Question: I want to own a
Haven Spa and not be forced by economics
to purchase an inferior spa? I just don't
understand how spas can be so expensive?
A: I know that many people are in
need of owning a spa for heath, enjoyment
and life improvement. I was in the
same boat. When I first got
into the spa industry, I drove a 12 year
old car, because I had a family and
mortgage to support. I bought my
first portable spa with payments and it
was worth every penny in interest.
It was also a very good well made
spa. I had the advantage of
knowing spas. That spa never needed
any warranty service either.
When I needed extra money, I always had to
borrow it and make payments. I still
do that, now rarely, in my business, but
the end result of borrowing money allowed
the business to grow.
I do not consider some (most) spas to
be a “home improvement”. Rather, they
are a waste of money.
Consider that a Haven Spa is a 20 or 30
year item, depending on how you treat
it: It is an actual HOME IMPROVEMENT,
not a detriment.
The "short version": Buy a Haven
which is a home improvement, and if you
need to finance it with your home
improvement loan, it will still pay for
itself in savings.
One of the best sources for money to
purchase a quality spa is in your
home. I do not recommend this
for most anything else but to expand your
home, or to put in real
improvements. I do not
consider some (most) spas to be a “home
improvement”. Rather, they are an
aggravation and waste of money.
I do not recommend putting money on
a spa that is going to cause problems to
people who can barely afford to own a
spa. Those are the people who also
cannot afford to pay to have them fixed
regularly. (Labor Costs, for hot tub
repair, today are over $100 per hour in
many cities.)
If you buy a cheap hot tub or used, you
need to be mechanically/electrically
trained and inclined and forget about any
support for your purchase. You buy cheap,
because it is all you can afford and I
hope it works out for you. The DIY spirit
is good. But you cannot make a lemon spa
into a good spa by hard work.
We have service customers who bought cheap
and have no mechanical electrical
skills. The spa had a very short
warranty, and is now in need of
repairs. Normally these spas are
purchased from mass merchants. When
they get the repair bill for $500-$1000 on
a new $4,000 to $6000 spa is should be a
“wake up call” and it will be a “sign of
things to come.” You can figure
about every 6 months to be on first name
basis with your hot tub service guy.
I have a friend (spa service technician of
24 years) who called me the other
day. He told me that Lowes is
getting some cheap line of spas.
Then he said: “I guess that will
insure job security” for him,
because he is doing warranty work
for the other companies.
I have, personally, participated in
warranty for 16 different spa companies,
and Haven Spas are nothing like those
spas. We are truly the least amount
of warranty company in the spa
business. I mean we don't do much
warranty work at all, because the spas
work so well, as they were designed to.
When you pay way too little for something,
it costs you money in the long run.
On some spa brands you pay high for the
original prices and you pay a lot for
keeping it running. In the case of
poor quality spas, it is a lot of money in
the long run. I see people dumping
those spas by giving them away or they sit
in the back yard for years, before going
to the dump. Nobody is going to put
$1200 into a 6 year old spa that is worth
$1000 in running condition. By the
way, Haven Spas have the highest resale
value of any spa I have ever sold. 10 year
old models sell for 60% to80% of the
original price.
Typically the spa company's main
line of spas is sold through
dealers. Those dealers, do not like
threats from Lowes or Costco, Target,
Sears, or Walmart (nor HavenSpas) on their
income, so you know the Mass Merchant
version spas are cheap and made to not
compete with the main line of spas.
Since I consider the latest “premium”
corporate spas to be a poor to mediocre
value product, you have to realize
my opinion of the mass merchant version of
those spas. Why buy something that
is built so cheap? Don’t you know
what the professional spa service people
think? My number one question I pose
to spa shoppers: "How much do you know
about spas?" Don’t you know how much
electricity it costs to run a poorly
insulated spa? Don't you know that spa
repair people are in great demand and get
up to $150 per hour.
Enough of that.
When you realize that you need to spend
some "serious" extra money to get a better
product, then you need to find the money,
do a budget, and you need to evaluate the
total costs of ownership. If you pay
$6,000-12000 for a run of the mill spa and
it breaks down in 5 years, when the
warranty is over (and with several trips
out to fix it under warranty: CLUE), you
can pay for just one service call, $700 on
average, and if a main component is dead;
$1500. If you can get 10 to 20 years
on the same type of part (Haven Spas),
isn't that a better way to go?
