Buying The Right Swim Spa For Your Family’s Needs

As swim spas continue to grow in popularity, so do the number of options for swim spa buyers. Every year, more and more hot tub and pool manufacturers begin to produce their own lines of swim spas, with their own unique pros and cons.

With so many choices now available to potential swim spa buyers it can be tough to decide which swim spa is right for them, and their family. Today, we will help you narrow down your search with 3 questions.

1) HOW BIG SHOULD YOUR SWIM SPA BE?

Most swim spa manufacturers have several sizes of swim spa available. The first thing you should do to narrow down your available choices is to pick the size of swim spa that is right for your family.

How Big Is Your Family?

How do you choose the right swim spa size? Start by asking yourself how many people will be using the swim spa regularly. If the answer is just 1 or 2, you can pretty much buy any size of swim spa you like. In the interest of saving money, a 14′ swim spa would probably be best. Any larger and you’re just spending money for more area that you don’t really need.

If on the other hand you have a couple of young kids that will likely have friends over for a pool party, you should look for a swim spa that has a large swimming area to give them room to move around and play. In this case it is usually better to go with either a 17′ or 19′ swim spa.

How Tall Are The People That Will Be Using The Swim Spa?

If one or more people using the swim spa are quite tall (over 6′ 2″) you might want to consider buying a slightly larger swim spa than you otherwise would. A 12′ or 14′ swim spa simply won’t be long enough for them to comfortably swim in. Upsizing to a 16′ or 17′ swim spa will allow them to swim comfortably without fear of hitting their legs off the seats or steps at the back end of the pool.

2) HOW WILL YOU BE USING THE SWIM SPA?

When it comes to picking out the right swim spa for your family, one of the biggest factors to consider is how you and your family will actually use the swim spa. For simplicity sake, we will split these potential usages into two categories; fun & relaxation, and fitness.

Fun & Relaxation

While swim spas were originally created to be the ultimate fitness pool, more and more people are buying them simply as a fun or relaxing splash pool. If this is the case with your family, ignore all of the fitness options out there and look at three things:

• Does the swim spa have enough room to fit your family?

As we just covered, you should only be considering swim spas that have enough room to fit everyone in your family.

• Does the swim spa have enough seats when we want to relax?

Along with their swim jets and swim tank, most swim spas also have therapeutic massage seats similar to those found in hot tubs. If you’re planning on using the swim spa to relax and de-stress after a long day, you’ll want to make sure that there are enough seats for you and your partner to relax. If you’re planning on regularly having friends over, look for a swim spa with 4 seats to accommodate the extra people.

Nobody likes having to spend a bunch of time maintaining their swim spa, especially if the whole point of buying it was to relax! The reality is that most swim spas are made with filtration systems meant for hot tubs. While these systems work just fine in hot tubs, they’re not designed to properly clean the amount of water found in swim spas. The result is a swim spa that needs to run constantly, is hard to keep clear and requires constant cleaning and maintenance.

Fortunately, not all swim spas are like this. Hydropool’s Self-Cleaning swim spas, for example, use a highly efficient pressure side filtration system designed for use in in-ground pools. The result is that all of the water in the swim spa can be filtered in 40 minutes or less. This not only keeps the water in the swim spa clear, it also drastically reduces the amount of time you need to spend cleaning and maintaining the swim spa. In fact, most Self-Cleaning swim spas only require about 5-10 minutes of maintenance per week!

Fitness

If you’re planning on using the swim spa for fitness, you’ll want to pay special attention to the swim systems used by the different manufacturers. Unfortunately, most swim spa manufacturers still don’t know how to make a good swimming experience. They use large hot tub style jets with underpowered pumps that create a weak, turbulent swimming experience.

The problem with those swim spa manufacturers is that they simply don’t have the experience required to create a good swimming experience. Hydropool, on the other hand, have been perfecting the swimming experience in their swim spas for over 25 years. In that time, they have developed one of the most powerful, smooth, and controllable swim current systems in the world.

Their new V-Twin swim current system is able to move over 1400 gallons of water per minute; enough to create a 10 km/h swim current! Not only that, their patented V-Twin jets spread the current out over a wide area while also cutting out turbulence created by the pumps. The result is a smooth, powerful swim current that anyone can enjoy!

3) WILL YOU BE USING THE SWIM SPA YEAR ROUND?

The last thing to ask yourself when picking out a swim spa for your family is if you’ll be using it year round, or just in the summer. One of the major advantages of swim spas over traditional pools is that they can continue to be used even when the outside temperatures dip below freezing. That’s not to say that all of them work equally as well in the cold weather, however.

While all swim spas are safe to use in the winter, some will cost you a fortune to do so. If they’re not properly built for winter, swim spas can cost $500 or more per month to run when the temperatures dip below 0C.

If you’re planning on using your swim spa in the wintertime, make sure that it is built with Canadian winters in mind. Hydropool swim spa are made in Canada. They know how cold it can get and build their swim spas to run year round, without costing you an arm and a leg.

Hydropool’s exclusive Hydrowise swim spa insulation system utilizes two layers of insulation; one around the shell of the swim spa, the other around the cabinet and floor of the swim spa. This 2nd layer of insulation around the cabinet and floor helps seal in waste heat generated by the pumps and heater, further increasing the energy efficiency of the swim spa while also protecting the pumps and electronics from the harsh winter elements.

TRY BEFORE YOU BUY

Following this guide should help you narrow down your swim spa choices to a select few that properly meet your needs. How do you pick which one to buy? Try them out! Most swim spa retailers now offer free “wet tests” where you can come into the store and swim in one of their swim spas.

At the end of the day, wet tests are the only true way to tell which swim spa is right for you. You wouldn’t buy a car without test driving it first, why spend $20,000 or more on a swim spa without seeing if you actually like it!