Hot tub leak repair

Most hot tub leaks are in the equipment bay, at the seals and unions around the pumps and heater, rather than in the shell. A simple test, watching how fast the water drops with the pumps off and then on, usually narrows down where to look.

Leak or evaporation?

Every hot tub loses some water to evaporation and splash-out, more in dry or windy weather and when the cover is left off. If you're topping up far more often than you used to, find standing water or soggy ground around the tub, or see the level drop noticeably overnight with the cover on, it's likely a leak.

Where hot tubs leak

• Pump shaft seals: water dripping from the pump, between the wet end and the motor.
• Unions: the large threaded nuts that join the pumps and heater to the plumbing. Their O-rings wear or shift, especially after the tub has been drained.
• Heater: the unions and gaskets at each end of the heater tube.
• Jets: the gasket behind a jet body can fail, or the jet body itself can crack. These leaks often show up as wet insulation behind one section of the cabinet.
• Fittings and pipes: glued joints can separate, and pipes can crack, sometimes after a freeze.
• Drain valve: a valve that doesn't close fully, or a missing cap.
• The shell: less common, but cracks happen, often from an uneven base or from freezing.

Narrowing it down

You can do useful detective work before we arrive:

1. Mark the water level with tape, leave the pumps off for 24 hours with the cover on, and check it.
2. Repeat with the pumps running on their normal filter cycles.
3. If it drops faster with the pumps running, the leak is likely on the pressure side: pump seals, unions, the heater or the jets.
4. If it drops just as fast with the pumps off, look at fittings below the waterline, the drain, the jets and the shell.
5. If it stops dropping at a certain level, the leak is probably at that height, often a jet or fitting.
6. With the power off, open the equipment door and look for drips, wet spots and white crusty deposits around unions and fittings.

With the water still, a few drops of food colouring released close to a suspected spot will drift toward a leak.

What to do in the meantime

Keep the water above the skimmer so the pumps don't draw air. If water is reaching electrical parts or the equipment bay is flooding, switch the tub off at the disconnect and call us. If the leak is fast, lowering the water until it's fixed may make sense, but in freezing weather talk to us first: a tub with no circulation can freeze.

Why it matters

A slow leak does more harm than the water it wastes. It can soak the insulation inside the cabinet, so the tub loses heat and costs more to run. It can rot the wooden frame and the base under the tub. It can let a pump run short of water or starve the heater of flow. And water dripping onto electrical parts can trip the GFCI.

Fixing it

Most leaks come down to new O-rings, gaskets, a shaft seal, a jet body or a section of pipe. Leaks deep inside foam-filled cabinets take longer to reach, because the foam has to be cut away and replaced around the repair. We'll tell you what we found and what the repair involves before we start.