Keeping up with the spas a full-time job  

EDMONTON -- You might not know Peter Thomson now, but on some 25-below-zero snowy winter night he could be your new best friend.

  By The Edmonton JournalSeptember 29, 2008      

EDMONTON -- You might not know Peter Thomson now, but on some 25-below-zero snowy winter night he could be your new best friend.

This would happen just after you discover your hot tub's innards have given up the ghost and you face the prospect of figuring out what to do with a 500-litre ice cube.

Thomson, owner of Spa Time Electronics Inc., 1419 69th St., has been fixing Edmontonians' personal pieces of tropical paradise for 31 years, keeping pumps pumping, heaters heating and jets washing away the aches and pains of the day.

He started in the business 35 years ago in Peterborough, Ont.

"It was a summer job. We mainly worked on swimming pools at that point. We did a few hot tubs back then. They were concrete and ceramic tile."

What was meant to be a short-term employment stopgap never stopped.

"The time just kept going by and by and by. In 1977 we moved to Edmonton and I just carried on with it."

Thomson has seen the technical revolution of what was once a fairly basic piece of backyard luxury. When he started, the tubs were concrete, built on site -- and they weren't cheap.

"If people think hot tubs are expensive now, they were very expensive back then -- about ,000 or ,000."

The next material innovation was cedar, then fibreglass. "The acrylic sheet came quite a while after that in just a multitude of colours."

And, while the old tubs were build on site, so were the components, he said.

"When we went to electric heaters, you bought all the pieces individually, 10 or 15 different components, and you had to wire them and hand build every single one of them.

"Then, in the '80s there were companies that started seeing where the market was going and they started building spa packs."

Concrete tubs had four or six jets.

"When the fibreglass ones came, we'd get up to 10 or 12. In the early '90s, we'd put two pumps in them and 20 to 30 jets, and we thought we were really building something."

Now, "there are tubs out there with four pumps, 80 jets and fibre-optic lights that are actually in every jet nozzle. There are stereos and TVs. It's a chore just to take the courses to keep up with this new stuff that's coming."

Technological changes keep Thomson on a steep learning curve.

Different companies run tech courses throughout the year, he said.

"I know with Gecko out of Quebec, Sophie, this lady, she's an electrical engineer. She is so good. I just sit there and laugh at those new guys who just come in there and say, 'What's she going to teach us?' You have no idea."

As a freelance serviceman, Thomson learns about all the hot-tub brands he can.

"Most companies now will strictly service what they sell. They don't bother doing other service.

"I pretty well do all the different brands."

Many of the problems with which Thomson deals are caused by hot-tub owners who fail to maintain the chemical balance in their water, he said.

Bad water chemistry is probably the biggest cause of equipment failure, he said. "People don't check it."

Some will fill up their floating chlorine dispensers, walk away and forget it, he said.

"When they do that, the chlorine goes extremely high and, typically, with those dispensers, if your chlorine is high, your PH is low. Low PH water is very corrosive. It eats away at the element and it eats the rubber in the seals and causes issues.

"A lot of jet nozzles will rot away with a high chlorine reading. Something to remember is that city water PH is 7.6 -- that's in balance with your skin. If the city let the PH get out of whack, everybody's copper pipe in their house would literally fall apart."

Thompson says he'll continue Spa Time as long as he can.

"Every year I keep saying another five years, another five years."

There is no heir apparent to take over when he does retire, he said.

"Maybe in the next year or two I can find a young guy that wants to learn the business and I can teach him and if he wants to take it over, I'll just do the troubleshooting and he can buy it from me."

"But you've got to find the right guy."

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