Scott: The GNC Project Part 2

Off and on over the last several years Margaret has talked about getting a hot tub again and placing it at the lake. She has visions of a gazebo in the open spot just to the west of our shed. For one reason or another, we really never pursued this dream. I think mostly because we would have to build another outbuilding on the property and that might not look good, or there would be two small buildings then. Lately as we decided that we were going to spend more time at the lake in the future during the summer, this hot tub gazebo started to sound like a good idea.

In the past all of our hot tubs have been new purchases, and they all were purchased from the same dealer in Mankato.

Our Other Tubs

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This time with the economic conditions as terrible as they have been it seemed like there might be some opportunities to get a good buy in the used hot tub market. Over the last few months I have been scouring the Craigslist.com listings for used hot tubs. It seems like there are plenty of them for sale for one reason or another. The problem with most of them is that they are very large and usually 3-5 years old and aren’t in very good shape.

I did finally see one that looked like it might work, and called the seller to arrange a trip to view. The tub was on the way up to the lake so we stopped on a Friday night. They wanted $1000 for a 5 year old wooden tub. Upon inspection it didn’t appeared to be worth more than a couple of hundred dollars and it had no insulation at all. Not a good deal. Onward to other tubs or may be we should consider a new one?Weeks later I’m still looking at Craigslist and an interesting ad appears. “For Sale never used Bull Frog Hot Tub”. A call to the phone number reveals that a bankrupt spa dealer had given a warehouse full of hot tubs to a gentleman in payment for some debts. He had 5 of them and was asking 2,500 dollars a piece. A little internet research indicates that these are really nice hot tubs that retail for over $5,000. This might be interesting!

That night we went to look at the tubs in a warehouse in Brooklyn Park. The tub was a little larger than we had hoped for, but it was indeed brand new, never used and in original factory condition. Unfortunately no warranty was available without the dealer. This is starting to seem like a reasonable deal. Even if there is some yet to be determined equipment issues a $5,000 tub for half price I can afford to repair a few things myself. We offered him $2,300 and he accepted. Now if I can find a way to move this it looks like we have a hot tub!

The tub is large enough 6’ by 7’ that it will not fit on our trailer, so I’m going to have to find another trailer to move it. Google tells me that Broadway rental in Brooklyn Park rents trailers and a double wide snowmobile trailer goes for 32 dollars a day. A bargain! We are in business.

The morning of Tuesday June 9th Margaret and I are sitting outside Broadway rental at 7:00AM in the morning waiting for the gates to open and pick up the trailer. We have to be at the warehouse to pick up the tub at 7:30 just 3 miles down the road.

7:30 at the warehouse a crew picks up the tub and deposits it on the trailer!

We pull the trailer and tub to the side of the parking lot to secure it properly for the long ride to the North Woods. This is the part Margaret is worried about. She is petrified that we have a $2,000 tub on a trailer and are planning on driving up Hwy 10 at 65 miles and hour for 3 hours.

Strapped down and all ready to go. All we have to do is get up north and get it off the trailer in one piece. (Margaret is really worried about the one piece part.)

Just like I planned! No problems. We are now backing the tub down into our driveway somehow managing to survive unscathed the treacherous hwy 10 traffic to the north woods.