Posts Tagged ‘Spa Covers’
18
Apr
Spa Covers Going Green?
Spa Covers asked:
All this talk about going green, a big part of saving the environment is to not create more waste that will just end up clogging our land fills. Follow me on this for a minute… There are 10 million spa owners in the USA, and each one of them uses a typical rigid foam spa cover on their hot tub. For the sake of this demonstration each foam cover is only two inches thick and every spa is eight feet by eight feet. That would mean each spa cover contained about 10.666 cubic feet of foam per spa cover. For the rest of this example we will use 10.5 cubic feet per cover.
If each cover on every spa becomes saturated within two years and needs to be replaced that would mean that we would be adding 52.5 million cubic feet of waste to our landfills in just spa covers every year.
If it takes two and a half covers worth of foam to make up one cubic yard that translates to 4 million cubic yards of waste added to our land fills every two years just in spa covers.
If there are 11 million Cubic yards of stone in the Great Pyramid at Giza, we are adding enough foam to build a duplicate of it to our landfills just from used spa covers every six years conservatively. There are four and a half million cubic yards of concrete in Hoover Dam. We could build a two lane highway of discarded foam filled spa covers from Seattle Washington to Miami Florida every two years.
In case you have not noticed most foam filled spa covers are not two inches thick anymore. If all those old foam covers were four inches thick all these calculations would be double.
But we are just being conservative so we want to stick with two inches thick. If we ripped the covers in half and laid those pieces end to end we could circle the earth at the equator on used spa covers every two years.
Heck with parking lots, in a few years we could pave the entire planet with foam just from saturated foam spa covers from the USA alone.
So what is the solution? Well shop for a better spa cover. There are options available on the internet that your local spa dealer probably does not offer. You do not have to quit using your spa to save us. You just need to get a Spa Cover that does not use foam to insulate. There would be two major advantages to doing so. First the spa cover that did not use rigid foam to insulate would last longer. Since what always fails in the typical spa cover is the foam, either breaking or getting so saturated that you cannot lift it, a spa cover that did not use foam would tend to last longer.
Second, if the new type of spa cover does not use rigid foam it will also be a lot more friendly to the environment when it does come time to discard it. Less trash, less waste, less land fill, not that is what going green is all about.
All this talk about going green, a big part of saving the environment is to not create more waste that will just end up clogging our land fills. Follow me on this for a minute… There are 10 million spa owners in the USA, and each one of them uses a typical rigid foam spa cover on their hot tub. For the sake of this demonstration each foam cover is only two inches thick and every spa is eight feet by eight feet. That would mean each spa cover contained about 10.666 cubic feet of foam per spa cover. For the rest of this example we will use 10.5 cubic feet per cover.
If each cover on every spa becomes saturated within two years and needs to be replaced that would mean that we would be adding 52.5 million cubic feet of waste to our landfills in just spa covers every year.
If it takes two and a half covers worth of foam to make up one cubic yard that translates to 4 million cubic yards of waste added to our land fills every two years just in spa covers.
If there are 11 million Cubic yards of stone in the Great Pyramid at Giza, we are adding enough foam to build a duplicate of it to our landfills just from used spa covers every six years conservatively. There are four and a half million cubic yards of concrete in Hoover Dam. We could build a two lane highway of discarded foam filled spa covers from Seattle Washington to Miami Florida every two years.
In case you have not noticed most foam filled spa covers are not two inches thick anymore. If all those old foam covers were four inches thick all these calculations would be double.
But we are just being conservative so we want to stick with two inches thick. If we ripped the covers in half and laid those pieces end to end we could circle the earth at the equator on used spa covers every two years.
Heck with parking lots, in a few years we could pave the entire planet with foam just from saturated foam spa covers from the USA alone.
So what is the solution? Well shop for a better spa cover. There are options available on the internet that your local spa dealer probably does not offer. You do not have to quit using your spa to save us. You just need to get a Spa Cover that does not use foam to insulate. There would be two major advantages to doing so. First the spa cover that did not use rigid foam to insulate would last longer. Since what always fails in the typical spa cover is the foam, either breaking or getting so saturated that you cannot lift it, a spa cover that did not use foam would tend to last longer.
Second, if the new type of spa cover does not use rigid foam it will also be a lot more friendly to the environment when it does come time to discard it. Less trash, less waste, less land fill, not that is what going green is all about.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Continue Reading Comments Off
09
Apr
Spa Covers Gone With The Wind?
Spa Covers asked:
Where is my spa cover? Ever have to ask yourself this question after a wind storm? I have had people tell me they have found their cover a quarter mile from their home. I do not know how they knew it was their cover. Maybe in some parts of the country people write things on their spa covers to help them recover them after a storm. I suppose you could write, If Found Please Call, on the bottom. Maybe, Hope This Spa Cover Did Not Land On Your Sister.
Personally I think it might be time for a different type of spa cover. I found a posting on a spa cover dealers website claiming that they had several covers that made it through Hurricane Katrina. That is a little like saying there were some calvary survivors after Custers last stand. There is a big difference between having some going undamaged and having no losses.
The question to ask is are they selling anything different? So far I have found stronger straps as their solution. Well you could build a solid roof that attaches to the spa but in case you did not notice solid roofs were flying right off houses. The answer is not stronger tie downs for the wing you use to cover your spa but get rid of the wing.
