Spa Page Too • Spa Chemistry • Spa Repair • Spa Operating Costs

The spa was a complete surprise! Ro's parents in a characteristic yet completely unexpected act of extreme generosity decided that we needed a spa in our patio room. Ro and her mom picked out the best one, It's an LA Spas Quest 8000. We purchased it at the American Spa Store in Santa Clara. The photo below is a top down view showing all the seats, jets and floobers.

Before the spa could go in, we needed to make our patio worthy of it. This meant that the old '70s fake walnut paneling on the wall had to go. We also had to install a 60 Amp 220 Volt circuit to power this beastie. AND a wall had to come out (temporarily) so the spa could go in.

I replaced the paneling with some exterior siding and Ro took care of the redwood stain. We filled in the soffit, re-opened the vents a previous home-owner walled over, and added some lights both inside and out. The wiring took a lot of effort to install. Ro schlepped a 3-4 AWG w/ground cable through the attic from one end of the house to the other. This wire weighs about one pound per foot (we used about 90 feet) and it is very inflexible. To give you an idea of how big 4 AWG wire is: imagine the wire connected to most light switches in the wall. It's 14 AWG. If you take seven of those wires and twist them together, that's one 4 AWG wire. Take three of those plus one that's a little smaller and that makes up the cable for the spa power. (i.e. IT'S BIG !)