full foam vs thermopannels

[Hillbilly Hot Tub]

I was wrong, Clearwater does not spray, nor do they use bubblewrap. It is a 2 inch thick foam that they use for floating islands, and in construction. It has borates infused into the foam to eliminate bugs and rodents. It is foiled on both sides. It is placed on the floor and on all 4 walls of the cabinet, All 5 pieces touching tightly together. We brought it to an insulation guy(not a spa industry guy) and he stated it had an R 50 factor.....now that does not mean the tub as a whole is R 50, so lets not start down that road.

My point I guess is that a dead air space...a tight one with no gaps....with a high quality high R factor insulation works great. Add a 5 inch 2 pound quality cover.... My tub is very effcient. Why waste the heat pumps produce. I have 5 pumps and the other night, 50 degrees outside and all pumps going, my tub heated up 2 degrees in less than an hour from the heat produced by the pumps, heater never came on.

I had a full foam tub, a hawkeye and it cost me much more to run. The cabinet was always warm to the touch. Once you heat the foam up till it reaches the outside of the cabinet it starts "leaking out, kind of like a coffee cup. Now if the cabinet was lined with the foil to reflect the heat back, then filled with foam I think it would be great for insulation purposes.

Still have my gripes about repairs, I guess we have been the unlucky ones that have worked on all the full foam tubs with leaks other than in the control box. We have done a ton of them, multiple brands.

A quality tub is a quality tub....the high end tubs all seem to cost about the same to run, full foam or not, it just depends on how they are built

[Tom]

My point I guess is that a dead air space...a tight one with no gaps....with a high quality high R factor insulation works great. Add a 5 inch 2 pound quality cover....  Why waste the heat pumps produce. (My emphasis - TG)  

An excellent brief summary of the benefits of perimeter insulation.  Conserving energy from the pumps has been part of our system since 1997 (we call it "Free Heat(tm)")  

[BauerN]

I always tell myself:  "I'm just gonna look at BADH, I won't post, I won't post, I..."

I can't resist pointing this out though.  (Even though I sell and service FF spas).

The reason (IMO), that Arctic is doing a much better job than any others (which I'm aware of), was stated earlier, sort of.

Heat will, like many things, follow the path of least resistance.  So, by putting the high R-value foam on the cabinet, and not much on the shell, the least resistance is toward the plumbing and shell (where your water is).  This will effectively recycle the heat from pumps.

Other TP brands I have worked on put more insulation on the shell than the cabinet, therefore making the recycling aspect less effective (least resistance becomes outside of the spa).

I hope I don't ruffle too many feathers with this part:

I live in Montana, it gets kinda cold here (if you've never visited).  The ONLY TP spa I would consider at this point is Arctic.  

[Hillbilly Hot Tub]

Clearwater does not put insulation on the shell either. My point is there are a few good TP companies which have their other advantages.

It still all comes down to quality building and service. Not all in how many can we sell, but how many customers are completely happy.

I live in NH, also very cold as with Washington where Clearwater is made, and Canada for Artic who has all of us beat on "coldness" (I went on vacation to the coast of Canada in August and froze my butt off!)

[BauerN]

Clearwater does not put insulation on the shell either. My point is there are a few good TP companies which have their other advantages.

It still all comes down to quality building and service. Not all in how many can we sell, but how many customers are completely happy.

I'm in complete agreement with both of these points.

I have zero exposure to Clearwater, please pardon me for leaving them out.

[Gary]

Forget about insulation value, I see way more leaks with TP spas than FF spas and when I do fix FF leaks it is no big deal as some try to preach.

I am only a service person and from what I have seen through the years FF is how I prefer a spa to be.

[Tom]

Forget about insulation value, I see way more leaks with TP spas than FF spas and when I do fix FF leaks it is no big deal as some try to preach.

I am only a service person and from what I have seen through the years FF is how I prefer a spa to be.

This is turning into a good discussion.  Since Arctic uses access and ease of repair as a sales argument, I'm interested in comments of this type.  

Gary, have you had the opportunity to work on an Arctic Spa?  We really don't follow the usual TP construction, and other technicians report the reverse, that they prefer to work on an Arctic to FF types.  Perhaps this is just a variation in individual experience?    I do know that in our factory service training courses, we have techs with a lot of experience with other brands who comment on how easy it is to service our spas by comparison.  At that point, though, they wouldn't have much experience about relative frequency of repairs.

Would this vary with location or climate, do you suppose?  I remember one tech from Alaska, who makes a good living fixing frozen spas, saying that Arctic was the only one that made sense from his perspective.

[Gary]

Have never worked on an Artic nor see one up close, not much a dealer base in the deep south.

If and when a spa does leak a non full foam spa is easier but as I stated fixing a full foam is not a big deal either.

If they are sealed up tight and it appears Artic does then I would think it would be insulated just fine.

