Be honest, your first thought was whoa, Margaritaville makes a hot tub! The answer is YES!! I work for the manufacturer of Margaritaville Hot Tubs, and I've had my hot tub for a few weeks now. I’m going to tell you about my experience so that you’ll feel confident ordering your hot tub and placing it in your backyard.
A Little Bit of Background
My husband and I recently moved into our rental house in late December and noticed it had a concrete hot tub pad in the backyard. We've never lived at a rental house that allowed us to have a hot tub so I immediately shared with my landlord that I work in the world of hot tubs. I told her to let me know if she ever wanted a new one. Well, she didn’t take the bait so we ended up buying our own.
Ordering the Hot Tub
I was really excited for the Margaritaville Hot Tubs line to come out because we live near the beach. Our backyard is like jumping into a Margaritaville commercial and I knew the hot tub would look great. We ordered the 110v, SunBake Lounge, 25-jet hot tub with the parrot head cabinet. We went with the 110v for several reasons. The main being, our rental house doesn’t have 220v wiring and we’re military which means we will be moving a lot, so a plug-n-play can work anywhere. We were so excited to get it, the hot tub seriously couldn’t come soon enough!
Delivery
In the days of Amazon Prime waiting weeks for a hot tub felt like a year but it was well worth it! About 3-weeks post-order I got a phone call from a shipping company who had a package for me and needed to schedule a delivery (Note: Shipping times may differ based on the location). I immediately called them back to schedule the soonest date they had available, which was 4 days out because they called me on a Thursday and don’t deliver on weekends, doh!
Monday rolled around, and the delivery guy showed up during his designated time slot. He asked me where I wanted the hot tub placed. Since I knew it was curbside delivery I didn’t think I’d have an option, but I decided to see if he would place it in the backyard for me. I showed him our back gate and said “through here” in which he replied “The forklift is way too big to fit through that gate” so he placed it under our carport (image below).
Placing the Hot Tub on its Foundation
Now came the task of getting it from our carport to the hot tub pad in our backyard. I tasked my husband with this job. I knew that the hot tub only weighed 370 lbs dry but I’m not going to lie, seeing it in the crate all packaged up made me question if we needed to hire some people to place it for us.
My husband rounded up a strong co-worker to help move it and the process began. First, we un-packaged it from the wood crate but kept the actual hot tub in its packaging of plastic with cardboard and thin foam sheeting. We had to flip it upwards on its side to fit it through our gate, so we located the control panel before flipping it. The control panel was clearly marked on the outside of the packaging with a DO NOT PLACE ON THIS SIDE. My husband and his co-worker flipped the hot tub onto a moving blanket and plywood (which we got from the crate). They slid the hot tub up to the step of our carport and placed the plywood over the step. From there they created a makeshift shoulder dolly out of surfboard straps and lifted it over the step. Then they slid the hot tub over the plywood on a moving blanket until it reached the concrete pad. In total they had to move it about 300ft.
Some tips:
- Buy actual shoulder dolly straps from Home Depot
- Get new or multiple moving blankets (ours ripped because it was so old)
- Get some plywood so that it’s easy to slide
- Get a square furniture dolly to easily place it on and move it
Living With a Hot Tub
The hot tub took about 12 hours to heat to 100 degrees with a max temperature of 104. We go in it about 2-3x a week and absolutely love it! It has been wonderful to use post work, after hiking, when friends are over, and on nights where we're just plain bored. We got the lounge model even though some co-workers advised against it. I guess people don't like the lounge after awhile but it's honestly my favorite seat in the hot tub. The jets are strong and the maintenance has been very easy. So far, we have put chlorine in it and had to raise our alkalinity levels and that's it.
I personally love the 110v. The main difference between a 110v and 220v is the pump can't simultaneously run the jets and heater at the same time. This means that if you're in the hot tub for extended periods of time the temperature will decrease. So far, this has not been a problem for us and we've been in it over an hour with no temperature drop.
