Sunday Times

Lovely bubbly

A hot tub is just the thing for relaxing in your back garden - and it's easier to look after than a pool, says Wendy Sloane

Whenever the evenings get a bit nippy, Roger and Chrissie Williams rip off their clothes and make a dash for their back garden. Then they let their cares slip away by relaxing in their hot tub.
"I like to go out on a really cold night when it's clear skies and you can sit back, relax and watch the stars go by," says Roger, 40, who is financial director of Bristan, a bathroom and kitchen taps company, and lives in an eight-bedroom detached house on a private estate in Sutton Coldfield.
"It's very good as a de-stress tool," he says of his HotSpring Spas Grandee hot tub, which has room for eight people and costs £11,395.

Hot-tub companies in the UK offer either home-grown spas or ones imported from America or Scandinavia. A high-quality model that seats two people sells for about £3,500, while ones that can hold eight go for £11,000 and up. And unlike swimming pools, which estate agents say don't always add value to a home because of costly maintenance, you can take your hot tub with you.
"Our typical customers are very wealthy with nice big homes. They're people who are quite happy to hand over £5,000 for a bath," says Keith Helm, consumer sales manager for Nordic, based in Oxted, Surrey.
In the early days, a "spa" was made from acrylic or some other thermoplastic, while a "hot tub" was fashioned from teak, cedar or another natural material. Both had therapy jets, a pump and a heater, and were designed for relaxation. These days the terms are used interchangeably, and while natural wooden tubs are available, in this climate it probably makes more sense to buy a man-made shell.
"Hot tubs are low maintenance and running costs are minimal. We guarantee ours will be less than £3.50 a week," says Siobhan Hay, marketing director of HotSpring Spas of Chelmsford.
Hot tubs require no plumbing. All you need is a flat, level surface that can handle the weight of a big pool filled with water, and a garden hose (you can leave the water in for months and drain it with a hose bib connection or inexpensive pump). The heater and jets are built in.

Tony Rogers, 43, a builder, installed a Ripple Spas Premium 300 hot tub in the garden of his three-bedroom home in Ashford, Kent, nearly two years ago. "When it's cold out we use our tub in the evenings, and in the summer we use it as a splash pool. You have the best of both worlds - if it's a hot day I just turn the temperature right down and it's brilliant, the next best alternative to having a swimming pool," he says.
Rogers's wife, Maria, and children, Natalie, 15, and Dane, 12, are big fans of the tub, which sits on decking outside the patio doors to his 85ft garden, protected by a tiled, pitched roof. "My children use it as much as I do," Rogers says. "As my work is physically strenuous I get a lot of aches and pains, and half an hour in the tub relieves stress and tension."
Ripple Spas has 33 hot tubs in its range. All come fully insulated with a five-year guarantee, while the Quarite resin shells are guaranteed for 12 years. Its most expensive model is the five-seater XL 715, or the "TV Tub" as Mark Janney, the company's sales director, calls it, at £14,450. "It has a CD player, AM/FM radio and a television that pops up out of one of the sides," he says. "We do bigger spas, but without tellies."
The company is not the only one to offer special extras. All HotSpring Spas tubs are clad in a maintenance-free polymer called Everwood, which doesn't stain or weather and can be coloured to match your decking. Its top-of-the-line feature is a customised spa audio system, where the entire shell becomes a speaker. This means the sound is concentrated in the hot tub rather than floating off towards the neighbours. The necessary amplifier can be fitted for £1,600.

If your budget is tighter, the Comfort Spa is a 7ft-diameter inflatable hot tub that can comfortably hold four people and has 127 micro jets. It costs £999.
Alternatively you can just rent a hot tub for special occasions. Clearwater Spas hires out a variety of hot tubs for £100 for a three-day weekend, or £150 for an entire week.