Soak like royalty.
Pay like a mortal.

Wood-fired tubs go from cold to glorious in around 2-3 hours, depending on the weather and your fire-tending enthusiasm. Electric models hold temperature 24/7, so they're ready when you are.

Wood-fired Tubbys: nope. Fresh water and fire. No chlorine, no test strips. Just change the water every couple of days with frequent use. Your skin (and nose) will thank you. The electrics are a different animal: they hold their water for months and run ozone, which does a lot of the work but can't hold the water on its own. They want a light chlorine residual underneath it, around 3 ppm at pH 7.5. Not a soup. A capful and a test strip.

Quite a bit. Guests turn over every few days, you're not there watching the water, and in most districts a spa run commercially picks up council water-quality obligations. Worth checking before your first booking.

The electrics run ozone, and the thing to know is that ozone is a second line, not the first one. It oxidises beautifully but holds no residual, so it can't keep water safe between guests by itself. Underneath it you want sodium dichlor at about 3 ppm with pH near 7.5. Five ppm is the ceiling for 316 stainless; above that you're damaging the steel. A Nature2 mineral stick in the filter (about $105, four months) lets you hold the same water on less chlorine. Chlorine is what an ozonator is built to work with and does the cell no harm. Skip bromine (with ozone in a commercial spa it forms bromate), skip chlorine-free biguanide systems (corona-discharge ozone destroys the PHMB itself), and skip salt chlorinators. Clean the cartridge weekly under that sort of use. Any pool shop stocks spa chlorine. Perfect Pools do a 1 kg pail for about $20, posted anywhere. The whole routine is written up in our Water Care guide for short-stay operators (PDF). Wood-fired stays gloriously simple: drain, refill, light it. No chemicals go near it.

Ring us before you set up, we'd rather spend ten minutes on the phone than have you read about it in a review.

Everything you need to get soaking: steps and a cover with every tub, plus filters with the electrics and a stirring paddle with the wood-fired models. Wood heats in layers, so a good stir evens out the temperature before you hop in. No lobster-top, ice-bottom surprises.

Two years on parts. That's the written warranty, and it's the one we'll actually stand behind. The stainless steel inner barrel, 304 in the wood-fired, marine-grade 316 in the electrics, is built to see out a great deal more than that. We'd just rather promise you something we can honour than a number with a nice ring to it.

Down to 3 °C, and it holds there. The Tubby Cedar Ice Bath has its own 2,700 W chiller built in, so you set a temperature and it stays there whether it is a mild Auckland morning or a hard Central Otago frost. No buying ice, no topping it up, no doing sums about how long you have before it warms up.

Two to three minutes is plenty for most people, and there is no medal for longer. Get in, breathe slowly, get out before you start shivering hard. Build up over weeks rather than proving something on day one. If you have a heart condition, are pregnant, or are on medication that affects blood pressure, talk to your doctor before you start, and never plunge alone or after a drink.

Together is where it gets good. Heat first, cold second, repeat: that swing is the whole point of contrast therapy, and it is why plenty of our customers end up with both on the same deck. If you are choosing one to start with, take the ice bath over summer and add the tub before winter.

Usually, yes, though we're not the ones driving. We use trusted freight partners and crate every tub in timber so it arrives looking as good as it left. If your spot is tight, a HiAB truck can lift it into place (arranged at your cost, and worth every cent watching a hot tub fly). And if your driveway is more of a goat track with ambitions, tell us early. Some places really are impossible, and we'd rather work that out with you than surprise a truck driver.

Our tubs are 800 mm deep internally with a 300 mm seat, roughly 500 mm from seat to waterline. Tall friends soak comfortably. If you're NBA-sized, ring us and we'll talk it through.

A Speed Demon Grande with the 3 kW SpaNET SV Mini typically runs $115-$178 per month in alpine-cold climates (modelled on Queenstown/Wanaka), about $3.15-$5.25 a day of heating. Every electric Tubby is wrapped in a thermal blanket, insulated everywhere except the control housing, which is what keeps those numbers low. Got solar? The SpaNET controller integrates with it to trim that further.