Find a design that does not offer a rigid surface for the wind to lift on. The reason rigid foam spa covers fly is that they make a good wing. Our armed services fly planes with less aerodynamics than the typical rigid foam spa cover.
What causes a spa cover to fly? When wind comes at the spa, some of it hits the side of the cabinet and has to go around. As the air is pushed around the spa it some of it goes up over. As it breaks over the top of the rigid foam cover it starts a little ripple or swirl action that begins to suck upward on the rigid surface. Like when your riding in a convertible, if you have hair like I used to, it does not blow backward like you expect but forward because of the windshield diverting the air flow. If you had no windshield your hair would be blown straight back. This swirl action pulls the foam cover up off the spa.
It does not need to move it very much, just enough to create enough of a gap for some of the air to get under the cover. The second reason rigid foam spa covers fly is they have a nice air space between them and the water surface they are supposed to be keeping warm. Once air starts to flood into this air space it creates pressure. The air rushing in can not push down on the water so it takes the only thing it can move, the spa cover. Once this action starts it is only a matter of what velocity is required before lift off occurs. The first movement of the flying spa cover is straight up.
The pressure in the space between the water of the spa and the bottom of the cover pops the cover straight up. It takes a lot less force than you might think because it is lifting on the entire bottom area of the rigid foam cover at once. Even a saturated rigid foam spa cover that is too heavy for one person to lift will fly when the air is pushing on the entire bottom surface. Once a heavy spa cover gets airborne watch out because anything it runs into is going to get damaged.
So are these spa cover dealers offing anything different? Are they offering a spa cover that is not designed like a wing? Are they selling a spa cover that does not require straps and truck ratchets to secure it to the spa? I propose looking for a different kind of spa cover.
The internet has put the world at your finger tips. Instead of settling for the same old thing, shop the web for a design that makes sense. Look for a design that does not use a rigid foam board resting across the top of the spa. A better design would rest right on the water surface first because the water is what you intend to keep warm and second because this would remove the void that would build up pressure to pop the cover off. If the flexible and dome shaped rather than flat and rigid it would resist lift and deflect even the strongest winds. If you are tired of worrying about your spa cover every time the wind blows, you owe it to yourself to find a better spa cover.
Where is my spa cover? Ever have to ask yourself this question after a wind storm? I have had people tell me they have found their cover a quarter mile from their home. I do not know how they knew it was their cover. Maybe in some parts of the country people write things on their spa covers to help them recover them after a storm. I suppose you could write, If Found Please Call, on the bottom. Maybe, Hope This Spa Cover Did Not Land On Your Sister.
Personally I think it might be time for a different type of spa cover. I found a posting on a spa cover dealers website claiming that they had several covers that made it through Hurricane Katrina. That is a little like saying there were some calvary survivors after Custers last stand. There is a big difference between having some going undamaged and having no losses.
The question to ask is are they selling anything different? So far I have found stronger straps as their solution. Well you could build a solid roof that attaches to the spa but in case you did not notice solid roofs were flying right off houses. The answer is not stronger tie downs for the wing you use to cover your spa but get rid of the wing.
Find a design that does not offer a rigid surface for the wind to lift on. The reason rigid foam spa covers fly is that they make a good wing. Our armed services fly planes with less aerodynamics than the typical rigid foam spa cover.
What causes a spa cover to fly? When wind comes at the spa, some of it hits the side of the cabinet and has to go around. As the air is pushed around the spa it some of it goes up over. As it breaks over the top of the rigid foam cover it starts a little ripple or swirl action that begins to suck upward on the rigid surface. Like when your riding in a convertible, if you have hair like I used to, it does not blow backward like you expect but forward because of the windshield diverting the air flow. If you had no windshield your hair would be blown straight back. This swirl action pulls the foam cover up off the spa.
It does not need to move it very much, just enough to create enough of a gap for some of the air to get under the cover. The second reason rigid foam spa covers fly is they have a nice air space between them and the water surface they are supposed to be keeping warm. Once air starts to flood into this air space it creates pressure. The air rushing in can not push down on the water so it takes the only thing it can move, the spa cover. Once this action starts it is only a matter of what velocity is required before lift off occurs. The first movement of the flying spa cover is straight up.
The pressure in the space between the water of the spa and the bottom of the cover pops the cover straight up. It takes a lot less force than you might think because it is lifting on the entire bottom area of the rigid foam cover at once. Even a saturated rigid foam spa cover that is too heavy for one person to lift will fly when the air is pushing on the entire bottom surface. Once a heavy spa cover gets airborne watch out because anything it runs into is going to get damaged.
So are these spa cover dealers offing anything different? Are they offering a spa cover that is not designed like a wing? Are they selling a spa cover that does not require straps and truck ratchets to secure it to the spa? I propose looking for a different kind of spa cover.
The internet has put the world at your finger tips. Instead of settling for the same old thing, shop the web for a design that makes sense. Look for a design that does not use a rigid foam board resting across the top of the spa. A better design would rest right on the water surface first because the water is what you intend to keep warm and second because this would remove the void that would build up pressure to pop the cover off. If the flexible and dome shaped rather than flat and rigid it would resist lift and deflect even the strongest winds. If you are tired of worrying about your spa cover every time the wind blows, you owe it to yourself to find a better spa cover.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Continue Reading Comments Off
