This tub is impressive. The review may get a bit wordy...because the best way to go about it is to tell you our experience.
First, in early April of 2016, I ordered a different tub for my disabled wife...then, barely in time, realized with a shock that the tub I'd ordered would not fit through two of our home's interior doorways en route to Pam's bathroom. Oops! Fortunately, I caught the seller just in time, before the too-wide tub left their facility, and upgraded to this one. At 28" wide, it will fit through the standard 32" interior doorway without having to rip half of the house apart.
When the tub arrived and we (our part time hired hand and I) got it out of the shipping box and lugged it into the kitchen, I sat down to read the manual. Oops again; this puppy draws 2750 watts of AC current and requires a dedicated 30 amp circuit to handle the load. Since we live off grid and electrical power supply is an entire art, I needed to buy a bigger generator than we currently owned...then build an open faced shed to house the gennie...then dig a ditch and bury 40 feet or so of heavy cable to run between the generator and the house. It also required installation of a wall switch near the tub...and no store in town carried a 30 amp switch. (Happily, Amazon did.)
Plumbing the drains turned out to be interesting, too. The tub comes with two large 2" drains. Since the drain line I'd long ago run over to the installation area was only a two-incher itself, I ended up running those two drains through a "Y" into the single pipe, but wow, even with that, this tub does drain fast. Pro: That's important when the bather can't get out until the water is below the door opening. Con: The force of a whole huge tub of water pushing down through there turned out to have a drawback--shreds of sewer residue will back up into the floor area of my clawfoot bathtub in my bathroom if I forget to close the clawfoot's drain. Not nice! But as long as I don't forget, no problem. And if your "normal" in-city home has a larger drain pipe, no problem there, either. (We do have a 3" main line, but the two bathroom pipelines get to "interact" a bit before reaching that.)
The whistles and bells on this unit are something else. Hydro massage, air massage, chromotherapy (alternating blue and green lights with an occasional quick dash of red), an ozone generator, an in-line water heater...and everything worked perfectly, right out of the box, no problems at all. The water controls are also quite remarkable and easy to use: Thermostatic mixer, water spout faucet, and a completely separate shower hose control--no flipping either/or like you see in most home tub/shower combos.
There is one design flaw that left me shaking my head. The manual says a licensed electrical contractor "must" be used for installation. Yeah, right. I built our home from the ground up, literally, homesteading in Cochise County, Arizona, where the local building code allows an Owner-Builder exemption for rural landowners. "Licensed contractor" is not in my vocabulary...but I'm betting any electrician out there would have been muttering over the main wiring panel for this tub. The incoming power supply wires had to be 10 gauge. Those are not small, but most importantly, the connecting lugs were too wide to fit into the itty bitty 5/16" slots on the panel. I had to grind the sides of each lug "loop" down a bit to get them narrow enough to fit. It all worked out in the end, though, so no harm, no foul.
Thankfully, the numerous adjustable supporting legs are simple to adjust and come with holes in the feet so that nails or screws can be inserted to keep everything in place after the tub is leveled. That's a real plus.
Finally, to the points you-the-consumer really care about: Despite being billed as a "Petite" tub, my five-foot wife's feet don't reach the floor when she's sitting on the seat. In fact, they miss by several inches. The only other not-quite-wonderful detail is the unbelievably loud howl of the hydro massager when it's running. Allen (the hired hand) nailed it when he said it sounds "exactly like a full shop vac." I can't afford to lose any more hearing, so I wear soundproofing earmuffs when I'm in there helping Pam soak her aches and pains away. We also discovered (no surprise) that our 50 gallon propane fired hot water heater was not enough to fill the tub completely with "hot enough" water...at first.
But we worked out the kinks. Instead of having to add another water heater, we developed a procedure: 1. Temporarily turn up the water heater to maximum, labeled VERY HOT. 2. Run the hot water until we hear the burner kick in. 3. Shut the hot water off and wait until the burner goes off, which takes about twenty minutes. That gives us more than enough hot water. 4. After Pam is out of the tub, turn the hot water heater back down to its normal setting.
The benefits? Just what we hoped for. Pam is a bone thin 84 pounds. Ten minutes of bubbly-jet hot bath soak is enough to heat her up thoroughly and to ease her chronic head-to-toe pain considerably. The step-in (and out) height of the doorway is quite manageable for her, though I do stand ready to steady her on the way out because of her balance problems. It's a beautiful appliance. I couldn't find any other tub (on Amazon or elsewhere) that would do the job we needed done, and this one does it very, very well.
| Color | White |
|---|---|
| Material | Acrylic |
| Brand | Ellas Bubbles |
| Product Dimensions | 52.25"L x 27.5"W x 38"H |
| Style | Air+Hydro, 2 Piece Faucet, Right |
| Finish Type | Brushed |
| Item Weight | 1.6 ounces |
| Installation Type | Drop-In |
| Capacity | 70 Gallons |
| Shape | Rectangular |
| Manufacturer | Ella's Bubbles |
| Part Number | 931682P |
| Item model number | 93168 |
| Is Discontinued By Manufacturer | No |
| Size | Rectangle |
| Finish | Brushed |
| Voltage | 120 Volts |
| Wattage | 1.5 KW |
| Horsepower | 1.50 |
| Item Package Quantity | 1 |
| Special Features | whirlpool-bathtubs |
| Included Components | Air and Hydrotherapy Jetting, Right Inward Swing Door, Fast Fill faucet, Right Side Dual 2" Drains, Petite Walk-In Tub, extension panel to fit 60" opening |
| Batteries Included? | No |
| Batteries Required? | No |
| Warranty Description | Limited lifetime warranty on door, frame and shell and 5-year parts warranty |
