I recently acquired a used 1995 Hot Springs Sovereign spa. The people got rid of it because it had a small hairline crack below and to the left of the light fixture. Apparently this was a common problem with this model spa in the mid 90's. I've located the crack and it appears to be about the width of a hair and one inch long. I've found a local guy who specializes in acrylic repair. He's offered to repair the crack for $190.00. He doesn't offer any sort of written guarentee and the Hot Springs spa dealers in my area claim that all shell crack repairs are temporary until you can get a new spa.

My questions... Is it hard to repair something like the crack I'm describing? Should I attempt it myself or does $190.00 seem like a good deal? Are repairs like this really temporary as the spam dealers say or are they just trying to sell people a new spa?

Thanks in advance!

Aaron

If the crack isn't leaking, I would not even worry about it. However, in the past, I have first removed the lens for the light, and used silicone on both the inside and outside of the shell, after a thorough cleaning of the surfaces, before putting the light lens back in. If that didn't work (90% of the time it did) and the crack goes all the way through the shell, I have taken my dremel and ground out the crack, creating a "V" and then simply filled this in with epoxy for use with fiber glass. It isn't the prettiest repair, as it will darken with the heat from the water, but it works.

The crack is repairable, however, it's quite expensive and very messy... The problme isn't sealing the crack, that's the easy part.... the difficult part is making sure a crack doesn't reappear somewhere else....

The spa shell cracked because the material has quite a bit of flex... over time, it simply flexed so much, so often, it eventually cracked. To repair it properly, not only do you need to seal the crack, but also re-enforce the entire section of the shell accesable from the equipment compartment. The repair is done from inside the equip compartment. Large crack repair kits are available from your Hot Springs dealer. It is a pemanent repair.

If you just use an epoxy on the spa-shell from inside the tub... it will just look ugly, and develop another crack within a few months to a year.... might not be a bad idea if you're not too thrilled about spending several hundred dollars... (The kit is around ~$200 + installation) If you use white epoxy, and do a neat job, no one but you will notice the repair...
For about $10 dollars, you'll basically be doing as good a job as the acrylic repair man, unless he's also going to remove all the equip, cut out a large section of plastic housing base to gain access to the spa shell, and then re-enforce the entire section of the spa shell with fiberglass and epoxy to prevent all future flexibilty of the spa shell in this area. (The rest of the spa is foam filled, no flex issues there)