The Best Hot Tub Brand ... For Us

Generally in follow up to the question of 'what is the best hot tub?', we hear this one next - 'Why did you choose Caldera?'.  Since our focus is to ensure our customers have the information to make the best decision for THEIR family, we wanted to explain how we determined which hot tub manufacturer was the best fit for our family(company).

Quality is #1

When we decided to carry an additional line of hot tubs, we had to find one with equal or greater quality than our brand - Caldera was the first manufacturer that came to mind. Quality manufacturing of the hot tub, is the #1 priority for us.

We brought in a few Caldera hot tubs and really inspected them .... how they plumb them, the components used, how the hot tub is put together overall, and we tested them extensively. What we found was a solid product that was in line with how we manufacture hot tubs, which was extremely comforting.

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Easy Maintenance is a Must!

The next item on the list was essential:  easy water care. One of the main concerns our customers have regarding the purchase of a hot tub is the time and money needed for general water care and maintenance, so we had to ensure we selected a low maintenance hot tub.

When evaluating Caldera, one of the things we were most excited about was the integrated water care that works with the Frog cartridge system. This integrated water care allows for minimal maintenance; you simply replace the Frog cartridge periodically, depending on how often you use the hot tub. Daily and even weekly maintenance was eliminated with this feature - a huge plus for our customers!

Caldera also utilizes ozone as a primary sanitizer, and they were one of the first to use ozone on a hot tub, which is consistent with our manufactured tubs.  It seemed their thought process on hot tub water care mimicked ours, making them an ideal fit from a water care and maintenance perspective.

Accessibility for Service

During our time manufacturing hot tubs, we found that ease of access for our service team was vital. Let's face it, hot tubs have a lot of plumbing, unions, and equipment, with water filling them all .... no matter what you may hear, there is no 'leak proof hot tub'!! They are going to spring a leak, EVENTUALLY.

We found in our manufacturing process that our wood cabinet provided enough insulation making it unnecessary to foam fill our shells/plumbing, which allowed for efficient diagnosis and remedy of any repairs our service techs needed to make.

When looking for a hot tub to bring to our store, finding one that was not foam filled was key. We wanted to ensure that our service technicians would always be able to easily service any hot tub we sold.

Caldera actually uses an insulation product called FiberCor that is applied at four times the density of the urethane foam found in most hot tubs. It is very easy to remove the insulation, make any necessary repair, and then reinstall the insulation that was removed. This allows for your shell to remain fully insulated, even after a service repair.  On a foam filled hot tub, once the foam is removed to make a repair, it is sometimes not replaced, and if it is replaced, it is generally not with the same type of insulating foam - this diminishes the energy efficiency of the hot tub to a degree, depending on the size of the area, which is not ideal.

Therapeutic & Wellness Focused

The next thing that swayed us in the direction of Caldera was their overall objective with their hot tub...if you spend even a few minutes on their website or related social media, you will find Caldera is focused on one thing - the therapeutic/wellness benefits that come with hot tub ownership.

Historically, we also focused on the therapeutic benefits of hot tub ownership, with our whirlpool jet being a main component in our hot tubs - this jet allowed for a full body massage in any seat of our tub. We wanted to ensure our customers would have a similar experience with any hot tub that we carried, so we researched how Caldera approached this.

We found that instead of focusing on the number of jets, bigger pumps, or how much water they could move through the hot tub in a given amount of time, they focused their efforts on maximizing the effectiveness of the jets, and providing optimal water pressure. Caldera took time to determine the best placement of the jets to offer a massage of the muscles, and each seat's configuration of jets focuses on a specific set of muscle groups. If you spend 5 minutes in each seat of a Caldera hot tub, when you wrap up your 20-25 minute soak, you will have received a full body massage.

By focusing on effective jet placement, Caldera is able to provide a superior therapeutic experience in the most efficient manner, which saves you on utility bills, because you don't need to power more and larger pumps to achieve the desired results.

Company Culture

Over the course of about a year, we met with several top hot tub manufacturers, and we found that Caldera's company culture matched ours on some key points we felt were imperative.

First, Caldera's primary concern was ensuring our customers purchase a quality hot tub they will enjoy for years - they were more concerned with customer satisfaction than unit count. We were told repeatedly their focus was not how many units we moved each year, but how satisfied the customers were on the units we actually sold. They believe if they focus on customer satisfaction and quality, they won't have to worry about unit count - that will simply come naturally.

Additionally, we found Caldera to be similar to our culture on the education of the consumer. Caldera also firmly believes in education, not selling.  Helping customers get the information they need to make the best buying decision for their family is our #1 goal, and we found Caldera has a very similar opinion on this point.

Lastly, Caldera's culture focuses on service after the sale - to both you, the consumer, and us, their product dealer. We found that we were assigned an entire team to ensure any questions or needs we had were met, and that entire team is available to all of our customers if needed. This is significant given the large investment a hot tub is for a family!

In summary, from the research we performed, Caldera met or exceeded our primary criteria, making them an ideal hot tub for 'our family'.