#Mice 2, #Hot Tub Zero in #Santa #Fe

Chapter Six:   Hot Tub Wars

The Score:  Mice 2.  Hot Tub zero

       

     

The hot-tub mice have finally and totally defeated me.   When we bought the El Dorado home, it had a hot tub, a green and dusty gray thing that sat about two feet out of a hole in the industrial gray deck directly in front of the master bedroom’s windows.   It was ugly, especially because it eventually had an ill-fitting greenish, perpetually dusty cover that lapped over the edges of the tub and looked like the youngest child trying to fit into his older brother’s clothing.  

This was the second hot tub we had.  The first could empty itself of water in a little more than three days. 

When the hot tub first took on the qualities of the Titanic on a bad day, I called Tom the Tub Guy, the local hot tub expert.  I was a bit suspicious of him because, when he put the hot tub back in operation after the winter shut down, he spent many hours gazing at the hot tub in philosophical adoration while he waited for a garden hose to fill it up.  He assured me that was the proper and accepted method and that it had nothing to do with adding dozens and perhaps hundreds of dollars to his overall charges.   He also guaranteed that I could not have filled the hot tub before his arrival, thus saving me money and him time or vice versa.

He suggested that I go to the local hot tub supply store and buy Fix-a-Leak, an almost magical potion that could stuff up a leaking hot tub faster than a child flushing a tennis ball or wad of clay into a toilet. 

We certainly enjoyed the tub for the one evening it was warm enough to get in it, which was two days after it was filled for the first time and the night before the leak became all too obvious (unless we wanted to use the tub merely as a foot soaker).  It seemed worthwhile to pour in some Fix-a-Leak to see if it would solve the problem.

When I asked Tom the Tub Guy why the tub was turning itself on every ten minutes or less, he assured me that was normal, that the tub was keeping itself at the desired temperature and the whole process cost less than keeping a light bulb on for a year or two.

I followed the directions exactly, pouring half the Fix-a-Leak container into the tub and then circulating the water on high setting for 72 hours.  We tried to convince ourselves that the sound of the pumps constantly going directly outside our bedroom windows was “almost” the same as listening to a train clickety-clacking through the countryside all night long.   It actually sounded like a dishwasher wheezing all night long.