Spa and Hot Tub Covers

Every week I get a call from someone wanting to know if we can build a custom spa cover.  The answer is yes with a qualification.  Not every spa can be covered.  Before you let work begin on that custom spa idea you should consider how you plan to cover it.  After the spa is built it will often be too late.

Spa manufacturers are building all sorts of shapes and sizes these days that can be purchased and delivered to your home and covered easily.  But for high end custom built spas, that often cost six figures it is not so easy.  Unfortunately far to often it is after the spa is complete and the owner gets their first heating bill that they think about a cover.

These spas are often featured in spa magazines and truly look amazing.  Who would not want one?  They look like theme park attractions you can own.  They often feature natural looking rock walls and water falls, spill ways and infinite edges so that while you sit on the spa you can see the landscape beyond.  All very impressive and expensive.  Unfortunately heating and keeping debris out of such a work of art can also be an expensive proposition.

If you ask the designer of one of these spas how they intended it to be covered when the spa was not in use, the answer is they do not want it covered.  That may not seem so bad if the spa is in southern California or some tropical island.  However even these places need to keep rain water and blowing debris out of the spa.  In snow country it becomes even more important to cover the spa when not in use.

If you are considering having one of these spas built, make sure the designer is including a cover into the process and that it does offer insulation.  Just having a safety cover anchored over the spa is not going to keep heat in or debris out.  To insulate the water when the spa has different heights around the edge such as a spillway, the spa cover should actually rest on the water.  By coming in contact with the water the insulating cover will cut down evaporation and chemical consumption too.

In order for the cover to be easy to attach and remove you also need to consider access around the spa.  If you have one side of the spa hanging off in space it may be attractive but fastening any cover on that side would be precarious without some consideration of how to safely maneuver around outside of it.

Likewise a spa buried in a rock wall.  If a wall of any kind rises up vertically, although beautiful will always be problematic for fastening and keeping stuff out of the spa.  Planning on a cover before built is the only way I know of to deal well with this.

There are solutions available to cover almost any spa if the cover is built into the initial design.  It will most likely be a costly spa cover and pricey to replace however not as expensive as leaving the spa uncovered.  The reason for the cost is that each time it is built is basically a one off production.  This is why most concept cars go straight to a museum.  If anything breaks on it there are no replacements sitting on a shelf somewhere.

Have you ever driven to the store looking for the perfect shoe?  You go from store to store looking at what they have to offer until you find just the right one.  But when you go to the sales person and ask for one in your size they tell you that they are sold out of your size.  The more this happens, the more enticing online shopping becomes.  Some of the bigger traditional stores have tried online stores and come to the conclusion that they don’t work.  If you check out their stores you can buy anything they could not sell in the store but not every item the store sells.

The traditional Brick and Mortar edge.  For store owners who depend on foot traffic to make  sales the growth of online retailers is a serious threat.  The local store now has to focus on its strength and hope that remains enough to win the consumer.

Privacy and Security.  Preying on the fear that your private information will be out there for anyone to grab and abuse is a favorite of the traditional store.  However as more americans get used to online banking, booking travel arrangements, buying movie tickets and using secure websites this perceived advantage is loosing its punch.  These days you are more likely to loose your privacy to a person you actually hand your credit card to than online.

Interaction.  The internet is said to be an interactive medium.  The local store will seem to again have the advantage here since the have sales people right in front of you to answer your questions.  The problem is that anyone who has ever gone to the internet before they went shopping tends to know more about what they are looking for than the sales people.

A well thought out website anticipates your questions and answers them with knowledge and experience.  When you go in to a store you rarely get to talk with the owner.  It just is not possible for the owner to be available for every customer walking through the door.  But online, the owner can be involved.  Experience has taught them the questions you are going to ask about every product and they know the answer.  You can be half way around the world, shopping while the store owner sleeps and he can still be answering your question because he has anticipated it.

Selection.  In the past, a traditional store could boast selection as a key advantage  over the online store.  That is far from true now.  You can generally find exactly what you want on line often direct from the manufacturer or a website specializing in that particular product.