In the back of my book “How Spas Are Made”
I give an average comparison between the
standard spas of Southern CA and a
Haven spa. Most of it has to do with
cost of ownership, not just the cost of
the original purchase. You could
make the interest payments on a Haven Spa
and still save a few thousand dollars over
the life of the spa. This comparison is
NOT and exaggeration. Since we have been
increasing the "distance" of quality way
beyond any competitor, since moving to
Holland with our factory, the numbers are
much greater in savings by owning a Haven
Spa.
http://www.spaspecialist.com/CostVS.Price.html
Every Time I turn on a Haven Spa and
listen to it run, just makes me feel
good. It sounds smooth and
powerful, as the well tuned machines
they are.
The Haven way of building and producing a
product, gives you an idea of where we
come from.
I have seen plenty of spa shells that have
lasted over 20 years and what they look
like. I have seen properly applied
fiberglass shells, made with acrylic that
are in great shape at over 30 years.
That is why we choose the Acrylic/vinyl
ester/fiberglass composite (five layers of
hand rolled glass) for our shells as just
one example. Our shells follow the example
of extremely expensive boats, like those
made in Holland. Holland is famous
for yachts and cruisers. After all
they were the first to build boats using
technology. This is why we see this tiny
country, has had so much influence around
the world.
We also choose the best motors, I
know of. I am constantly looking for
better parts, and we now have a newer more
modern motor on all of our spas.
This, along with the DAIT,
and our beefed up control system will make
Haven SE and SC spas the longest
lasting without the constant visits by the
service people.
Our new cabinets are HEAVY and have the
most durable composite known to mankind
for spas. Our spas weigh on average over
1000 LB.
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There have been plenty of poorly
made spa shells, and I have seen the
results and I have seen improper use of
water pumps and poor filter designs.
It is rampant in the spa industry. The
utter disregard for the ANSI
safety standards by the majority of
the spa industry is really bad.
To me, a 40 plus years engineer, it is
standard engineering we use. For
instance if a pump manufacturer gives
instructions on the parameters of use for
a pump: Don't you think they should be
followed? We actually exceed them
and put in safety and overkill in every
part.
How about the use of the control system
parameters?
Structural engineering and composite
engineering principles? Every spa I
see, other than Haven, has horrible
concessions on standard engineering, and
they sound like "thrashing machines" to me
when they run. I actually, cringe when I
would listen to them. I would say to
myself: "Those poor parts, being beaten to
death."
Forcing parts to not run correctly is a
disgrace to and a disrespect for all the
great scientists and engineers who came
before.
Every Time I turn on a Haven Spa and
listen to it run, just makes me feel
good. It sounds smooth and powerful,
as the well tuned machines they are.
Haven Spas are my personal answer to this
problem of poor engineering in the spa
industry.
However, they are budget priced (factory
direct) to purchase, And much less
costly to own over the life of the
spas. After 15 years of ownership,
you will still have a spa running well and
still reliable.
If you look at the Haven line of spas and
the prices, you will see that we do
not cut the strength of the product, we
cut some features (not all can be 5 pumps)
, but still maintain therapy in all the
spas. If you want real value,
highest quality at a factory direct
price, for your hard earned money,
you need a
state of the art and engineering, Haven
Spa. In my opinion, there is
no other choice.
You cannot put twin 4 HP pumps and
30 jets and sell it for less than $9000 to
consumers, unless it is low quality
(junque) and has poor service life.
Haven Spas are not made in China or
Indonesia, and the cost to produce a truly
American Parts made in Holland is
higher, because of the higher quality of
lifestyle we are supporting. (People
want higher wages for employees...well we
pay higher wages in Holland with full
benefits.) How do these “fly by night”
companies sell so cheap, something that is
made in America? You think about
that. Cheap illegal labor is the
most common methods or made in Mexico
where there is no protections for
employees and need for safety regulations.
