What the call usually is
The maintenance visit is the one that prevents the other five. In Seattle we drain, flush the lines, open the cabinet and inspect it dry, refill, and balance the water for Seattle's soft supply — calcium up, alkalinity up, pH held — with the numbers written down for you.
A Seattle maintenance visit takes about two hours: drain and line flush, filter soak or swap, cover and cabinet inspection, refill, and water balance. Every four months for a family tub keeps heaters, seals and jets out of the repair column.
Seattle's Cedar and Tolt water runs at about 1.5 grains of hardness with alkalinity of 15–25 ppm. That is the whole reason a Seattle refill needs a deliberate dose of calcium and alkalinity — without it the heater and the seals pay for the softness.
Cabinets on shaded Seattle lots stay damp from October to April. A maintenance visit in Seattle is also when the cabinet gets dried, the insulation checked for rodents, the terminals greased and the cover strapped before the next storm season.
What owners describe on the phone
Water will not stay balanced
Low alkalinity in soft water. Raised to 80–120 ppm, the pH stops swinging.
Foam, cloud or a smell chlorine will not fix
Biofilm in the plumbing. A line flush before the drain clears it; a drain alone does not.
Filters pack up every few weeks
Needles, pollen and body oils. A two-filter rotation with a monthly soak keeps flow codes away.
Cover heavier every year
Waterlogged foam. We weigh it and tell you when it is costing more in heat than a new cover.
How the visit runs
- A call half an hour before we arrive
- Diagnosis with a meter, then one written price you approve
- Water hardness and alkalinity checked and noted
- Special-order parts arrive the next business day in most cases
- If the tub is not worth fixing, we say so
Scope, plainly: the spa and what lives inside its skirt. New circuits, supply plumbing and setting new tubs go to an electrician or a dealer.