Shipping.  The traditional store may boast no shipping.  However that depends on your point of view.  You still pay for shipping when you buy from the local store, it just comes in the form of a higher price.  If the item is not in stock you pay for your gas to go to and from the store to find that out.  Then when the item is at the store you pay for your gas back and forth again.  In most cases I find it costs me less to buy something on line and pay the shipping than it does to drive all over and come home empty handed.  After driving to and from work the last thing most people want to do is get back in the car and drive more.

The internet can be a cost effective way to save money as a consumer.  By cutting out the need for a store, the middle man between the manufacturer and the consumer one can get a higher quality product for the same price as a similar one from your local store.

Since mankind decided that hot tubs would be fun we have had to face the challenge of keeping that water clear and safe. Chlorine and Bromine have been in use since almost day one. Both have their advantages. They kill everything. The down side is also that they kill everything. By that I mean that Chlorine and Bromine are both caustic chemicals. That is both how they function and what makes them less desirable. Not only do they kill germs and bacteria but they are harmful to your skin, hair, bathing suits, spa jets, pump impellers, pets and environment. With the heightened awareness of the environment and our own physical health, there has been a wide variety of alternatives to the old standards.

Minerals can be used to treat the spa water with less harmful effects. First, Copper can be used to treat your water and keeps stuff from growing in your water. It is a lot safer for your skin, hair and health, and won’t cause premature break down of your pump and jet components. Still, because it does a good job of killing things you need to use care when you empty your spa. Some areas have banned using copper to treat water because if it does end up in the water shed it will kill fish and algae.

Another popular choice is Silver and zinc. I would just recommend sticking with the liquid based versions. You should never use anything directly in the filter area of the spa because you do not want the risk of anything being sucked into the water pump.

Ozone can also be effective in water treatment. It works by exposing ultra violet light to air which forms an energetic oxidizer. It destroys algae, viruses and bacteria. Again you should know how to use your system properly. Avoid over exposure to ozone while using the spa. No ozone bubbles should be entering the spa during occupancy. Also you should not be able to smell ozone while you are in the spa.

One thing that a lot of spa owners forget about is checking your spa water pH. Maintaining the proper pH level can greatly improve the effectiveness of the water treatment. Spa water that is not properly balanced can cause irritation to eyes, and mucous membranes. Just because you keep a handle on your chemical treatment, do not get lazy about checking the pH.

Finally, circulation of the water. Stagnant water, especially warm stagnant water is a breeding ground for life. Regular circulation of the water for significant periods of time will reduce the need for chemicals and increases the effectiveness of the spas filtration. It is better overall for your spa pump to run for three to four hours at a time for two to three times per day as opposed to running for thirty minutes at a time ten times per day. If your spa only runs for thirty minutes it does no have enough time to properly filter all the spa water.

The bottom line is that yo want to be able to enjoy your spa for years to come. However like your car, regular maintenance can have a profound influence on that. If you maintain your car, change the oil, replace the filters, rotate the tires, you stand a much better choice of enjoying your vehicle with fewer unpleasant surprises. The same goes for your spa.

Is that heavy foam cover the reason why? In Search of the Perfect Replacement Spa Cover? If you have had your hot tub for a few years you’ve probably bought a few foam covers. You probably bought the first replacement cover from the same place you bought your spa.

You went in and told the salesman that your cover got heavy. More than likely he told you that now they have developed a better foam cover. One wrapped, glued, dipped, sealed in multiple layers of special stuff. But even that one got heavy eventually.

One friend of mine just thought he was getting weaker, until he went to the spa dealer and looked at a new cover. Preparing to use as much effort to lift the new cover as he did his own at home, he nearly threw the cover through the front window of the store. It was then that he realized his cover was getting heavy. Like him you have most likely figured out that rigid foam spa covers are flawed technology.

