Can I put an inflatable hot tub on my balcony?. This is a question mostly asked by apartment or condo dwellers who don’t live in a big house but want to enjoy the luxury of using a hot tub at their current place.
You may be wondering if a balcony can hold a hot tub, and hence you came here.
Well, the answer to this depends on the size of the inflatable hot tub. The average balcony cannot hold a full-sized hot tub. Considering that the typical balcony is designed to support a weight of between 50-100 pounds per square foot, a fully loaded hot tub with people will likely exceed 100 pounds per square foot.
How Much Weight Can a Balcony Hold?
Overloading a balcony can lead to safety hazards and put people’s lives in danger. Collapsed balconies may even cause fatalities. So it’s important to know how much weight a balcony can actually hold.
On average, a balcony is load-rated to 50-100 pounds per square foot. So that means a total weight supported of between 3,200 pounds and 6,400 pounds.
Depending on your local building codes, standard balconies are built to support between 60 – 120 Ibs per sq. foot. So, on paper, most balconies that are large enough to hold a hot tub should also be able to support a standard hot tub and still have a few hundred pounds of load-bearing capacity
So, if your balcony was rated 100 pounds per square foot, you might be ok. But this is a serious question to answer and you will need the assistant structural engineer because of the risk involved.
Even with a balcony being able to support about 100 pounds per square foot, there are factors that could affect its strength over years. These include:
- The type of environment
- Age of materials
- Quality of construction
- Factor of safety used
- The use the balcony has been put to
- Size of fasteners used
Most balconies are designed for 40 pounds per square foot at a minimum.
How Much Does an Inflatable Hot Tub Weigh?
If you are wondering how much inflatable hot tubs might be weighing, they weigh a minimum of 2,700 Ibs and a maximum of 3,700 pounds with water and people.
The weight varies depending on the model. The weight depends on the capacity.
The weight of the hot tub will determine the location or platform it can be placed on. If you were to place the inflatable hot tub on the ground, then you wouldn’t have to worry about a potential collapse. But any other location or platform that is elevated above the ground, needs careful consideration.
There are two types of the weight of the hot tub; boxed weight and filled weight.
The actual weight is the weight of the hot tub without water. While the filled weight is the weight of the hot tub when it is filled with water and people are in it.
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How to Fill a Hot Tub Without a Hose
Mostly filling the hot tub is not the problem, but draining it when it’s on a balcony or apartment. To drain the hot tub on your balcony, you need a long garden hose or submersible pump hose to help drain it.
You drain it the same way you do it when it’s on the ground, just this time, you can choose to drain the water with the hose into a bathtub.
There are 2 ways to drain the hot tub:
- Use a garden hose
- Use a submersible pump
Before you drain a hot tub, always make sure the power is cut off!
Using a submersible pump is the best way to drain the hot tub. It can take about 15 minutes maximum. Here is one of the best submersible pumps on Amazon. But if you don’t want to spend on a submersible pump, then, you can use the garden hose. But this can take you hours.
Then, no matter which one you used, just use a wet/dry vac to get the water out of the bottom that remains after draining.
Draining the water through the bathtub is one of the best places unless you have access to the public drainage from your balcony.
What is the best inflatable hot tub for a balcony?
If you’re certain that your balcony can bear a load of at least 100 pounds per square foot. One of the best inflatable hot tubs for balcony is the Intex Pure Spa inflatable hot tub, you can check it out on Amazon.
It is well built, durable and it’s one of the most recommended by verified customers. This unit is built to take a max of 4 people.
This hot tub has a built-in hard water treatment system, and it’s easy to set up. It comes with an easy-to-use control panel, and it has up to 140 water jets for producing a highly soothing spa experience.
This takes less than 20 minutes to have it set up and ready to use. This is a great option because it can be moved around here and there if you want to remove it or move it around.
This inflatable hot tub only weighs 101.8 pounds and is built with a Fiber-Tech patented technology.
Features
- Built-in infiltration system
- Color-changing LED light to create an alluring ambiance
- 2 headrests
- Puncture-resistant 3-ply laminated material
- Easy-to-use, tilt-adjustable control panel
- Insulated cover to minimize heat loss
- Insulated ground cloth
- Fits up to 4 persons
How Do You Fill Up a Hot Tub if You Don’t Have a Hose Nearby?
The best way to fill a hot tub where there is no hose spigot available is to use an adapter and connect a long garden hose to a kitchen sink faucet.
Using a garden hose is one of the easiest ways to fill a hot tub. This is because it’s convenient. You simply connect it to the water source and put the other end in the hot tub.
Another way is to use a bucket and fetch the water up and down but that will take a long tiring time considering that a hot tub is at least 500 gallons.
Final Thoughts on Whether You can Put an Inflatable Hot Tub on a Balcony
Your hot tub can be placed just about anywhere—outdoors or even indoors when practical. You can put it on a deck, patio, rooftop entertaining area, or even under a gazebo.
The perfect spot for your hot tub all depends on your home and landscape design and layout, as well as your personal tastes.
To some people, the balcony is the only place they can place a hot tub. It is possible to enjoy a hot tub from the balcony if you get the right weight that your balcony can support.