The Complete Guide to Swim Spa Insulation: Types, Pros, Cons and More

Swim spa insulation isn’t something everyone wants to know about. Many people who come shopping at Hydropool stores are satisfied to hear, “yes, it’s insulated.”

This article is NOT for those people. 

• This article is for people who want to understand how proper insulation helps make swim spas more energy efficient. 
• It’s also for people who want to know about the different types of swim spa insulation. 

We do get asked about insulation and frequently explain it at Hydropool, both at our corporate location and at the retail level. Insulation is extremely important in cold weather countries like Canada (it’s actually extremely important everywhere for energy efficiency).

In this article, we will take you through the main types of insulation available to you when you buy a swim spa and assess the pros and cons for each. We’ll also give you examples of who does what. 

• The role of insulation in making your hot tub energy efficient
• Full foam
• Perimeter
• Blanket-style

Hopefully, by the end, you’ll have a good understanding of the insulation in your swim spa. 

 

 

Why is Swim Spa Insulation Important?

The main thing insulation does is make it difficult for warm air to get from one place to another. That’s how it keeps your swim spa warm. 

Swim spa insulation serves multiple purposes:

Energy Efficiency: Better insulation means your swim spa uses less energy to maintain the desired temperature, resulting in lower energy bills.

Heat Retention: Insulation helps retain heat within the swim spa, ensuring that the water stays warm for longer periods.

Structural Support: Good insulation contributes to the structural integrity of the swim spa, providing additional support to the plumbing in particular. 

Noise Reduction: Insulation can help reduce the noise generated by the swim spa, making your relaxation time more peaceful.

Is Swim Spa Insulation Regulated At All? 

The California Energy Commission is the major regulator of the energy efficiency of hot tubs and swim spas. In order to sell in California, a company’s swim spa must pass a series of tests showing that it is energy efficient. Because it is a major swim spa market, companies are highly motivated to sell there. 

So if you’re shopping, here’s your first tip on finding out if your swim spa has good insulation: Ask if it is CEC approved or it can be sold in California. If the answer is no, you can do better and you should! (As a sidenote, all of Hydropool’s hot tubs and swim spas are CEC approved and can be sold in California). 

What Types of Insulation Are Used in Swim Spas?

There are a few types of insulation commonly used in swim spas:

Full Foam Insulation: This involves filling the entire cabinet with foam. While it provides excellent heat retention, it can make repairs more difficult. 

Here are the pros of full foam insulation:

• It does insulate your swim spa. It looks visually impressive: Open a panel and your entire base is stuffed with insulation. Salespeople love it. 
• It supports plumbing, which is good. All of that foam means your plumbing remains in place – it can’t move because all of that foam shoved in there. 
• It has maximum R-value. All that foam is doing something!
• It’s quiet. All that foam means you won’t hear your motors working.  

What are the cons of full foam insulation? 

• One issue is that when it comes to repairs – especially if you ever develop a leak – finding that leak is like an archeological dig. You have to literally cut out foam all through the swim spa in order to find the source of the problem. Then you have to figure out how to get it back in. Imagine if your car engine was stuffed completely with foam: How would a mechanic ever service it? 
• The other issue is that you’re paying for insulation that is doing limited value. You don’t fill up the rooms of your house with insulation, because you don’t need to do that. What you need is enough insulation. If you just have insulation in your walls in your house and it does the trick, why do you need to fill up your entire swim spa? 

Perimeter Insulation: This type places foam insulation around the cabinet's perimeter, allowing for easier access to internal components. It works how insulation works in your house: you insulate the walls, making it difficult for heat to pass by.

Pros of perimeter insulation:

• You’re not paying for insulation you don’t need. It’s a cost-efficient system that locks in heat.
• It’s easy to service. Take off a panel and you have access to your entire swim spa. 
• It uses the heat from your swim spa’s pumps effectively, trapping it in and directing it to your hot tub’s water, lowering your bills. 

Cons of perimeter insulation:

• It allows for leaks: Your plumbing isn’t supported at all, which means over time you’re going to shake loose a few parts. 
• You also have to watch for overheating pumps. The heat does get locked in, which is good, but if you trap too much, you’re just cooking your system from the inside. There’s little air circulation with this method, which can be hard on your equipment.  
• It can be louder. You’re essentially creating an echo chamber, because there’s nothing to stop the sound from coming out. 

Thermal Wrap Insulation: Utilizing multiple layers of insulating material, thermal wrap insulation reflects heat back into the swim spa, enhancing energy efficiency.

Pros of thermal wrap insulation: 

• It’s energy efficient. We use thermal wraps in our hot tubs. Essentially, it works like a triple-paned window: the air is trapped between multiple layers of the wrap. Remember, what insulation does is make it hard for air to move from one space to another. So if you have more spaces for it to move through, it’s going to keep the heat in longer. 
• It’s based on technology developed by NASA (and used by brands such as Columbia jackets). Using reflective silver, it traps heat in at a low cost. 
• It’s easy to access. 

What are the cons of thermal wrap insulation?

• The main con is that thermal wrap insulation provides little support for your plumbing, unless it’s added in as an extra element. Down the road that tends to generate more leaks than other systems on units that require lengthy plumbing runs like swim spas. 

Hybrid Forms of Insulation: Combining elements of full foam, thermal wrap and perimeter insulation, hybrids provide a balanced approach to heat retention and accessibility.

Hydropool is one of the companies that does this. We have tried the other models, and found you need to use the best of each for an ideal system. 

Its elements include:

• A thermal shield reflective blanket on the swim spa floor.
• Another thermal blanket wrapping and supporting the plumbing.
• 6”-8” of foam blown into the thermal blanket that wraps the swim spa. So now the swim spa has both “full foam” benefits and thermal shield benefits, while remaining accessible for repairs, because only one area is entirely foamed. 
• The entire cabinet is insulated with a reflective blanket on its outside, using perimeter foam techniques, trapping the heat from the swim spa pumps and making it difficult for the warmed air to move through it. 
• Vents which allow excess heat to escape in the summer, trapping it in during the winter. 

Pros of hybrid systems:

• Best mix of value for effectiveness: you get the best of all types of swim spa insulation.
• It’s energy efficient, because it uses your pump’s waste heat, directing it to help heat your water. 
• It allows for air flow so your system doesn’t overheat. 
• Because of the multiple blankets inside your cabinet, noise insulation is very good. It’s also trapped in there!
• It’s easy to service, for the most part. 

Cons to hybrid systems:

• It’s not as good as full foam for providing support to plumbing. It does have it as an element in most cases, but it’s not the best here. 
• Full foam components can make repairs a little trickier. 

We talked about Hydropool here a bit, to give a specific example of a hybrid system. We don’t like to do that much in these articles. While we think our insulation system is best, we want you to know there are other companies that have adopted hybrid methods as well as Hydropool and each one does it differently, borrowing the elements they think work best. 

If there’s one thing you can be sure of, if you ask any swim spa company whose insulation is best, they will say, “ours”! That’s why we wanted to write this, to explain as best as we could the major kinds and their pros and cons. 

What Type of Swim Spa Insulation is Right for Me? 

The goal is always the same, whatever is used: energy efficiency. Insulation is crucial in achieving that goal for anyone who owns a swim spa. What we did in this article is wind you through the different kinds of insulation available and show how they work, from full foam to perimeter to thermal wrap and hybrids. 

We hope we answered your questions in this article, but there’s a chance we missed a thing or two that applies directly to your situation. If that’s the case, one of our local dealers would be happy to help you out. Contact them here.