Our basement door has a patio that is about 8' X 16'. Great place for a hot tub, except the logical place to put the hot tub was taken up by pool equipment. What? Who builds a pool and then puts all the equipment (including the electrical) 5 feet from the pool and below the water level? The previous owners, that's who.
We'll take care of that in a later post.
Anyway.
We decided that putting the hot tub in front of the door would be a great SHORT TERM solution. 4 years later, despite the coolness factor of opening the door to get in the hot tub, we decided it was time to move the pool equipment and the hot tub to more logical locations.
Step one involved jumping into a semi frigid pool to put a plug in the bottom drain. Wow. That was really, really fun...
Once the plug was in place, we were able to cut all the pipes and move the equipment out of the way. We had to remove all the sand from our sand filter in order to move it. I was excited to replace the old sand with new. It was really interesting to see the innards of a sand filter and get a good understanding of how it works.
We relocated the equipment 20 feet farther from the pool, up against the side if the house next to the chimney.
We had to run new pipes from the pool bottom drain and the skimmer drain to the equipment's new home. Time to dig!
In addition to the drain pipes, we ran a new gas line (the original gas line got taken out in the first scoop full of dirt in the septic tank replacement, despite calling Digline...) and conduit for the pool light. Our pool came with a light, but I have never trusted it. It's duct taped in the middle. For me, swimming in the dark is better than light from a questionable light that may or may not electrocute everyone. So, we put in some conduit in hopes of someday getting a new, properly placed pool light.
Once the pipe was ready, we plumbed all the pool equipment in. Then we had to tackle the electrical. Our house is an old house that is stretched to its electrical limits. Instead of running new service, we decided to repurpose an interior outlet as an exterior outlet. Once the outlet was done, we added a programmable clock to manage the on and off cycles required for proper water circulation.
We added new sand to the filter, primed the pump, plugged everything in and crossed our fingers. Thankfully it all worked!! Hooray!!!
Once the pool equipment was moved, we addressed the hot tub. We had to clean up the area where the equipment had been, and build a retaining wall to prop up the corner of the pool deck.
A little more digging and some creative paver placement got the job done.
With a little help from our friends, we pushed slid the hot tub into its new spot. It was a close one...
Now all we had to do was run a new 220 line in conduit from the junction box to the hot tub, fill it up and enjoy. Piece of cake!