The other thing that bothers me though is the heat, to lower the life and any electronics just add heat or moisture or a combination of the both. If you seal it up tight the pumps, circuit board will all run much hotter than they were intended. That is why some manufactures of TP add vents that the owner can open if it gets too hot in there. The pumps themselves have fans built into the to remove heat, so if it is a sealed environment it will just recycle the hot air. All kinds of electronics have built in fans, they are not doing it for no reason.

For this reason alone I would never recommend a TP style spa to someone.

[Tom]

Have never worked on an Artic nor see one up close, not much a dealer base in the deep south....The other thing that bothers me though is the heat, to lower the life and any electronics just add heat or moisture or a combination of the both. If you seal it up tight the pumps, circuit board will all run much hotter than they were intended.

Your being in the deep south does indicate a regional influence.   As their name implies, Arctic Spas were engineered for cold climates, and a lot of that engineering is redundant in your service area.  Many who think we are an ordinary TP-type spa are not really familiar with our product.  I invite you to check www.arcticspas.com (and oh, how I hope our new site gets finished soon!)
  
Obviously, we've considered the heat issue, and our components are spec'd for the required internal operating conditions.  Our pump motors, for example, are IP55 (sealed against moisture and air infiltration) and use an aluminum housing with an external fan driving air over cooling vanes.   Electronics are spec'd appropriately as well.

Although we have few dealers in the American south, we have dealers in Australia, the Canary Islands, and Cyprus, to name a few hotspots.  For warm climates like that, in what I consider a monumental irony, we remove two of the insulated doors and replace them with screened, louvered doors to permit cross airflow, or we install our patented Chiller to help keep the interior cold.  The irony is, of course, that we devoted a lot of R&D time to keeping the heat in during a Canadian winter, only to have to find ways to keep it out in more southern latitudes.  

Often mentioned in this context is the myth that "In a TP tub, the unsupported hoses flop around, which causes them to work loose and leak."  Could be true in some, not so in ours.  The simple answer is to remove a couple of the access panels and point out that the hosing is spot-tacked where necessary so it is hardly "unsupported".  A more fun answer  is to hand the person a three-foot piece of the heavy hose used in our products and say, "Here you go, flop it around."  It takes real effort to bend the stuff; it doesn't need a lot of support.

I hope that addresses some of the concerns you raised in your post.

[Hillbilly Hot Tub]

Very well explained Tom. Funny how different our experiences are in different climates on the repair aspect. I will also add that for us, in the cold weather, digging in foam for a leak sucks when it is zero outside. I will also add with Clearwater we have never had to address a leak in the plumbing(keeping fingers crossed!) We have had to replace many light lenses last year(light lens manufacturer issues), very glad it was not a full foam tub for those! Clearwater also spot glues the plumbing where needed and uses decremeted clips for the plumbing to the jets. It still comes down to a quality built spa with a company and dealer that back it!

As well as my tub is insulated, we are having serious heat creep here right now, but only have to deal with it for a month. I can see in the south how this would be a disadvantage. I have the tub set for 98, it wont go below 100 and creeps to 102 when we use it. We have to take 2 doors off to let the heat out this time of year.

[JonJon]

Fluids, compressible (gas) or incompressible (liquid) "Transport" heat by convection. The warmer portion rises as the colder portion sinks to replace the volume occupied by the risen warmer.  In this manner the fluids pump themselves around striving to reach equilibrium wherein the temperature is uniform throughout.  It tries but never reaches perfect equilibrium because heat is always leaving (or entering) the vessel by conduction, mainly, and by radiation (think of the Sun).  Heat is going to travel or flow to cold and cannot be stopped (unlike some claims).  The only thing that can be controlled to a certain degree, is the travel time.  Insulation resists the flow of heat by slowing down the travel time or "Heat transfer flow rate." Within practical physical size limits (cabinet), the amount of insulation reaches a point where more insulation does not buy you enough more energy savings to warrant the cost.

If you want to "win" the energy savings "contest" then close up your "Tub," put the temperature on "Vacation," and never use it!  Just let it set there and look pretty. Use it as a conversation piece.  It is when you bring it up to temp, 102+/- F, pop the cover and blanket (surface of the water heat loss is main culprit), turn on the bubbler (air/water convection/conduction heat loss time reducer. i.e. heat leaves faster), crank up the jets (another air/water convection/conduction heat loss "speeder upper" i.e. pumping, foaming, frothing) The heater has to kick in and play catch up to keep the temperature up.

IMHO (of course what the hell do I know?) cover and blanket off, running full blast, same outside temperature, humidity, wind (for hair splitting science nuts:  same specific gravity of the H2O mix). . . . costs should be very close to equal tub for tub, equipped with a similar number of bells and whistles.

The energy savings would be gained during the storage or vacation mode.  As has been said before many a time, the mean average year round outside (for outside tubs!) temperature has to be accounted for in the insulation equation.  Just like the old days when you had to put a piece of cardboard in front of your radiator and/or have a 110v heater on your engine block/oil pan/cooling system/battery, in your vehicles in Alaska or anywhere in a Snow Belt winter "vs." you took your thermostat out/bought a bigger radiator/ran your heater/bought a higher flow rate fan in Tucson, Arizona or similar climates, in the summer.  The point being one size does not fit all.

