How to save money on the running of your hot tub With the price hikes in energy costs, a big concern when buying a hot tub is ‘What can I do to make my hot tub as energy efficient as possible?’ There are many things that you can do to retain as much heat in your tub whilst keeping your monthly costs down. Install a Heat Pump At Hot Tub Liverpool, we have done our research and found that heat pumps are a great way to reduce your energy cost, these can be connected to your hot tub to reduce running costs by up to 75%. A heat pump is a device that transfers thermal energy from one point to another. This technology can also be used to extract the potential thermal energy in the outside transferring the heat through a heat exchanger and heating your hot tub. Although they use a small amount of electricity to run, heat pumps are considered high efficiency and clean because they don't depend on the burning of fuel to create heat. They perform well in moderate climates such as the UK and can provide heating during the winter months. There are two different main kinds of heat pumps depending on the type of medium they extract heat from, namely air or ground/water and they are now beginning to be incorporated into modern builds on a regular basis. Heat is a useful property when it comes to keeping our houses warm, it moves from a high temperature to a low temperature naturally. What a heat pump does is reverse this process using some simple science that pushes air from outside, warms it up and then feeds into your house. On the outside of a heat pump you will find a system of coils with refrigerant in it over which the outside air is drawn using an impeller or fan. The liquid on the refrigerant coils absorbs the heat and because it warms up, begins to evaporate. The gas then goes through a compressor that increases the temperature dramatically. How well is your hot tub insulated? Top-quality insulation is an extremely important part of the energy efficiency of a hot tub. The insulation forms a barrier between the shell’s surface and the external temperature This helps maintain water temperature and allows the heater and pumps to run more efficiently. Full foam insulation is the most effective way to ensure energy efficiency within your hot tub. Foam is sprayed to fill the cabinet, providing support and using half the energy of a partial foam insulated tub. The only disadvantage to this is if the tub develops a fault or if any repairs are required, it can make it harder to access the interior of the hot tub. Make sure your hot tub has a heat-retaining lid. This is probably one of the most important factors when looking for ways to keep your hot tub efficient. Heat rises, so a cover that does not fit properly will let heat escape from the tub. We recommend that the cover forms an airtight seal around the outside of the hot tub to keep the heat retained in the tub. A good way to see if your hot tub cover is of good quality is if snow or frost doesn’t melt when it lands on it. At Hot Tub Liverpool, all our hot tubs come with heat-retaining covers as standard. Lower the temperature of the hot tub. Reducing the temperature, even by just a couple of degrees will make a big difference to your energy costs, for instance in the summer months you probably wouldn’t have it as hot as you would in the winter, making a significant saving in costs. Also, if you are going on holiday for a week or two, or not using it for any reason, turn the temperature of the hot tub down even further. A comfortable temperature for your hot tub in the winter would be around thirty-seven degrees and less during the summer. Choose the right size of hot tub for your needs The bigger your hot tub, the more water it holds therefore, the more it will cost to heat, so if you just want your hot tub for relaxation and hydrotherapy and not for parties or socialising with friends, choose a slightly smaller tub that holds less water, making it cheaper to run. We would recommend that you should use 250 litres of water per person. Make sure your hot tub is shielded from the wind Locating your hot tub out of windy conditions is a good way of ensuring that heat isn’t escaping the water. You could surround the tub with fence panels or bushes for instance. Some people locate their hot tubs in an outbuilding or put a wooden structure around the tub, this also guarantees privacy.