All rigid foam spa covers will always eventually become moisture saturated, heavy, and might even break or blow away. Regardless of what wrapping is around the foam it is doomed to get heavy.

Even if it were possible to keep the foam from saturating with water no rigid cover is ever going to be in contact with the water that it is supposed to keep warm. Every rigid foam spa cover is constantly losing heat between the bottom of the spa cover and the water surface. As the spa water produces steam that steam hits the bottom of the cooler rigid foam spa cover, condenses and falls back into the spa actually cooling the water.

But the real point is that with a foam cover that slowly gets heavy we slowly stop using our spas. Generally speaking the foam fails slowly so you don’t notice it. If you use your spa every day, an ounce different here and there does not get noticed. It just becomes a little more work. So you just put up with it. But after while you get home from work and the thought of wrestling that cover off the spa just becomes less important.

That is a shame considering how much you looked forward to it when you first got your spa. It is also a shame considering how much you spend to heat the water that you are less willing to get into. It is a shame considering how much you paid of your hard earned money to get that spa in the first place. Did you know that the more time you spend in your spa the less sleep your body requires? If you got your spa for therapeutic purposes how often do you think you can afford to go without that therapy before you start to suffer?

Are you willing to loose all that just for the sake of a few inches of foam? I see it every day. People with spas in their back yard, but instead of using their spa they pile stuff on it. It might be the picnic table they moved just to make it easier to mow. Maybe it is toys the kids left out or the barbecue. Seems like an expensive place to pile your stuff but people do.

I propose you get back to enjoying your spa. Instead of replacing your heavy spa cover with another one that is just going to end up the same way, shop online for a different type of cover. Find a different type of spa cover that does not use foam so it will not get heavy. If you do, you can enjoy your spa for years to come. You will thank me later.

All this talk about going green, a big part of saving the environment is to not create more waste that will just end up clogging our land fills. Follow me on this for a minute… There are 10 million spa owners in the USA, and each one of them uses a typical rigid foam spa cover on their hot tub. For the sake of this demonstration each foam cover is only two inches thick and every spa is eight feet by eight feet. That would mean each spa cover contained about 10.666 cubic feet of foam per spa cover. For the rest of this example we will use 10.5 cubic feet per cover.

If each cover on every spa becomes saturated within two years and needs to be replaced that would mean that we would be adding 52.5 million cubic feet of waste to our landfills in just spa covers every year.
If it takes two and a half covers worth of foam to make up one cubic yard that translates to 4 million cubic yards of waste added to our land fills every two years just in spa covers.

If there are 11 million Cubic yards of stone in the Great Pyramid at Giza, we are adding enough foam to build a duplicate of it to our landfills just from used spa covers every six years conservatively. There are four and a half million cubic yards of concrete in Hoover Dam. We could build a two lane highway of discarded foam filled spa covers from Seattle Washington to Miami Florida every two years.

In case you have not noticed most foam filled spa covers are not two inches thick anymore. If all those old foam covers were four inches thick all these calculations would be double.
But we are just being conservative so we want to stick with two inches thick. If we ripped the covers in half and laid those pieces end to end we could circle the earth at the equator on used spa covers every two years.

Heck with parking lots, in a few years we could pave the entire planet with foam just from saturated foam spa covers from the USA alone.

So what is the solution? Well shop for a better spa cover. There are options available on the internet that your local spa dealer probably does not offer. You do not have to quit using your spa to save us. You just need to get a Spa Cover that does not use foam to insulate. There would be two major advantages to doing so. First the spa cover that did not use rigid foam to insulate would last longer. Since what always fails in the typical spa cover is the foam, either breaking or getting so saturated that you cannot lift it, a spa cover that did not use foam would tend to last longer.

Second, if the new type of spa cover does not use rigid foam it will also be a lot more friendly to the environment when it does come time to discard it. Less trash, less waste, less land fill, not that is what going green is all about.

Could where you place your spa effect how often you use it? It may not seem so at first but over time the answer is a resounding, Yes. So, you finally bought that spa, now what. Wait, before you pour that cement pad and call out the electrician think about how you are going to use the spa.

