moved. It's the one we have today and we still love it when we get the chance to go in.

I was introduced to Spa Solution at a home show. 3 Month supply in one bottle and low maintenance.....yeah right.  We kept walking and never went back to the booth.  I wasn't ready to shell out $79.95 and throw away my box of bottles with poison and toxins.  It may burn my eyes and shorts but darn it, I had the cleanest tub water in town. 

By nature I'm a lazy sod. And those words "low maintenance" kept rolling around in my head.  The weekends trudging through the snow to "test" the water. Nights when I yearned for a dip only to find the water murkier than mom's pea soup (I jest, but you get the point).

Well, we bit the bullet one day, probably after a bad dip, another pair of shorts, or the realisation our cover rotted out because of the fumes. I forget which, maybe all three. 

After carefully reading the instructions (I won't repeat them here, visit www.miragespasolution.ca) we crossed our fingers hoping this goo would do the trick. It smelled nice but looked like snot.  It looked even worse when you poured it in....Our hot tub dealer said it was "snake oil" and a hoax. The stuff doesn't work so don't bother. A few websites made the same claim. Ironically, they all sold chemicals so I took that with a grain of salt. The end result was we LOVED it. The water was clear every time, no scum line around the perimeter, no chemical smell to burn your nose hairs, and darn it I'm still wearing the same shorts I did a few years ago!!!! (Although the elastic stretches more)

She's a Beauty!

 I've been a hot tub owner for the last 10 years. That's about the time I could finally afford one.

 Actually that's not true. Our first tub was used and boy were we proud of it.  We had saved up about $1,000 and promised ourselves we would go looking for one when we had raised that much.

One weekend we embarked on a shopping trip loaded up with circled newspaper ads promising "8 person tub, great shape, $500 and you haul away" or "Slightly used tub needs a bit of TLC, yours for $800", or my personal favourite "Beachcomber tub, holds water and never been peed in"

So off we went, full of enthusiasm and anticipation, dreams of soaking underneath the stars that very weekend with a bottle of chardonnay. Oh the thrill of it! Our first stop was a laugher....an old chap led us into his backyard and showed us the "8 person tub in great shape". Yup, there it was in all its beauty and glory. Our first hot tub! or not....... I had to hold myself back from asking him where exactly he thought 8 people might fit. Not only that, but the rotten wood and absence of motor and pump led us to believe this tub might not be in the great shape he claimed it to be.  We exchanged some pleasantries and lied about what a lovely backyard he had and how he must have enjoyed the tub in its hay day and promised him that he was on the top of our list. The poor man probably thought he had a sale by the end of the day.

Well, we didn't fair very well the rest of the day either. We hit a lot of places, saw a lot of lousy tubs and as twilight drew near, dragged ourselves back home. Either we needed to increase our budget or catch a better break.

The next day it came. A local tub for sale, still hooked up with water in it, the advertisement beckoning "Come and see, bring your bathing suit and test it out, $1500 OBO".  Whoo hoo! We beat a path over to the home and bought the tub (we left our suits at home). We loved the tub and had it for a few years.

I was never good at stabilising the water and had no patience to read the instructions, or learn about the science of water. My motto was "when in doubt, chlorinate". I swear the tree above our hot tub died for this reason. It was a perfectly good Maple when we moved there, but darned if it didn't start dying the day we put in the tub and I began heaping in buckets of chlorine. I'm not sure but birds stop coming around then too. But hey....the tub was clean clean clean!!!! Nothing could or would survive in that water. Unfortunately it killed more than just the tree and chased the birds away. Flip, I was going through a pair of shorts every few weeks, developed rashes in the darndest places, and eventually it ate out our hot tub cover and burned out the heater element.

Well, we learned our lesson. No more chlorine, lets switch to bromine! We bought a new cover, installed a new heater element and off we went. Our tub was as good as new. The bromine seemed milder but still toxic.  We bought a box full of other chemicals to stablilise the water but never could get it right. PH up, PH down, Clarifier, Foam Away, Boost, De-scale, and these were the ones I could read.  Whatever we did would not work for us. Every stinking day I had to go outside to test the water just in case we wanted to go in that night. What a pain. There had to be a better solution!

A few weeks later we learned the tub was dying a slow death. The acrylic began to thin, the motor was making noise, and the temperature thermometer fluctuated so much one night it could be 110 (Which is the temperature they do lobsters in Nova Scotia), and another night it would be down to 90 (Which is like sitting in a bathtub with your buddy).  Leaks developed, and I did everything to save the poor bugger. I chipped away the foam underneath to find the leak, re-fiberglass, refill, reheat, all for naught as another leak spring up. I remember the last day. One final leak and I rammed my screwdriver through the acrylic. I couldnt stand the slow death so I killed it, gathered up my tools and walked inside the house to break the news.....

Hunny.....it's dead......

The Start

2 years ago I didnt know what a blogger was.....now I are one. Blog, blogger, blogging whatever tense, this was not a word in the dictionairy in my day. Some quick Webster research (circa 1968) would put the word in between "blockhead" and "bloke", of which I am currently both.

So what the heck.....what's making me start? Well, a couple things. Number one, ashamedly is for purpose of e-commerce (another one Webster doesnt recognize). You see I need more hits on my website and some people smarter than this bloke told me to write a blog and link it to my website and use common words so when people do a google search they will chance upon it faster.

WTF......(don't bother looking it up, and if you don't know what it means ask anyone 35 years and younger.

Oh yeah, the second reason, I like to write! I always have, but never afforded myself the pleasure past doing business minutes of meetings and the like. Now I get to do it for fun, and that's cool becuase it's mine and no one elses and I can use words that mean stuff to me, words that could be incorrect, words that could sound silly, or heaven forbid even spelt (spelled) wrong? WTF! (That word has really grown on me in the last 2 years)

So here's the stage, curtains open and a hush falls over the audience. I own a small home business I call "Mirage Clear Spa Solution". I won't get into all the details because I don't want to ruin the plot so soon into the story and clearly turn off all my readers which will soon swell into the hundreds and maybe even thousands! Quite honest, my wife will have to read it, and perhaps one or two of my friends may give it an obligatory glance but that's it.

All kidding aside, I do hope it will contain some useful information for people that stumble upon it whilst looking for some information. It will contain some stuff they can use. So what's the harm. I get to write, albeit not the Stieg Larsson trilogy I envisioned, my wife is happy I'm pursuing my dream, and I might drive some people to my website and sell a few bottles of my product.

So, let's get the deminutive plug out of the way and begin the journey in blogland (again, not a word but neither was blog so hush). http://www.mirageclearspasolution.ca/ , theres the link, and its clicakable and all that stuff if you really want to see what I'm into at this point.

Forward Ho.