Cleaning

 The FIRST thing with a second hand tub is cleaning. 

This one appeared to need more than most, though it wasn't actually too bad - The crystals inside (at the bottom of the image) dissolved easily with water and tipped out! 

One of the GREAT things about the Softub is that whilst they look awkward, they are surprisingly reasonable to handle and impressively lightweight (Specs ~ Legend 220 - approx. 32kg)

I managed to pull my Jeep up to the wall and move the Softub onto it and over it, without too much hassle and that's on my own. Admittedly I am 6'4" and fair built, but no where near as young as I used to be!

Getting the Softub on its side and rolling it, is impressively easy, which is handy for cleaning and hosing out. Need to be a little careful with the hose attachments and take off the jubilee clip fittings. Hot water softens these and makes things far easier! 


I removed the 5 jet directors and took them inside to clean properly in the sink.

I used a kettle with hot water in to pour on the filter, which softened it up and removed it. I ran it under water and used a brush along with water to clean inside each of the 190 filter folds - I had some filter cleaner in the chemicals that were given with the Softub and made up a solution to leave the filter in a plastic mop bucket over night to sanitise. 

It is the medium aged Softub filter, snap on but offset 5" fitting (Older use a screw in, newer a 6" snap on) - I will buy some new filters (£28-£35 eBay Darly SC760) but that will be once I've got the tub running and have changed the water.

I'm expecting to empty the tub a short while after the first fill. No matter how good i've cleaned things and checked stuff over, the only real way to get things right is to use the tub for a short while, find the problems and issues, fix and then make it how you want it. 

From the initial positioning it fits in the space pretty well. I had some yoga mat squares for the old Lay-Z-Spa tub. They're old and dirty and starting to degrade so i'll probably get nice thick new round mat but the squares will even the slabs out for the initial testing. 

I LIKE having an insulating mat below the tub. It probably isn't strictly required as the Softub has a built in pad, but you can never have too much insulation with these things. On the inflatables it also makes it comfier and protects from any protrusions. Given a working Softubs value, protecting it makes sense to. A general Win/Win/Win


You can see the lid lip shrinkage here. I'm going to have to nourish the vinyl to make that lip soft and supple again to get it to go over the gap between the lid and the tub. Worst case will be a new cover, though I hope it doesn't come to that.

Conclusions

Surprisingly reasonable to clean. Easier to move than my inflatable hot tub, fits in the space nicely and should work well for my use case.



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