Entrophy

Entropy is a measure of the amount of disorder or randomness in a system. Because there are many more random ways of arranging a group of things than there are organized ways, disorder is much more probable.

A few years ago my husband's birthday was just around the corner so I bought him a hot tub. He was so excited since his buddy had just gotten one he just raved about how nice it would be to have one. There was only one condition and now problem, he had to take care of it. My hot tub has become more of an mental health adventure than the solitude environment that I was hoping for.

After it was delivered and set up, we ventured down to the local spa supply store. They tested our water and fixed him up with every little gadget and chemical that he would need to maintain a safe and clean hot tub for years to come. Everything was great for the first couple of weeks and then the thrill of having a new "puppy" wore off. I'm now the one who has to maintain it. It has become a project that has taken more time and money than I've ever thought I would have had to invest. I should write the brochures that are in the stores but I don't think that they would sell many tubs. I would have pictures of me scrubbing scum off the sides of my tub on a beautiful hot day but I would have a large ice lemonade in my one hand to make a little appealing. I would speak highly of all the hours of relaxation that your tub with provide you with years of enjoyment but I should mention the three hours of maintenance and headaches to everyone one enjoyable moment. False advertising should be against the law and that's exactly what those brochures do.

The first winter with our hot tub was fantastic, the weather was great and sitting outside while it was snowing is an unbelievable feeling. My favorite time is drinking a large hot cocoa with whip cream and watching the stars and soaking all my cares away.

The second winter was a little different story. -44 degrees Fahrenheit lead to complete havoc on my nerves not to mention the hot tub. The cover was on the tub too long and developed a leak and began to smell musty so then no one wanted to soak in that and then the heater went out. In order to replace the heater the water needs to be drained but with the temperatures as they were there was no way you could safely drain the 400 gallons without ruining something else in the pump. The tub was left to circulate for two months to wait for warmer weather to allow us to get someone over to work on it.

The tub was back up and running but now the problem comes back to the water. I think anyone who even thinks about having a hot tub should first go take a basic chemistry class first. There are so many ways to screw up the "soup," as the hot tub guy calls it, that I have had this tub for four years now and I still have a hard time with it all. The pH increaser and decreaser and then the whole alkaline increaser and decreaser and then calcium hardness increaser are just waiting for the next victim to make a real mess in their hot tub. I get the pH down and the alkaline goes crazy and then leads to numbers out of this world on the calcium hardness scale. This is only the beginning of the whole process.

The next is the water sanitizer with stain and scale control, shock, and waterline control. I never seem