Bringing an 18yo Jacuzzi back to life
#5
We've had a Jacuzzi hot tub that we bought new about 18 years ago sitting on our back deck.  I know its probably past its use by date, but it has kept on going till one day that it didn't.  Previously I had replaced the top cover and re-sided it in cedar tongue and groove when the original siding had rotted away.   But about 2 years ago, it stopped running and sat over a winter with very little water in it.  You know where this one is going...

Last year I decided to see what I could do to bring it back to life.  I filled it up and it seemed to hold water well enough.  I hot wired each pump to make sure they all still worked and they did.  I did my research and found out that you can replace all the electronic controls with aftermarket stuff so that is the route I decided to take.  What had happened is that the heater eventually shorted out and the current fried the control board.  I could have bought a used board and new heater but I had no idea if the top controls were also fried.  This aftermarket set had new topside controls and it would have all ran about the same.  So I placed my order with SpaDepot and got my new controller as well as a new Ozone generator and some new filters.

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With the new controller installed wired in, I filled the tub up and was excited to get a first use for all my money spent.  But after a day or so I noticed that the water level was going down quickly.  Probably leaking out maybe 5 or more gallons a day.  I tried the stuff you dump in to slow leaks, but no joy,   So I drained it and it sat for another year. 

But since I was already in for about 600 on the new parts I decided that I needed to give it another go before I scrapped it and filled in the deck.  This would entail jacking the thing out of the sunken platform it sat on and somehow getting it on a side so I could access the bottom to find the leak.  How hard could that be?

As it turns out, for an older guy in his 60's it is decently hard.  I eventually got it out of the spot it was in and removed all my cedar siding from the first refurb.  Mice had been in the thing for a long time and it stank from the urine.  Lovely.  And the underlying wooden structure was less than stellar as well.  18 years outside takes a toll.

I had rebuilt the deck it was sitting on about 12 years earlier and the decking boards in one spot were starting to rot out as well from moisture.  That will be another project this fall when I replace all those boards with Trex.

A neighbor and I were able to jack the tub up to about 40 degrees, but couldnt seem to get it much higher without the pucker factor becoming too great.  Sleeping on it for a couple of nights I finally had a brainstorm.  I have a floating dock in the back yard that I had mounted a boat winch on a 4x4 mount to drag a boat up on the dock.   I removed it from the dock and screwed it to the deck and then ran the strap over the tub to a reinforced 2x8 I had screwed to the tubs structure with a large lag bolt.  Using the floor jacks, the boat winch and some 2x lumber I was able to slowly get the thing up higher and higher till it finally got to the point where the boat winch pulled it up vertical without effort.

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The tub sat on a plastic pan that I'm guessing was ABS.  It was held on with mostly rusted out screws that I managed to get out or cut with a sawsall.  Once the last screw came out, I got out of the way and the pan came down.  Did I mention the problem with the Mice?   All the chewed up, peed on insulation was sitting in the bottom.

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Yes it was disgusting, but I was in this far and I already knew the mice had been living there for a while.  So I cleaned up the insulation and it filled up my garage trash can twice.

But where you have mice, you have critters that eat mice.  In this case a four foot black snake decided to peek out and see what was going on.

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He or she was curious enough to come out a couple of times.  I managed to get it out with a reacher  since it decided that it would try and coil around it python like and that was enough.  I dumped it in the grass and it made a beeline for my shed.  Later on I found it back in the tub, but it decided there wasnt much going on anymore and I didnt see it again.

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Once the tub was opened up and I had removed all the chewed up foam, I started probing around to find the leak.  I got lucky, one part of the foam on the bottom was totally saturated and I dug out the foam with my fingers to find a check valve that had split in two.  I replaced the pvc fitting after digging out around it and used some thickened pvc glue along with getting enough clearance by shifting the flexpvc back to fit it in.  Sorry, no pix of this step.

6 cans of spray in triple expanding foam didnt make much of a dent, but it filled in the spot I had dug out.  I lowered the tub back down without the pan and filled it up in several stages so that if there was still a leak I could isolate it.  I gave each stage several days and marked the levels with tape.  Each time I didnt see much if any drop in the level over several days.  So I emptied it again and one more time I jacked it back up, this time to put the pan back on.  Of course the frame wasn't totally square any more, but I got it back together none the less.  

Rather that trying to put all the cedar siding back on, I decided to try a new material, some PVC sheet goods my neighbor got for me from Lowes.  I used 2 4x8 foot sheets ripped down to 24 inches and cut the lengths to match the spacing of the wood supports of the tub.  I used some exterior trim type screws to hold it on after stuffing some extra batt insulation in spots eaten out by the mice.  BTW, I also sprayed out much of the foam interior to get ride of the urine stench, keeping the pump motors as dry as possible.  I also patched up the hole I think they used to get in with some aluminum and pop rivets.

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Since I am resurfacing the deck, I added in 2x joists and used blocking to stiffen it all up.  Currently the tub is sitting directly on the joists but once the new decking is on, it will sit on top of that.

Since this tub had curved corners, I wanted to replicate the siding it had used.  I ended up kerfing all the corner pieces on the back side by cutting slots about half way through and about a half inch apart.  Initially I used a heat gun to soften the PVC but after the first two I realized that they were bending mostly due to the pressure just from me and the screws I kept adding along.

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To cover up the joints, I ripped some leftover pvc into about a 2 inch width and then resawed it to half thickness.  I overlaid the joints at first with some pvc cement but later with some ALEX caulk temporarily held in with screws.  On the front where the electronics are I made the panel with the overlaps to cover the joints glued with PVC and held it all in with some stainless pan head screws.

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I could have done more to cover up the screws but the more I thought about it, the more I figured it looks pretty good the way it is and it is an 18yo hot tub after all.    I repainted the cover lift support and remounted it and painted the sides with some oil based exterior enamel.  

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Hopefully once the new deck boards are done it will start to look decent again.  In the meantime I have my hot tub back.

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Would I do it all over again.  Probably not, but sometimes you just get a bug to do it and I hated to see that 600 dollars spent go down the tubes.  If I get another 5 years out of this tub, I will be more than happy.
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#6
That was a lot of work, you're gonna need a soaker.
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#7
(07-15-2020, 10:49 PM)Phil Thien Wrote: That was a lot of work, you're gonna need a soaker.

I've had several. The whole process of jacking it out of the deck, propping it up, fixing the leak and then testing it x2 and making a new shell for it took a couple of months. Was quite the eyesore for a while. Wife is happy it looks sorta normal again.
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#8
Great job. When we had a hot tub, it drove me crazy when it went down. I researched online and kept fiddling with it until I got it running. I didn't have to do nearly as much work as you did. My hats off to ya, 
Cool
I no longer build museums but don't want to change my name. My new job is a lot less stressful. Life is much better.

Garry
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