How to Move a Hot Tub (and What Happens on Delivery Day)

Every hot tub on our floor leaves the building the same way. Drained, dry, tipped up on its side on a cart and rolled out a door by people who have done it before. What makes a hot tub move go wrong is almost never the lifting. It is the forty feet between the driveway and the pad that nobody walked with a tape measure.

Cincinnati Pool and Patio has been in the pool and spa business here since 1966, and we deliver hot tubs in Cincinnati and across Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. This guide covers both moves people ask us about: delivery day for a new spa, and moving a hot tub you already own. We deliver the spa. We do not wire it, fill it or start it up. Those parts belong to your electrician and to you, and we go over them with you before the spa arrives.

What happens on hot tub delivery day?

The delivery itself is usually the shortest part of buying a hot tub. The real work happens in two conversations before it. In the showroom, when you pick a model, we ask about your yard: where the spa is going and how it gets there. Then comes the site and electrical review, where we tell you what the pad and the power need.

Compare that with a spa ordered online. Those are typically freighted to your driveway, and the last stretch to the backyard is your problem. That last stretch is the entire job, and it is why we ask so many questions about a yard we have not seen yet.

How do you plan the path from the driveway to the pad?

A spa tipped onto a cart is tall and thin. Take the Wellis Prague Life on our floor, which measures 79 by 79 by 35 inches. On its side it stands more than six and a half feet tall and just under three feet thick, before you add the cart under it and the hands beside it. The Wellis Oslo Life P&P is 79 by 59 by 31, so it is slimmer through a gate. A long spa like the Dream Maker Contour 830S, at 78 by 101 by 36, needs more room to swing around the corner of a house. Our guide to hot tub sizes and whether a spa will fit through your gate has the full model table.

Then walk the route the way the cart will travel it. In older Cincinnati neighborhoods the trouble spots repeat: a side yard pinched between the house and the neighbor’s fence, an air conditioner unit or a gas meter sitting in the only path, a retaining wall with four steps. On the hillside lots in places like Mount Washington, Wyoming and Fort Thomas, the slope matters more than the width. A loaded cart can be controlled going across a gentle grade. It should not be going down a steep, wet one.

Does winter change a hot tub move in Cincinnati?

Winter is a perfectly good season to take delivery of a spa. Our ground here is clay. Frozen hard in January, it is about as good a surface as a lawn ever gets. The problem is the week it thaws. Clay holds water, the top few inches go soft, and a cart carrying hundreds of pounds on small wheels leaves a trench from the driveway to the patio. Sheets of plywood laid end to end solve most of that. So does picking a morning after a cold night.

Shovel the route, salt the steps, and knock the ice off anything a foot has to land on.

The freeze matters more when you are moving a spa you already own. A tub that has been running holds water in the pump, the heater and every line behind the shell, long after the footwell looks empty. Leave that in place through a cold night on a trailer and it does to the fittings what it does to a garden hose.

What needs to be ready before the spa arrives?

The pad comes first because everything else sits on it. A level, stable surface such as a concrete pad or a reinforced deck is what we recommend. A filled spa on a surface that leans puts its weight where the frame was not built to carry it. If the spa is going on a deck, have a deck builder or a structural engineer confirm the framing before you order, not the week of delivery.

Power is the second piece, and it depends on the model. Some spas on our floor are plug and play and run on a standard household outlet. The rest are 240V and need a dedicated circuit that your electrician installs. That work is not ours, and it should be finished, or at least on the electrician’s calendar, before the spa arrives. Our guide to plug and play hot tubs and what a 120V spa means explains the difference.

How do you move a hot tub you already own?

Here is the order we would do it in.

1. Kill the power. Breaker off first. A 120V plug and play spa unplugs. A 240V spa is hardwired, and taking those conductors off is a job for an electrician, not a screwdriver.
2. Drain all of it. Open the drain, then pull the water out of the lines with a wet and dry vacuum at the jets and the filter well. In cold weather this step decides whether the spa survives the trip.
3. Remove the cover. A cover is not a handle. Carry it flat and keep the weight off its fold. If yours is heavy with water, see our guide to hot tub cover replacement.
4. Tip it, do not lift it. With a person at each corner, tip the spa up onto its side on the cart or the dollies. As a rule the side with the pumps and the control pack rides up. Your owner’s manual says which side the manufacturer wants down. Lift from the base and the frame, never from the cabinet panels, the jets or the plumbing.
5. Roll slowly and strap it down. Plywood over grass, one person steering, the rest steadying. On a trailer, strap across the frame so nothing bears on the cabinet.

Dream Maker spas use a lightweight, durable construction that moves easily. A large acrylic spa with foam insulation needs more hands.

When should you not move a hot tub yourself?

We sell spas, so you might expect us to say a move is easy. Across flat ground, through a wide gate, with a few strong friends, it can be. Here is where we tell people to stop.

Stairs change everything. So does a spa that has to go up onto a raised deck, or over a fence because the side yard is too narrow. Those are jobs for a hot tub mover with a proper spa cart, and in a few yards for a crane. That costs more than pizza for your friends. It costs far less than a cracked shell or a hurt back.

Age matters too. An older spa with a wood frame that has sat on damp ground for years may not survive being tipped. Sometimes the honest answer is that the spa has done its work, and the money for a mover is better put toward its replacement. We would rather tell you that in the showroom than have you find out halfway across the lawn.

Relocating a spa you already own is a different job from the delivery of a new one. Call the store and ask before you rent a trailer.

What happens after the hot tub is in place?

This is the part the store does not do, so plan for it. Your electrician connects a 240V spa. You fill it with a garden hose, following the manual for your model, and balance the water before anyone gets in. Our hot tub water chemistry guide for beginners walks through the first fill, and the spa chemicals it calls for are on the shelf here.

The quickest way to get it right is to bring a sample to our store. Handing your water to someone in your own city, and walking out with the exact product they told you to use, is most of the reason to buy a spa locally.

Bring the route to the showroom

The easiest delivery is the one planned before you fall for a model. Take photos of the path from the driveway to the pad, measure the narrowest gate, and bring both to 10731 Reading Road in Evendale, Monday through Saturday. We will put your measurements next to the Wellis spas and Dream Maker hot tubs on the floor and tell you plainly which ones fit the route. See the line on our hot tub showroom page, then contact us or call 513-554-0000 to set a time.

Frequently asked questions