Review: SaluSpa Ibiza Inflatable Hot Tub

When I agreed to test a SaluSpa Ibiza hot tub for work (it’s a hard life, I know), I figured it would be a relatively simple process. I thought I’d just put it on my deck and fill ’er up—you can just put them anywhere, right? Wrong. At 222 gallons of water, this thing would weigh over 1 ton if you put two average-size adults in it, let alone the four to six that the gigantic box says it can hold.

So no, you can’t just place it on a deck, unless your deck is specifically built to withstand a literal ton of weight and water. In my backyard, straight on the grass, it would be. My going-to-native-prairie, raccoon-filled backyard, surrounded by shady oak trees with a penchant for raining branches and walnuts the second the wind hits more than 3 mph.

I figured I could just plug it in anywhere. Wrong again. Technically, it’s supposed to be on an isolated circuit. The manual recommends having a professional electrician come and set up an outlet dedicated to your hot tub and your hot tub alone. Even with the plug having built-in GCFI, similar to a hair dryer, you don’t want to mess around with mixing water and electricity. I just plugged it into a heavy-duty outdoor extension cord (another no-no, please do not do this) and crossed my fingers, running to unplug it from the wall on my back porch every time it rained because I was terrified of starting a fire—but not so terrified that I listened to the instructions in the first place. I digress.

Speaking of rain, I thought that the cover would protect my hot tub from the elements. Third time’s the charm—I was wrong again. The SaluSpa Ibiza has a nifty floating square that does give the tarplike cover some structure, but water, acorns, ants, and mosquito eggs still pooled on the top whenever it rained. In August in northern Illinois, this happens frequently. Don’t get me started on the earwigs. To quote World of Warcraft, I was not prepared. There were no string lights, no romantic citronella candles, no relaxing under the stars and watching the snow fall peacefully. I was a sweaty girl in the middle of a heat wave with a job to do.

And one other snafu—when the hot tub arrived in late December, I did not anticipate that two weeks later, I’d slip on ice and snap my ankle. Pesky Midwestern weather at it again. After months of rehabilitation, I finally got the tub set up in late summer—exactly the opposite time it would’ve been ideal to do so. None of these factors are a detriment to the hot tub itself. But my review requires several grains of salt.

On to the Lede

The SaluSpa Ibiza is easy to set up, but the instructions are bad. I followed a lot of the setup alongside this YouTube video and puzzled my way through the rest. You basically set up the pump, use it to inflate the 6-by-6-foot body of the tub and the floating cover, and then fill the tub up with water. The tarplike top cover snaps around the tub with carseat-style clasps that aren’t the easiest to unclip with wet hands, but that’s nitpicky. They work fine. My tub filled faster than I thought it would, in around 90 minutes, but it took nearly two days to heat up, even in the summer heat. I can imagine this would take much longer in the brutal Illinois winters.

Photograph: Louryn Strampe