i have a 4 person spa made by 'Strong Spas'. The last owner told me that i could plug the spa into an outlet made for 120 voltage. I've had it working fine for about 2 months, and it stopped working the other day. i read about this spa, and the owner's manual recommend 240 voltage. The spa will not turn on. I have tried flipping the circuit breaker switch a few times, and it won't come on. When this first happened, i flipped the breaker, and it came back on, but turned later on that night....any advice on what to do at this point? does it sound like i just need to increase the voltage on my outlet? any help would be greatly appreciated....

If it had been working then it is probably not because the voltage is incorrect. Incorrect wiring for the voltage would trip the breaker everytime. Normally, spas can be wired for either 120v or 240v so you could change it to 240v but that may or may not solve the problem. If the current draw is close to the breaker limit, it might trip the breaker only under certain conditions. So by going to 240v, you would halve the current and perhaps, it might solve the problem but you need to have 240v wiring and breaker set to do that plus it sounds like you may need an outlet as well which may be a big undertaking. But if there is a component that is failing such as a pump and/or heater, then that could cause the problem and would probably need to be replaced.

A couple questions:

What size is the breaker that is tripping?

What does the manual say about current draw for the spa?

Hi Mark, thanks for your reply a couple of weeks back. i've been out of town, and am just now reading your response and am able to respond. to answer your questions, 1. the breaker that's tripping is 110 volt, with 100 amp service. 2. i'm not sure what the current draw for my spa is, but the max draw is 48 amps.

i just plugged my spa into the 110 volt outlet, and it turned back on...not sure why that worked, but am afraid it may turn off again.

what do you recommend from this point to ensure the spa won't turn off again on its own?

thanks for your help!

Clarify something for me... when you say you flipped the breaker, do you mean to say that the breaker was tripped, and you had to reset it? Or were you simply turning the breaker off and on to try to affect a problem with the spa being off and not coming on?

Either way, as Mark has mentioned, you should not have any issues due to the selection of 120v or 240v. If it has been running for 2 months and suddenly began shutting off, then most likely there is some failure internal to the spa. I'm just confused as to whether or not it is tripping the breaker when it fails.

Also if moisture was detected it could be the GFCI.

But they are typically manually reset, and since it is working since he returned, he would have had to reset it.

I don't think the 110/220 issue could be causing it to not work suddenly. That's the kind of thing that either works on one setting or the other.

That said, for efficiencies sake, you'll want to switch to 220V at some point anyway. Several years ago, I had a hot tub in Michigan. I found that my hot tub was pulling about $40-50/month worth of juice (according to the Watt's On device) when it was 110V. When I switched it to 220V, I saw my bill drop by about $30/month. I went back through the bills compared month to month and it's consistently $20-30/month less at 220V than it was at 110V. Of course, there was $500 worth of wire and other stuff to make up that difference, but it was definitely there.

The hot tub I have right now is currently wired for 110V. I haven't ran it very much because of that. After the summer, I'll use it a lot more so I plan on wiring it to 220V.

I'm not sure what caused the change in the power bill, but any device running off 240 VAC will pull the same power, measured in watts, as one running off 120 VAC.

The main bene for running at 240 is the heater will stay on when there is a call for heat and the pump is running at high speed. The heater element also gets more power usually, 5000 watts vs 2000 watts.

At 120V, high speed on the pump shuts the heater element due to current draw requirements.

Scott