James Arjuna,
The Spa Specialist.
Copyright
1997,through 2007
The Spa Specialist
Haven Spas
1997,through 2007
The Spa Specialist
Haven Spas
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Quality Spas and Hot TubsWho Is James Arjuna? Part I
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| If
you are the type of person who likes to be "manipulated" in to buying
something by a sweet talking sales person, then, you don't belong
here. If you are like Erik and
want to get something for nothing, then we don't want you here
either. We only want people who are ethical in the Haven Family
of spa owners. People all across the country are enjoying the Spa Specialist hot tubs and spas. You can too! We are the internet spa and hot tub store. We even have spas in Hawaii and Scotland! We ship and delivery to your home. WHY HAVEN SPAS? (Click on the smiley faces to learn more. ) The value! It's the spa's engineering and reliability ,
the spa shell and cabinet construction,
the 1/2 inch clear redwood skirt and composite skirts. No
one has the therapy as in our spas. Our remote service people
take care of any problems. Lowest prices for the highest level
of quality and reliability of any hot tub or spa. One of the most
thermally efficient spas in the world.
We recommend the Spa Buyer's Questions and Answers
as the best place
to start. The prices are linked on that page. Thank you for
visiting our site! Email us with hot tub questions
or visit our Message Forum  |
Hot Tub installation , click on photo to see  |
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| "want to know why these competitors cringe
at the mere
mention of my name" If you ever want to know why these competitors cringe at the mere mention of my name or about Haven Spas; it is because we build actual value and use real applied engineering. Then we expose 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 never do anything or 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 or 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. 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 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, then you need to find another job, in my humble opinion. Life is too short to not enjoy it. "Most of the large corporate business spa companies seem to run on the profit first above and beyond the ethics" Money is not a motivator in Haven Spas. It is a necessity to have money to produce and care for our customers, but if I wanted to be rich, I can think of many other ways to do it that are not so difficult. We set our prices to meet the needs of our customers! We have to pay bills, just like anyone and we have the highest quality presently available. 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 lie and deceive 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 them. To the large corporate spa company it is sort of a "vacuum cleaner game" in which the "vacuum cleaner" is the advertising, hype and pure lies, inferences and implications. Anything that "sucks" the dollars out of the consumer's wallet. There has not been a more unethical business than spas in a long time. Most of those types of businesses from the past are gone because the practitioners went to jail. The old time car dealers who set back the odometers remind me of most spa sales tactics. "Don't ever buy on emotion or because you feel obligated to the "Nice" salesman." This condition of the spa industry is only because the spa shoppers do not know much about spas and EVERYBODY WANTS 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. 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". 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. 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. 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. I went to school and studied electronics, math science, 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 in those days and the ones we have now, (which are being 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. 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 timesaving 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" or "WB" 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 it is a birth defect or 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 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. 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). After a while I met Sandy, one of the best days of my life! 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. "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. 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. (and this 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 2x4 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 $20 extra to use 2x4's. If you are a bean counting spa company selling 7,000 spas that is a cost of $140,000 extra. Can a spa be made with 2x2's and hold up? Yes, but not as long as 2x4's. Each and every part of a Haven spa has a history and a reason why we have to have them made the way we do. One of my favorite stories about leak repairs and what really cleared up any doubts about ho bad a full foam spa is to repair was this story: I got a call from a lady who had brought out her Hot Spring spa with her from California. It was shipped by a moving company on it's side. She filled it with water and it was leaking quite a bit, so naturally she called the largest service center in Colorado, where I worked and asked us to come up and fix it. I scheduled her on the "board" and gave the call to Todd, a very experienced service technician. I figured, no big deal, he can handle it. At the end of the day he came back from his service calls and came in and "chewed me out" about giving him a leaking Hot Spring spa to fix. He basically told me to never give him one of those pieces of #$%$ (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 Hot Spring 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 Inc., 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 10 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 Hot Spring spa to her daughter and buy a new Hot Spring 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 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 Hot Spring spas was a terrible idea, especially leaksto repair a leaking Hot Spring 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 Hot Spring 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 Hot Spring or D1 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. |
 Find our how to install a hot tub indoors correctly! If you read the reasons for full foam in the Hot Spring literature, you will see a bunch of reasons, and the last reason they mention is "structural integrity" or something. 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 thermo-lock 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 (30Yrs). 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". "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. Keep that in mind when you shop. Since that time 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." 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 delaminate 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. Today you will still hear cheaply made, full foam, spa companies telling spa shoppers that acrylic spas crack and delaminate. That is no longer true for most all of the companies using vinyl ester resin bonding methods. The "delaminating" is a thing from the past. Acrylic is the best surface material available to day for spas. It has the most history for longevity and durability. A structured fiber-glassed 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 The Spa Specialist 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. 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, pump water, not water vapor, so this beats the pumps and harms the motors by overheating them. "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 spa 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. The said they were "Hot Spring filters" and he had "seen that before". Apparently Hot Spring is the only Spa Company who does that to their 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 Hot Spring 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 thse spas are bad to fix. The common complaints are the cost for parts and fixing leaks is a terrible experience. "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. 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 ands 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 2007) 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." The other problem was spa companies were copying Hot Spring in order to use their sales pitch. We found out that the Marquis 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 Marquis spas, I saw crap with a Marquis 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 Marquis Spas now." It was a poor product in the theme of Hot Spring Spas. I called up my friend who worked at the Westminster Marquis 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 Marquis store because of the poor quality spas. I used to work with him at the Coleman store. (Marquis 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.) "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! In the summer of 97 I put up the SpaSpecialist.com website. About 10 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 Inc was going to become the " Oldest and Best Internet Spa Company". 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 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. (Now we use our own truck and crew as much as possible to deliver the spas. We do it because it is more economical and the service is first class.) 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. 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. 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. I 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 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. "So, even if we deliver a Haven spa to the house next door to the Phoenix dealer, it is a Haven Spa built to our design specifications, exactly and that dealer cannot 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. 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 deliver a Haven spa to the house next door to the Phoenix dealer, 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! It is included in the ETL listing by model numbers, not by model names, because it is important for us to have the ETL listing on our spas. (2005, This year we have our own ETL listing for our models.) 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 25 years behind the times in the basic designs. Basically that makes Haven Spas 25 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 5 months if you order in April, but that is for a reason. There is a back log at the facotory and each Haven Spa is a special order item, custom made. If you want it fast and low priced, we can't do that; never will I do 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. 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." :) |
