DIY Hot Tub Plumbing Guide - I cover it all, it is easier than you think!

hi andy here from builderhottub.com in this video we're going to look at all the aspects of plumbing that you're going to need when you're building your own hot tub in your backyard so plumbing's probably the area of of building your own diy hot tub that i get the most questions about it seems to be the area that most people are maybe skeptical about or not sure whether they can actually do the plumbing the good news is is the plumbing itself is is not that difficult the concept is is pretty straightforward so you are heating the water with a heater you're pumping it around with a pump okay and it's it really is that simple so if you think the water starts in the hot tub it gets drawn by the pump through it's normally the front of the pump that has the inlet there so it goes into the pump it goes out either side or the top of the pump that then passes into the filter it then goes through the filter then into the heater and then back into the hot tub via the jets and it's just that circulation process uh that gives us um you know the the heated and the i guess the the bubbly water now the bubbles do come with the addition of a blower which we'll uh we'll talk about later but that uh that that process is really simple so you have to have some inlet drains in your in your hot tub to allow the water to be drawn out and into the pump normally you would have a skimmer connected as well certainly if you're doing an in-ground concrete tub and that just helps with the water flow as well you would always have two inlet drains in case one gets blocked it's just the industry standard it's also a safety thing as well you don't want that pump being starved of water if there's no water in a pump it will overheat and it will damage and if you're running that's called running it dry fractures generally don't honor the warranties because they say you're not allowed to run them dry so we've got to make sure that there's always a good flow of water from the hot tub into the the inlet or the front of the of the pump one of the questions that i get asked a lot is regarding the jets on the on the hot tub and how they kind of all fit together with the with the plumbing so let's take a look at that now this is what a a fully assembled gunite jet and body looks like and it's comprised of a jet we've got a jet holder here normally these would be nice and flush but i'm i'm using kind of an exploded view so we can we can see what's going on we have the goodnight niche two and a half inch pipe and then the goodnight body at the back and inside of this it screws in here and we have the water line as well okay so this is the water pipe that carries the water from the the body into the the jet so if i just screw that back in there okay now on the back of the granite body we've got two sections here the two inch pipe section is for water so this would be a water feed and the one and a half inch pipe on the top is for air and the whole premise of the the gunaite is that you mix air and water together inside of the the granite body and you get a stronger jet and you also get more a much more bubbly kind of output as well into your hot tub which we're all looking for in the end i guess so okay so let's let's take this all apart and have a look how we can assemble it okay so we're going to start with the the granite body and what we're going to do is we're going to drill the the hole to allow the two and a half inch pipe which connects as so to go through the the wall of the hot tub which sits here and this is now inside the the hot tub once we have the pipes cut nice and flush we can then add a niche onto the the end of that two and a half inch pipe and this is going to be the hot tub wall here it's going to be totally flush with my finish and behind me you can see some pictures of of kind of what this looks like and the process but my hot tub wall is going to be totally flush with the with the niche here into the granite body goes a jet holder which is set on a one inch pipe and at the bottom of the the one inch pipe is a threaded ring and this allows me then to insert and that will twist into place and that holds it firmly in place now this would normally be totally flush but i've done it so it's it's kind of proud so we can see on the video the different parts of the the jet system once this is totally flush and this again is going to be the the wall of the hot tub it's then time to to add the jet the jet is the last piece of the puzzle and this simply fits into the jet holder and it twists and locks in place and that's it we're ready to go with our gunite system what we're going to do now is just recap the the inward plumbing and the outward plumbing using a couple of the cad diagrams that you're able to to purchase in my online store i'd highly recommend it once you've got the plans it makes life so much easier it just takes away any of that uh guesswork i guess which in in the long run is is gonna cost you in the wallet so as we can see behind me this is the the inward plumbing so we've got the two bottom drains and we've got the skimmer connected to those bottom drains this is going to allow the water now to be drawn into the the pump once it's passed through the pump as we've said it goes into the filter from filter into the heater and from the heater it then passes as we can see back into the the outward plumbing now there's two different lines that you can see on the diagram behind me the bottom one is the two inch water feed so that as we've seen it connects to the gunnite bodies and it allows water to go back into the hot tub on top is the one and a half inch air line and this connects to your blower which is in the control room on your blower you will have a non-return valve and that's really really important because once you turn off the pump the water will flow back into all of the pipes it flows into the air pipes as well so if you don't have that on that non-return valve on that blower you're going to fill your blower full of water as soon as you turn it on it's going to trip your breaker and it's going to damage the kit as well so you've got to have a non-return valve connected to that blower just to keep the water out of the of the system so these are just some short examples the full diagrams piece by piece are available as i said at my online store shop.builderhottub.com and they're available in all the different sizes uh depending on how big um you're you're actually building your your tub so do do check that out as i said the instructions just make life so much easier and it takes away the guesswork in putting your plumbing together we're now going to talk about making a good plumbing joint the kit that's involved with hot tubs is is really substantial we're we're not talking flimsy pieces of plastic they are substantial because they've got to withstand the pressure anything that's pressurized with water involved means you're going to have to have well-made joints otherwise you are going to have leaks and you really don't want to be trying to plug leaks connections that are made well with the fittings the correct pipe the correct pipe cement don't leak badly made connections connections that don't go all the way into the the corners or the the straight uh the sockets they they are gonna leak whether it's today whether it's 12 months down the line if they're not made correctly they're going to leak so as you can see behind me here is the process for making a a kind of perfect joint you're going to use plenty of pvc pipe cement don't be shy really cover the uh the connection uh in that pipe cement and when you push the pipe in it's got to go all the way in you're looking at about three centimeters or just over an inch for every one of the connections to to really force that connection into the um the the socket and if you look on the other end so if you um you know if you're able to look through one of the joints you should see that there's a layer of the pipe cement that's built up right on the edge of the pipe which just means it's made a really good connection the excess pipe cement will dry and it'll just seal it really nicely inside of the connection take your time with the plumbing uh it's really worth getting it right because going back a later date to to try and redo the plumbing unfortunately i made a few mistakes on on my own build so i have had to go back and redo them and it's just it's just frustrating having to to go and redo something that you've you know you've already done if you get it right first time it's not gonna leak if you've liked this video please do like share and subscribe to the channel see you on the next video

Channel: Buildahottub

Views: 15,834

Keywords: DIY Hot tub plumbing, diy hot tub plumbing diagram, diy hot tub plumbing kit, buildahottub.com, diy hot tub, how to build a diy hot tub, concrete hot tub plumbing, brick hot tub plumbing, hot tub plumbing guide, hot tub plumbing setup, how to plumb a hot tub, What do i need for hot tub plumbing?, build a hot tub, diy hot tub jets, diy hot tub build, diy hot tub in ground, build a hot tub base

Id: xHE5I1BMztQ

Length: 9min 36sec (576 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 15 2021