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Spa Chemicals--Where Can You Get the Best Deal?

Spa chemicals are one of those fun little ongoing expenditures that we don't always remember to factor into the price of the hot tub. That and the increase in the electricity bill. We've had a hot tub for about three years now and shopped around a bit for spa chemicals.

First off, we discovered much better deals by shopping online rather than wandering into the local spa dealer. We bought our hot tub locally which afforded us the opportunity to try it before we bought it, but there's really not any reason to buy chemicals locally when you can have them delivered to your door for cheaper.

You need to be careful when shopping online to watch out for high shipping charges. It's no good if you save money on the price of the chemicals only to end up paying a higher total due to shipping.

Definitely buy in bulk. The more pounds of bromine tablets (or whatever your sanitizer of choice) you buy, the better deal you get per pound. Spa chemicals stay good for a long time as long as you fasten the lids tightly and store them somewhere dry.

After trying a handful of online retailers, we settled on Spa Depot. As of our last order, they were offering free shipping on all their orders within the lower 48 states. Our shipments of spa chemicals have always arrived within 3 business days. They usually throw in a gift like measuring spoons or a log book or some such on orders over $50 (easy to reach when you're buying in bulk). Also, they charge a flat $3.00 shipping and handling charge. Considering Eddie Bauer charges me more S&H than that to send a T-Shirt, I think it's a pretty good deal. They don't use those annoying Styrofoam peanuts for packing either.

As you can see, that's where we get our spa chemicals. We've tried a couple other places, but they either charged more for shipping and handling, didn't have as large a variety, or were just slow and inefficient.

I've seen a few dealers selling spa chemicals on eBay, but it doesn't seem to be that popular yet. Also, it's easier all around just to buy everything from one place.

I'm not in any way affiliated with Spa Depot, so I invite you to look around at other retailers, online and offline. I just wanted to let you know where we have had a good shopping experience for buying spa chemicals, testing strips, and the like for a couple of years now.

--submitted by Anne Marie Goldstein

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