Can an overweight Spa Cover be a danger to your family?

Recently, a friend of my families was checking the chemicals in his spa and rather than attempting to remove the entire spa cover from his spa, he decided to just lift one side enough to get at the water long enough to get a sample.  He described to me that while bending over the spa water, he held the lid with his left arm, supporting it for only a moment, seconds.  As he was leaning, the weight of the water logged spa cover slammed down onto his shoulders, which caused him to become trapped from the shoulders up, into the hot tub. He was now lying face down in his spa with his legs pinned to spa by the weight of the spa cover.  He tried to move the cover off of his body, however the weight of the cover combined with his current position made this task impossible and he was unable to shift the waterlogged cover.

When telling me about this near-death experience with his Spa Cover, he illustrated the position he was currently in, and how luckily enough he had left the back sliding door open when he had gone outside.  His daughter and her boy friend were in the house and managed to hear the commotion coming from outside.  When they went outside to investigate the noise, they saw that he was completely trapped underneath the Spa Cover. 

They were able to lift the cover off, and they rushed him to the emergency room where doctors told him that the weight of the cover slamming down had dislocated his left shoulder and that he was lucky someone was there to help him.  Just a little longer could have resulted in his death.  While at the hospital there were able to put his shoulder back into place and his doctor insisted he stay over-night, as a precaution, due to the shock from his day’s experiences.  He was furious as you can imagine from his days events.  He immediately contacted the foam cover manufacturer of his current cover and in very expressive language explained that their cover had nearly cost him his life.  Now, did they do anything about his ordeal? No.  He was transferred from department to department; phone drone to phone drone wondering if he would ever get this matter resolved and finally he just gave up.  They were not going to help him at all.

This friend of mine had owned his spa for 12 years, and in those 12 years had purchased and replaced 3 conventional rigid foam core spa covers. While the life on his foam covers averaged from 2 to 4 years, and regardless of manufactures claims, each one of his covers became waterlogged, heavy, unusable, and completely useless.

He has since bought a Spa Cover that uses air chambers to insulate rather than rigid foam feeling confident that his air filled spa cover will not try to kill him as the other foam cover did.  In the United States there have been over 150 spa entrapment related injuries and deaths over the last two decades.

Another unfortunate experience suffered by one of my family’s oldest friends is just as devastating and equally frustrating.  Each time my friends were using their hot tub they propped their rigid foam cover up, between their spa and the wall of their house.  Once while in their spa, 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 became paralyzed. He had no feeling, sensation or movement in that half at all. Naturally they both were quite frightened and thought he might have suffered a stroke. They went immediately to the hospital.   And within just a short time he was diagnosed Bells Palsy—which his doctor had explained can come about by stress and or trauma.  It was not a mystery to his doctor or himself what was the most cause of the injury.  It had only been a few days since his extremely heavy spa cover had struck him in the head.   He later made a full recovery. His is an extremely lucky case.

Something no spa dealer or foam cover manufacturer is ever going to tell you is that each one of these foam covers will eventually get heavy, become waterlogged and become totally and completely useless.  It is inevitable, totally undisputable and guaranteed to happen.  Now something else about that fact they will not explain to you is that those conditions causing the death of your foam cover is dangerous.  Heavy foam covers can become as heavy if not more 150 lbs.  That kind of weight is not something you want to mess with.  A cover lifter can save you from having to lift your heavy foam cover, however many customers I have talked to over the years admit they have even had to replace their lifters because they have broken under the weight of their cover. Yikes.

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission people have even drown as a result of being 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?