A unit built for average conditions will need to be appropriately modified or made easily converted.  i.e. "Winterized/Summerized," if its home is in the extreme climate conditions.  I remember Wisconsin, 28 below in February, 105 above in August.  At the rate energy costs are skyrocketing, I would not be running my hot tub in Wisconsin in the Winter months.

[JonJon]

I always tell myself:  "I'm just gonna look at BADH, I won't post, I won't post, I..."

I can't resist pointing this out though.  (Even though I sell and service FF spas).

The reason (IMO), that Arctic is doing a much better job than any others (which I'm aware of), was stated earlier, sort of.

Heat will, like many things, follow the path of least resistance.  So, by putting the high R-value foam on the cabinet, and not much on the shell, the least resistance is toward the plumbing and shell (where your water is).  This will effectively recycle the heat from pumps.

Other TP brands I have worked on put more insulation on the shell than the cabinet, therefore making the recycling aspect less effective (least resistance becomes outside of the spa).

I hope I don't ruffle too many feathers with this part:

I live in Montana, it gets kinda cold here (if you've never visited).  The ONLY TP spa I would consider at this point is Arctic.  

There is a lot of talk about pump heat reclaiming or recycling.  I am very curious about how many btus, watts, or just plain heat units do pumps produce?  I kind of doubt that it is a staggering amount.  The pumps would have to bring the cabinet air temperature up to a level "above" the temperature of the thin foam, plumbing, vessel shell, and water for the heat to travel through the air by convection, transfer to the thin foam and plumbing by conduction and on through the shell and into the water by conduction. I would venture to guess that, especially in colder climates, the pump or pumps heat energy input would be hard pressed to reach and/or maintain a temperature high enough for this theory to work.  Can this pump heat keep ahead of the heat being sucked out of the side and bottom of the cabinet?  Would it not join with the heat traveling out from the shell and be "shirt tailed" right on out the sides and bottom?  The pump (motor) heat would be going against the tide, so to speak.  It is my understanding that all heat inputs into a containment vessel (cabinet air space; water "Tub") do their heat transferring (or energy loosing) altogether in the same direction(s).

Oh! Oh! Global Warming!

Any suggestions?

I know [unfortunately] one braggart, sleaseball, scumbag "Alleged" Portable Hot Tub/Spa wannabe sales type, that "wants" people to believe that the pump heat in the [his] cabinet makes "his" product(s) "Light Years" ahead of everybody else's.  This is just not true.  It is not even an urban legend "except" in his "**antisocial personality disorder" ravaged, "Alleged" mind!  (Trust me this is not anyone on this forum or website!)

**Google it.  I find it very interesting and entertaining.  Seems to fit this person almost perfectly. IMHO  

[spa_newb]

The war is about to start again.  You can look at some of the older pages and fine whole threads on this.  In a nutshell the dealers that sell thermopane will say they are better and the dealers that sell full foam will say that they are better.  As I am not a dealer or a energy expert (nor do I want to spark the war again) I will refrain from adding my opinion to this question.

Dave

Is it any indication as to what the better solution is when I have not visited a single dealer that sells anything other than Full Foam?

[Tom]

 The pumps would have to bring the cabinet air temperature up to a level "above" the temperature of the thin foam, plumbing, vessel shell, and water for the heat to travel through the air by convection, transfer to the thin foam and plumbing  and on through the shell and into the water by conduction. I would venture to guess that, especially in colder climates, the pump or pumps heat energy input would be hard pressed to reach and/or maintain a temperature high enough for this theory to work.

I point out again that an Arctic has NO foam on the shell.  A temperature gradient of only one degree is sufficient to transfer energy from the cabinet air into the water through the uninsulated shell. Some heat is transferred by radiation, I expect. Provided the cabinet is sufficiently insulated to prevent heat loss, energy will transfer into the water, reducing (but not eliminating) the time the heater is required to run.

[JonJon]

I point out again that an Arctic has NO foam on the shell.  A temperature gradient of only one degree is sufficient to transfer energy from the cabinet air into the water through the uninsulated shell. Some heat is transferred by radiation, I expect. Provided the cabinet is sufficiently insulated to prevent heat loss, energy will transfer into the water, reducing (but not eliminating) the time the heater is required to run.

I do not think that heat loss can be "prevented."  Slowed down through insulation properties yes.  Btu per inch of thickness per square foot of material per delta T [temperature difference i.e. ambient air vs. inside cabinet air] per hour.  The use of a high reflectivity face on the insulation, facing the shell, improves the situation with radiant heat transfer properties, reflected back toward the shell.  If the exterior of the vessel itself was a dark color ["dull" flat black is best] it would absorb the "Reflected" radiant heat most efficiently.