Wooden Hot Tub

Hot tubs are wonderful, nice and relaxing. 
Any idea how much they cost to operate?  Start with PG&E's electrical rates.  The monthly cost just to heat the water is $1,200 per year.  That's over half of our electricity bill with PG&E.   Add to that the chemicals and changing the water every few months.  And you don't want to use the water in your yard because of all of the chemicals.     

You could install solar, we did.  On some days the hot tub uses all of the electricity the solar panels produce in a day or even more.  (And this is in the summer when the panels produce the most.)   You could talk to the folks at Tubmakers on Ashby.  If you want a hot tub look on Craigslist.  Seems like every week someone is giving one away.

Question you need to ask yourself if soaking in a hot tub for 20 minutes every so often is worth $100 per month?

Please share your responses, I'm on the same search...

We have own a spa for the last 15 years and yes we did used it a lot at the beginning, the last years we stop using it, I don't know why....but now that one is dead and we want to replace it with a smaller 4-6 people wooden hot tub.

Covid has change our perception of the outdoor and we want to be more outside, even if it is very cold. The location of the tub is important, the farther from the house or bedroom, the less you will use it. I think the plastic ones are cheaper but all what I really want is to soak in hot water, I don't care about all this jets...still the wooden ones, apparently, are more expensive ...

We had a wood hot tub for about 12 years and I don't think we'd buy another one. When we bought our house 20 years ago it came with a fiberglass hot tub in the back yard. We never thought we'd want a hot tub but found ourselves using it more and more, so when it broke, we decided to replace it with a cedar hot tub. They are much prettier than the blue plastic ones, they have less surface area since they are deeper and narrower, so we figured less heat escape and lower PG&E bill, and we liked the idea of being able to recycle the wood when its time was up. We bought it from Roberts Hot Tub in Richmond which makes very beautiful wood hot tubs. 

The first hassle was we needed to find a carpenter to build steps and a deck around it. The round wooden hot tub is much deeper than the hot tub we'd had before. You can't just step over the side and get in. It was attractive though, and we enjoyed using it.  But over the years here is what we found: 1) Cedar has a lot of tannins that leach out into the water. It doesn't hurt you or discolor your skin, but it does make the water murky and slippery-feeling. This can be off-putting.  2) Biggest problem: since we always kept a cover on it, and had positioned it under trees, it was nearly always shaded, and the wood in the hot tub and the surrounding deck began to dry rot and leak water after a few years. Ants moved in under the deck and built colonies. Eventually it wouldn't hold water anymore and we had to disassemble it and put it on Craigslist.

We decided not to get another hot tub after that. We had used it nearly every day, but the cost of a new tub and heater, along with the high cost of heating the water, were big enough obstacles that it didn't seem worth it. There is also the water use, which became more of a concern during the drought years.  As with any hot tub, especially a wood one, you need to replace the water periodically. You can't just drain the water into your garden because the chemicals will kill your plants. So we'd wait for the rainy season, and when it was pouring outside, that's when we'd drain the hot tub so our neighbors wouldn't chastise us about all the water flowing down our driveway! We still like sitting in a hot tub but now we only do it on vacation.