First you should know that most of the serious injuries and deaths involving spas are deck mounted spas. If your are thinking about sinking your spa in a deck, turns out leaving it at least bench high can make all the difference as far as safety. Bench high will still make getting in and out of the spa with ease but your guests or children will be far less likely to step into it by accident. So, safety first, make sure the spa stays at least bench high out of the deck and you will be less likely to end up a statistic.

Next, make sure you leave plenty of room around your spa. It is natural to think putting the spa in the corner or up against the house. But in order to keep debris out of your spa and keep the water warm you are going to need to use a spa cover. Once you have the cover off and you are in your spa it will not matter if the spa is in a corner or hanging off the edge of the deck. However when you go to put the cover back on, in order for that to be easy, you need to have easy access around the spa.

If you think about putting the cover on your spa like you would make your bed it will make more sense. If you have your bed shoved into the corner of your room, you may open up more floor area but making the bed, tucking in sheets is going to be a struggle. With your bed you can grab it and pull it away from the wall. You can’t do that with your spa. No matter what kind of cover you decide to use, it will always be easier if you can get around at least three sides of your spa.

I know what you are thinking. I can open my spa cover standing on one side, and when I put it back on I just push it across the spa. And that may be true of your brand new rigid foam spa cover. Unfortunately no rigid foam cover in the history of man has ever stayed light weight. Once the cover begins to get heavy, it will be a lot easier if not necessary to have two people to take the cover off and back on the spa.

One more thing to mention. As humans it is our nature to get by with as little effort as possible. When you first get your spa, you may have plenty of energy you are willing to expend to get into your new toy. As the new wears off however, you will be less likely to exert yourself just to get a little relaxation. If you are using the typical rigid foam cover, you will almost certainly start to open only one side of your spa. You will flop the spa cover halfway open and just use the one side that you can get at. In my humble opinion, this is the beginning of the end.

What I mean by this is as humans when we begin to justify having half as much enjoyment, or telling ourselves we really don’t want to sit in the soothing pulsating jets of the spa we once were so excited to get home to, we begin to have less quality of life. I am convinced that if we make the right choices now we can keep a quality of life well into our twilight years.

You already bought the spa. That was a big expense and given the way spas are built by most companies these days that spa can last you the rest of your life. Where you decide to place your spa can make all the difference between using it later on or deciding to give it away because you just do not use it as much as you used to. The secret is making it easy to use, not just now, but later when the cover starts to get heavy and when you get older and lazier. When the new wears thin, you can still benefit from a dip in the spa.

Back in the annuals of time, Hippocrates, the father of medicine, thought it important enough to include regular spa use as part of the healthy lifestyle. If you want to live a healthy life well into your later years, using that spa is going to be a part of it. And because we are naturally lazy beings, making that easy now will be a big part of how often we use it later. Like brushing your teeth.

If you still have your teeth when you are old, it is largely because you planned for taking care of them when you were young. You made it part of your daily routine by planning on making it easy to do so. You put your tooth brush in the bathroom where you knew you would end up at some point in the morning. To a large degree you now face the same kind of decision in placing your spa.

If you place your spa too far away, walking out to it in your bathing suit seems far less inviting. I heard one person say he placed the spa as far away as his wife was willing to walk in the nude. I would add that she is going to get older and that distance may be less. Make the cover easy to get off and on. Like I said earlier having easy access to at least three sides of the spa will be important but maybe you should consider that eventually you might add a cover lifter of some sort. Leaving space around the spa will make a lifter a lot easier to add later too.

Having the spa partially sunken into the deck can assist in getting the spa cover off and on because as it gets heavier, and it will, and you get older, you will have less distance to move it. Leave room to fasten the cover easily on to the sides of the cabinet. In order to be as safe as possible your cover should be secured to the spa.

