Spas hot tubs ?

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Seems like a young girl drowned in a commercial hot tub when her hair got pulled into the pump suction, the several adults present could not pull her loose.
Commercial HT are bigger and have more powerfull pumps and thats my guess why. It may of been the 02 NEC-have to check the ROP and ROC to find out.
And you have until N0v 7, 2008 to make a proposal.
 
I think it's a matter of liability in a commercial establishment.

Nobody ever said you couldn't add an E-stop to a residential unit.
 
brother said:
Why is require to have an E-stop within 5 ft of the hot tub in commercial and not in single family dwellings??

IMO it has to do with the typical location of the pump(s) and their disconnects.

I have never seen a home hot tub / spa that was not 'self contained'. Being that a home tub is self contained and the requirement for a maintenance disconnect puts the disconnect 'at the pump' a home hot tub will have a disconnect at the tub. A home hot tub/ spa will also have on and off controls on the tub.


However, with a commercial Hot tub / spa the pump equipment is usually remote at a pump room and in that case the required maintenance disconnect will be nowhere near the pool, it will be at the pump(s). Also many times in a commercial hot tub there is only start button, no off button.

(Think of the spa at a Hotel pool for instance)

That being the case IMO it makes sense that a hot tub / spa in a commercial occupancy is required to have an emergency off button out at the tub / spa.
 
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brother said:
this may be true, but it just seems to me that it would be just as much danger in a residential dwelling as in commercial. 5ft within the edge of tub should be required in dwellings too, just my humble opinion.

In a residence, the occupants will most likely know how to turn the pump(s) off, where the controls are, or where the plug is.
 
LawnGuyLandSparky said:
In a residence, the occupants will most likely know how to turn the pump(s) off, where the controls are, or where the plug is.

I agree with this logic. In a transient occupancy such as a hotel, there is little likelihood that if something were to happen, that a user would be familiar with the location of controls. :)
 
LawnGuyLandSparky said:
In a residence, the occupants will most likely know how to turn the pump(s) off, where the controls are, or where the plug is.

This may be true, but it just seems like the reason it was prompted in commercial was because of a girl getting her hair caught in that thing. In cases like that i just see people paniking (sp?) and screaming and may not be thinking that clearly.

It just seems like its just easier/human nature for them to 'PUSH' a big RED button thats within 5ft to shut something off than trying to rush to a disco thats just under 50ft away to turn it off even if the tub have electronic controls on the panel there pushing a bunch of buttons in panic trying to turn it off. Ive seen where those have failed/malfunction. They even recognized this in 645 for data rooms when you read the handbook commentary about human nature.

Ok im done ranting, just wanted to know why and thanks for the responses. ;)
 
brother said:
Why is require to have an E-stop within 5 ft of the hot tub in commercial and not in single family dwellings?? Seems like it should be in dwellings as well. Im refering to 2005 NEC 680.41

Doesn't this article say "not less" than 5' away? It also doesn't give a maximum ... just "adjacent to and within site".
 
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