Killer Spa Covers?

How dangerous is an overweight foam Spa Cover? Recently a friend was checking the chemicals in his spa. Rather than attempting removing the entire spa cover, he decided to just lift one side enough to get at the water long enough to get a sample. He bent over and supporting the heavy cover with his left arm while attempting to fill a sampling bottle with water from the spa to check the chemical content, and total alkalinity.

As he leaned over further, the weight of the water logged spa cover dislocated his left shoulder and allowed the cover to hit him on the back knocking him into the spa. He was now face down in the spa with his legs pinned to spa by the weight of the spa cover. His shoulder was dislocated and unlike the Mel Gibson character in Lethal Weapon, he was in agony because of a the pain. He tried to move but could not budge the weight of the waterlogged cover.

He began to choke as he swallowed spa water and tried to rise up but could barely get his head out of the water. With what could have been his last breath, he screamed for help. Fortunately he had left the door from the house to the deck open. His daughter and her boy friend heard the commotion and looked out to see his legs sticking out of the spa cover.

His daughter and her boy friend were able to lift the cover off of his legs. His daughters boy friend jumped into the hot tub and pulled him up from the water. They took him to the emergency room where they put his shoulder back in place and treated him for shock.

Women who have experienced both child birth and a dislocated shoulder report dislocating a shoulder as more intense than childbirth. I do not know about that, I suspect that with child birth you can prepare mentally for the pain and with the shoulder it comes at you unexpectedly. But either way I think we can agree the pain is excruciating.

My friend had owned a hot tub for 12 years and had replaced 3 conventional rigid foam core spa covers. While the life on the foam covers had averaged from 2 to 4 years, regardless of manufactures claims, all the covers became waterlogged. He has since bought a Spa Cover that uses air chambers to insulate rather than rigid foam. He is certain that the air filled spa cover will not try to kill him as the other foam cover did.

A lady friend of ours and her husband were in the hot tub with their rigid foam spa lid propped up against the wall. A gust of wind hit the spa cover and it suddenly fell hitting her husband on the head. The blow was hard enough to push them both under the water. Fortunately they were not trapped and they both recovered quickly, or so they thought.

A couple of days later the left side of her husbands face suddenly went DEAD. He had no feeling, sensation or movement. Naturally they both were quite frightened and thought he had suffered a stroke. They did exactly what any of us would do and rushed immediately to the hospital. The doctor diagnosed him with Bells Palsy which can be caused by stress and or trauma like a heavy spa cover hitting him on the head. He later made a full recovery. He was extremely lucky.

Here is something you will never hear from a foam spa cover dealer. Every year people are injured by foam hot tub covers. Most of the injuries have come from a gust of wind blowing the heavy foam cover onto people as they use their spa. Sometimes people attempting to carefully maneuver a saturated foam cover off their spa, have lost their grip and had the hard foam cover slam down breaking the arch of their foot.

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission people have even been drowned when they have become trapped under heavy foam covers. Maybe now is a good time to search for a better spa cover. With the World Wide Web, you can literally have the world to shop from. Do you really want to risk injury or death trying to use your spa?