If you have already placed your spa and when you read this you realize your spa is not going to be easy to use, move it now. Drain your spa, move it to so you can walk around at least three sides of your spa. If you have shrubs or other landscaping right up to the sides of your spa so you can not walk around it, move them. Back them away from the spa. If you have a privacy fence surrounding the spa, take it down or move it back.

If you got one of those cute little gazebos or tea houses that fit right on to the spa, take it off. Move it to some other place in the yard. Make it a play house for the kids, a shed for the mower, or a tea house or gazebo, but get it off the spa. Either that or eventually you will get to the point where you can not remember the last time you got in the spa. You will get tired of paying to heat the water you are never in and you will drain the spa and shut it down. It will sit there until your wife decides to reclaim her yard and tells you to get rid of it. That will be a shame considering when you first got it, you could not wait to get into it. And your life was better. Do it now, you will thank me later.

How dangerous is an overweight foam Spa Cover? Recently a friend was checking the chemicals in his spa. Rather than attempting removing the entire spa cover, he decided to just lift one side enough to get at the water long enough to get a sample. He bent over and supporting the heavy cover with his left arm while attempting to fill a sampling bottle with water from the spa to check the chemical content, and total alkalinity.

As he leaned over further, the weight of the water logged spa cover dislocated his left shoulder and allowed the cover to hit him on the back knocking him into the spa. He was now face down in the spa with his legs pinned to spa by the weight of the spa cover. His shoulder was dislocated and unlike the Mel Gibson character in Lethal Weapon, he was in agony because of a the pain. He tried to move but could not budge the weight of the waterlogged cover.

He began to choke as he swallowed spa water and tried to rise up but could barely get his head out of the water. With what could have been his last breath, he screamed for help. Fortunately he had left the door from the house to the deck open. His daughter and her boy friend heard the commotion and looked out to see his legs sticking out of the spa cover.

His daughter and her boy friend were able to lift the cover off of his legs. His daughters boy friend jumped into the hot tub and pulled him up from the water. They took him to the emergency room where they put his shoulder back in place and treated him for shock.

Women who have experienced both child birth and a dislocated shoulder report dislocating a shoulder as more intense than childbirth. I do not know about that, I suspect that with child birth you can prepare mentally for the pain and with the shoulder it comes at you unexpectedly. But either way I think we can agree the pain is excruciating.

My friend had owned a hot tub for 12 years and had replaced 3 conventional rigid foam core spa covers. While the life on the foam covers had averaged from 2 to 4 years, regardless of manufactures claims, all the covers became waterlogged. He has since bought a Spa Cover that uses air chambers to insulate rather than rigid foam. He is certain that the air filled spa cover will not try to kill him as the other foam cover did.

A lady friend of ours and her husband were in the hot tub with their rigid foam spa lid propped up against the wall. A gust of wind hit the spa cover and it suddenly fell hitting her husband on the head. The blow was hard enough to push them both under the water. Fortunately they were not trapped and they both recovered quickly, or so they thought.

A couple of days later the left side of her husbands face suddenly went DEAD. He had no feeling, sensation or movement. Naturally they both were quite frightened and thought he had suffered a stroke. They did exactly what any of us would do and rushed immediately to the hospital. The doctor diagnosed him with Bells Palsy which can be caused by stress and or trauma like a heavy spa cover hitting him on the head. He later made a full recovery. He was extremely lucky.

Here is something you will never hear from a foam spa cover dealer. Every year people are injured by foam hot tub covers. Most of the injuries have come from a gust of wind blowing the heavy foam cover onto people as they use their spa. Sometimes people attempting to carefully maneuver a saturated foam cover off their spa, have lost their grip and had the hard foam cover slam down breaking the arch of their foot.

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission people have even been drowned when they have become trapped under heavy foam covers. Maybe now is a good time to search for a better spa cover. With the World Wide Web, you can literally have the world to shop from. Do you really want to risk injury or death trying to use your spa?

