My inground spa uses a gas heater. Wish I had gone with electric when it was built, but the pool compnay talked me into it (dont do it)

So after many years, LP gas is now coming from Amerigas and their prices are INSANE.

Gotten so bad I'm ready to switch to almost anybody and have them come remove the tank.

Anybody have a local gas source other than Amerigas that delivers to an inground tank?

How insane is your price?

I have Suburban Propane, and a 500 gallon underground tank. Heard annoying things about Suburban, but more about AmeriGas. If you bought the tank, you can get it refilled by anyone. Since I'm leasing mine from Suburban, I can only get it refilled by Suburban.

Their first-year price (2015) was good: Low-mid $2.xx range. They told me (before I signed the contract) that propane prices typically track the price of regular gasoline per gallon.

At 2016 refill, it came in near or over $5/gallon! I did an internet search of propane prices nationally, and sure enough, the values were all near regular gasoline (upper $2.xx). So I called, complained, and showed them the data.

The gave me a big BS story about how it costs so much more to ship propane to FL, and a chunk of the price was delivery charge to my house, not shown in the internet prices. (I don't recall if that part was true or not.)

But after the complaint, they gave me a credit that back the price to somewhere in the low $4.xx range. Still left me feeling rather violated.

$5.79 per gallon at Amerigas

No way I'm paying that!

There should be a conversion kit or someone who can convert it to electric (if you are going to be staying in your house for a while), The "guts" of an electric one is pretty simple, swapped out a control board and Ozone system on mine w/o any issues. just voltmeter and basic tools.

I keep mine at 104 degrees 24 hours a day, my guess it adds about $40 to the electric bill.  How many gallons of propane do you go through in a month?  Electric heating does take a long time to warm up, guess propane is more instant/quick heat-up.

All you need is a method of collecting all the "gas" from NSR.

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Dora Hates You

Hot air doesn't really contain much energy, ding.

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"The truth is incontrovertible.
malice may attack it,
ignorance may deride it,
but in the end,
there it is." -Sir Winston Churchill

I hear you SurferMic- wish I could do that w/o a huge hassle.

But the problem is the pool's design. The spa has a spillover to the main pool. When the filter pump is on, it pulls from the deep end and returns to the spa, which then spills over into the main pool.

And there goes your hot water.

It's the most wasteful design I've ever seen.. but the pool companies push for this.

Gas has gotten so expensive that I'm considering doing a total rework- adding a filter return in the main pool and a seperate setup for the spa, and then using electric.

Wish i had my spa on 24/7 - that would be great.

Is yours an inground, or a standalone spa? Do you use a heat cover?



re: usage- we go through a tank in about 3-4 months. At these prices thats $600 every 3-4 months :/

What about a diesel/kerosene based system?

Heck, with gasoline cheap, I'd buy a rebuilt small-block chevy engine and cycle the water through it. Between the engine block and exhaust manifold, you could recover a ton of heat, and the engine would barely be idling.

You could even run some pumps and jets off of it!

FWIW, I used to have a big pool with an electric heat pump. It rusted out twice in 7 years (beachside) and I couldn't afford the electricity for it. Different story for a spa though.