To ask how much it costs to run a hot tub

[unicorncrumble]

Thinking of hiring a hot tub for a week over the summer. Does anyone have one and know how much it costs to run in electricity?

@unicorncrumble Filling it will be a particular temperature as it will come usually from a cold tap through a hose, that will take under 2 hours to fill. So let's say the water is 15 degrees ish as a ball park figure. I assume you are hiring an inflatable lazy spa type one.

As a rough guide it takes about 1 hour to heat 1 degree of a 1000 litre tub so you are looking at trying to get it to 37 as a good temperature some people like 40 degrees. I would think 22 hours would be a reasonable guess as a ball park figure.

Assuming a 34p unit charge £7.48 to initially heat it. You need to keep heating it back up but if you are in it daily it will not drop down too much overnight in the summer as it won't be too cold to heat back up again. I turn mine off once I am in it but bubbles will see the temperature dropping more than if you don't have them on. The pump shows the temperature and you can just have the pump running with no heat to keep cycling the water.

Bare in mind that you will need to chemically treat the tub including an initial shock treatment so you might not be able to get in it immediately although there are ways round this if you do it as an overnight thing. If you are still thinking about it then I am happy to provide more information.

If you have neighbours then you also need to factor in the "cost" of how pissed off they will be with you 😎

@MarinatemysoulinSprite it is one week and it depends how late you use it, where you put it as the thing weighs as much as a small car and if you have the bubbles on constantly. For all you know the neighbours could be away for a fortnight or she might live in the middle of nowhere. But yes, be considerate of the neighbours.

Luckily we have good ones, they're more likely to show up with a bottle of wine than complain...

Also depends on where you live, most of South West has hosepipe ban currently so can't fill them (apparently there hasn't been enough rain!)

This is really helpful - thank you! Yes it's an inflatable one. I had thought it would cost way more than this (but I suppose if it's only for a week it feels a lot better than constantly on.) the chemicals etc are all supplied by the company. I you know if I can deflate it out onto the garden or will it kill all my flowers?

Sounds like a win-win then!

The company usually supply the chemicals and may set it up for you, shop around to see who offers what. Mine is bought and we have had it a couple of years. It is a Lazy Spa.

Re emptying it, they should attach it to a hose pipe and drain it, or you can, mine comes with a standard hoselock connector thing to put on, or they can put a pump into the water attached to a hosepipe and drain it quicker. You do not want them dumping that amount of water on your garden, it is a lot. I cannot stress this enough, don't allow them to dump it all over your garden.

Re chemically treating it, because it takes a while to heat up the chlorine works at 20 degrees or above so a good portion of the heating is also the chemicals working to ready the tub.

I will link some videos below of an excellent chap who explains it all beautifully, look at the other videos on his channel about inflating and emptying too. Very helpful.

We hired one for two weeks last year. It added on an extra £35-£40 to our electricity bill for that month.

Ours was an extra £150 to £160 a month (heater on all the time) that was before the rises though so it's not coming out this year 🤣