Where is my spa cover? Ever have to ask yourself this question after a wind storm? I have had people tell me they have found their cover a quarter mile from their home. I do not know how they knew it was their cover. Maybe in some parts of the country people write things on their spa covers to help them recover them after a storm. I suppose you could write, If Found Please Call, on the bottom. Maybe, Hope This Spa Cover Did Not Land On Your Sister.

Personally I think it might be time for a different type of spa cover. I found a posting on a spa cover dealers website claiming that they had several covers that made it through Hurricane Katrina. That is a little like saying there were some calvary survivors after Custers last stand. There is a big difference between having some going undamaged and having no losses.

The question to ask is are they selling anything different? So far I have found stronger straps as their solution. Well you could build a solid roof that attaches to the spa but in case you did not notice solid roofs were flying right off houses. The answer is not stronger tie downs for the wing you use to cover your spa but get rid of the wing.

Find a design that does not offer a rigid surface for the wind to lift on. The reason rigid foam spa covers fly is that they make a good wing. Our armed services fly planes with less aerodynamics than the typical rigid foam spa cover.

What causes a spa cover to fly? When wind comes at the spa, some of it hits the side of the cabinet and has to go around. As the air is pushed around the spa it some of it goes up over. As it breaks over the top of the rigid foam cover it starts a little ripple or swirl action that begins to suck upward on the rigid surface. Like when your riding in a convertible, if you have hair like I used to, it does not blow backward like you expect but forward because of the windshield diverting the air flow. If you had no windshield your hair would be blown straight back. This swirl action pulls the foam cover up off the spa.

It does not need to move it very much, just enough to create enough of a gap for some of the air to get under the cover. The second reason rigid foam spa covers fly is they have a nice air space between them and the water surface they are supposed to be keeping warm. Once air starts to flood into this air space it creates pressure. The air rushing in can not push down on the water so it takes the only thing it can move, the spa cover. Once this action starts it is only a matter of what velocity is required before lift off occurs. The first movement of the flying spa cover is straight up.

The pressure in the space between the water of the spa and the bottom of the cover pops the cover straight up. It takes a lot less force than you might think because it is lifting on the entire bottom area of the rigid foam cover at once. Even a saturated rigid foam spa cover that is too heavy for one person to lift will fly when the air is pushing on the entire bottom surface. Once a heavy spa cover gets airborne watch out because anything it runs into is going to get damaged.

So are these spa cover dealers offing anything different? Are they offering a spa cover that is not designed like a wing? Are they selling a spa cover that does not require straps and truck ratchets to secure it to the spa? I propose looking for a different kind of spa cover.

The internet has put the world at your finger tips. Instead of settling for the same old thing, shop the web for a design that makes sense. Look for a design that does not use a rigid foam board resting across the top of the spa. A better design would rest right on the water surface first because the water is what you intend to keep warm and second because this would remove the void that would build up pressure to pop the cover off. If the flexible and dome shaped rather than flat and rigid it would resist lift and deflect even the strongest winds. If you are tired of worrying about your spa cover every time the wind blows, you owe it to yourself to find a better spa cover.

If you need a new spa cover because your old foam cover was damaged by the elements, consider something different. The typical rigid foam filled hot tub cover covered with vinyl is doomed to end up heavy or broken no matter how well you treat it.No matter what you treat it with all vinyl is rated by hours outdoors. Really top quality marine grade vinyl is rated for 1500 hours outdoors. That equates to about one hundred days of sunshine. I know what you are thinking, why would anybody put vinyl on something that is meant to be used outside? But that is not even the most common failure of the typical rigid foam filled spa cover.

What generally happens before the vinyl falls apart is that the foam gets so heavy you can not lift your spa cover by yourself. No matter how it is wrapped and sealed inside the cover, the foam fills with water. What happens is the little air spaces in the foam that are supposed to help the foam insulate your spa get filled up moisture. Here is a tip why the whole foam cover is doomed, if you never put the cover on your spa, it would never get heavy. If you just took a brand new spa cover out and put it on your picnic table instead of your spa, the vinyl would fall apart before the cover got heavy.