Most manufacturing has left the US, but at
least some of it is still in the
continent. Haven Spas are Made In
the Holland where Luxury Yachts are
made. Some sub-assemblies components
come from Italy and no Chinese
parts. Fortunately, for
you Dutch quality is superb. The
Internet has allowed us a market that has
a lot less “steps” in the economic “food
chain”.
So, to answer the question, you see, why I
have to educate on the economics of owning
a better product. Is it worth
it to purchase a spa that is designed to
outlast the rest, and has the lowest
energy consumption of any spa with similar
features?
Absolute best therapy. When spa
companies put in tons of weak tiny jets,
so they have huge numbers of 100's of
jets, there ARE NO PUMPS capable of making
those jets work at optimum in a spa like
that. You cannot even put enough
pumps under the cabinet to run them, so it
is utter ridiculous nonsense.
We use FULL size therapy jets and put full
power of the pumps to the jets, to get
optimum therapy.
Yes, it is worth getting a “home
improvement loan” on the equity in your
house, in order to own one of the best
home improvements there is. Contact
any bank on this.. This interest
rates are lower and tax deductible,
because it is a home improvement. Most of
us don’t have $12 to
$20 K around to buy anything with,
so if you are wanting something that is
worth going to the effort to make payments
on, it better be worth it. Don't you
agree?
The other thing and a very important part
of our business ethics is that we respect
your money. Most people work hard to
make a living these days. The facts
are that those who want a good lifestyle,
have to work longer hours and both husband
and wife have to work.
Does a spa sales person, who knows nothing
about spas, nor engineering and is
reciting a memorized sales pitch,
and does not know he/she is selling some
rip off spa, like a Hoh Sprind Spa
product, respect your money? It is not
intentional..It is ignorance. I feel sorry
for both the salesperson, store owners and
their customers, for perpetuating this lie
("We have the best spas, bla bla bla!) on
the public.
No, they only want your money! The
ethics is that they will deceive you (and
the salesperson selling the spa too
you), into purchasing a stamped out
piece of plastic (stuffed with foam to
hold it together so it wont crumble under
the load of water and people), because it
feeds the corporate machine. Large
corporate spas are the worst, because of
the way they are produced and the amount
of human resources that are wasted, but
still have to be paid wages. The
larger they are the more wasted time and
effort there is, because they follow the
archaic corporate design that is taught in
college. Hasn't anybody besides me
figured this out. The schools are
teaching “old school” business management
in the age of world economy.
Do you have any idea how much it costs to
live in southern California? It is
virtually impossible to produce a quality
spa in Southern California and pay the
wages needed to buy a home. Hoh
Sprind Spas is doomed to extinction, by
the nature of how and where they run the
business. Using automation and cheap
materials sold as "the best" is pure evil,
in my opinion. The real market value
for the time, materials and energy to
produce these cheap things is about $4000
to $5000 at full retail for the biggest
models they have. Yet with the marketing
hype and cheap production, they sell them
for 10,000 and more.
You are going to see them in the mass
merchants, "burning" all their dealers as
a last ditch effort to keep the corporate
machine going. (We already saw that
with HO Sprigs and that failed. They were
"screwing" their own dealers. And yet the
dealers kept on trying to compete. )
Every mass merchant spa has been replaced
many times with some other company's
product, that were stupid enough or
desperate enough to try it.
The only thing that will save them is to
spin off to small efficiently operated
companies.
Now it is 2017 and MOST spa factories have
gone bankrupt and have been bought by
venture capitol marketing companies and
these spas are worse now than ever. All of
the major brands, today, are far worse
than they were in quality.
Basically, they are ruining the industry's
reputation which is already pretty
horrible. I hate reading
articles like
this. The total ignorance of
engineering in the spa industry, coupled
with greed, is why articles like this
exist.
Every time there was a "recession" and the
other brands cut the quality down to bare
bone, cheap, we kept raising the "bar" and
came out with spas such as the Super
Custom Fallsburg (and all the Super Custom
Models) that is now legendary in that it
has outlasted ever spa ever made and
outperforms all of them after 20 years of
production. Today the SCF is only
made to order and is $29,000.00.
And it is not the most expensive
spa either, but it is the most powerful
and longest lasting on earth.
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