Why? Because the hot spa water is way below the bottom of the rigid foam spa cover. Some of that warm spa water turns to steam and rises up. Steam molecules are smaller than water. The steam works its way into the little crevices and spaces in the foam where it condenses back into liquid. If you live in an area that gets snow, the snow will land on the saturated foam and freeze the water inside it.

How? because just as heat rises, cold sinks. When it comes in direct contact with the foam it freezes the moisture. The warm spa water is not in direct contact with the bottom of the spa cover so it is in a loosing battle trying to beat the cold. The steam rises from the water, hits the bottom of the now frozen spa cover, condenses and falls back into the water below working like a radiator to actually cool the water.

You may look out at the snow piled on your frozen spa cover and think you have great insulation. But you would be wrong. Snow sits perfectly on a frozen pond too. It does not mean the pond water is still warm. So why does anybody still sell rigid foam covers? Well two reasons really. First, it has been the standard of the industry for nearly thirty years. When the acrylic spa began to be sold in the states, it needed to be covered with something to keep the debris out and to assist in keeping the water warm. Foam boards covered with vinyl was cheap and since everybody was selling the same thing it was all they needed to offer. Remember definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome.

The second reason is worse in my opinion. Spa dealers know that the cover they are sending you home with will need to be replaced again because it will end up the same as the one you are replacing now. They know that like clockwork every couple years you are going to need to get another cover if you intend on using your spa on a regular basis.

So what are your choices? Thanks to the internet you now have the world at your finger tips. Look on line for a different kind of spa cover. Find a spa cover that is not covered with vinyl that is rated by hours if your spa is outdoors. There are Spa Covers available factory direct that do not use rigid foam that is just going to end up to heavy to lift. If you plan on using your spa for the rest of your life like I do, you owe it to yourself to get a better kind of spa cover.

We get a lot of inquiries from spa owners that are replacing their cover due to hail damage. Traditional rigid foam covers get hammered by hail because they do not absorb impact very well. The foam inside the cover is rigid enough to form a bridge over the spa, however it does not allow for impacts.

Branches, falling debris and large hail will pound the foam with enough force to damage or break the cover. As people who live in areas of heavy hail storms know, anything rigid is going to take a pounding. If you have been replacing covers because of this type of damage you have to ask yourself if there is some better way of covering your spa.

Let’s look at a few options. First you could opt for an Aluminum cover. This would be stronger than a foam filled spa cover, but it could be a little unwieldy because a one piece cover that size would need significant storage space. Not to mention even the slightest wind would make it a very large destructive frisbee.

Another option would be to go with a roll cover. These are very strong and essentially work like a portion of deck that you roll over the spa. The down side is they tend to collect small debris and allow it to get into the spa. Though strong they also offer little in the way of insulation.

Then you could choose to go for a reinforced rigid foam cover. One of the latest developments in this area is to have the foam glued to a board for strength. This would of course handle all but the most devastating hail storm. Only two caveats on this type of spa cover, it still will fly in a wind storm and with the added mass it will do serious damage to anything it lands on and it will still eventually become saturated. Once it is saturated a cover like this will be a four person job to open the spa.

The solution to this would be something that is able to give or absorb impacts. In Hollywood when a stunt man falls from a great height, he wants to land on something that will absorb his impact like an air bag. The air bag principle would work as a spa cover to guard against impact damage. Just like the stunt man landing on a cushion of air the same would be true of debris, branches and even severe hail.

Now the stunt air bag is designed to open and release air when it catches the stunt person so please do not use your air filled hot tub cover this way. However if your house is on fire and you have to jump out of the window aiming for the large air bag would probably save your life. I should note here that jumping on any spa cover would not be covered by the warranty.

No matter how fierce the storm or the hail stone an air filled spa cover will give or catch it without damage. We have tested them by driving golf balls into them at close range, dropping bowling balls on them and just having them in use around the country in areas that get severe hail storms. Before you replace another rigid foam spa cover because it broke shop online for a spa cover that will not end up the same way.