Five-plus seats. For households that genuinely fill them.

Honest test: how many people will use the tub together, on a typical week, once the novelty has settled? If the answer is one, two or three, you don't need 5+ seats — the 4-or-less range is the right category and you'll save meaningfully on running cost. If the answer is genuinely four or more — Friday nights that fill up reliably, teenagers bringing friends, multi-generational households, a holiday let rated for groups — a 5+ seat tub is the honest buy.

The most common regret we hear is from buyers who sized up 'for the occasions' and ended up running a 1,800-litre tub for two-adult use fifty weeks a year. The less common (but real) regret is from buyers who sized down on a tight budget and then found the household outgrew the tub a year in. Size for the routine pattern, with an honest look at the next 5 years — teenagers, retirement, holiday-let plans — rather than for peak occasions or worst-case austerity.

Less than most buyers expect. Once up to temperature, a well-insulated 6-seat runs at roughly the same per-day cost as a 4-seat — both sit inside our £2–£2.50/day year-round figure, with the 6-seat toward the upper end and the 4-seat toward the lower. The difference is 20–40p/day, not £1/day. The reason: steady-state heat loss is driven by cover surface area and cabinet insulation, both of which are similar across the range, not by water volume.

Where the 6-seat is meaningfully more expensive is in first heat-up (nearly twice the water to bring up from mains temperature) and in water changes — full drain and refill every 4–6 weeks means 1,800 litres through the heater instead of 1,100. Those aren't daily running-cost line items; they're embedded in the water-change cycle. Over a year, expect the 6-seat to cost £80–£150 more to run than a 4-seat, not £500.

Mostly no. A 5/6/7-seat tub needs bigger circulation pumps to drive the additional jet arrays at full pressure, and those pumps need the 32A headroom that a standard outdoor socket can't provide. A handful of 5-seat models with modest pump specs are 13A-compatible, but the serious hydrotherapy spec (Toronto SE and similar) requires 32A.

If 32A install is a constraint — a tight consumer unit, a rental property, a long run from the house — check the 4-or-less range first. If you genuinely need 5+ seats, budget for an electrician attendance of a few hundred pounds on top of the spa. The install is a half-day job for a qualified sparky and happens on a separate visit from the spa delivery. Worth booking the electrician before the spa arrives, not after.

A lounger is a full-length contoured seat — you lie back almost horizontal, with jets running along your spine, calves, feet and sometimes lumbar. It's the seat most people default to for a long passive soak and the one that works hardest on the lower back. Fit depends on user height; loungers are typically sized for users up to around 180–185cm tall. Taller users sometimes find their feet hit the wall.

A captain's chair is a deep bucket seat, usually at a corner of the tub, with the highest jet-per-seat count in the spa — typically 10–14 jets targeting lumbar, shoulders, neck and calves from a seated position. It's the seat for serious hydrotherapy: you sit upright, water up to shoulder height, and the jets are pressurised enough that you can feel the massage working on specific muscle groups. Most 6-seat tubs have one captain's chair; some have two. Long-term owners typically have a 'favourite seat', and it's usually the captain's chair.

Plan a minimum 3.5 × 3.5m level base for a 5/6-seat, closer to 4 × 4m for a 7-seat or any model with a cover-lifter arc. Tub footprints run 220–245cm square; the additional space is for realistic access on all four sides, a cover-lifter swing radius, and a step if you want one. Concrete or close-jointed paving slabs rated for 2.5–3 tonnes filled weight. Direct onto grass isn't a base; garden decking only works if the structure is purpose-built or explicitly engineered for spa load.

The access space matters more than people expect. Filter changes, annual service, the occasional need to get to the pump housing — all of those are dramatically easier when there's 50cm of clear walk-around. A tub wedged against a wall looks neat on day one and becomes a problem on day 400 when a jet needs replacing.

Typically 1,400–1,900 litres for a 5/6-seat; the bigger 7-seat models run 1,800–2,100. Mains filling takes 45–90 minutes depending on household water pressure. Drain-down for a full water change (every 4–6 weeks) takes a similar time. From a cold mains fill (10–14°C) up to 38°C takes roughly 14–24 hours — the 3kW heater on 32A tubs and the 2kW heater on the smaller plug-and-play models roughly match their respective water volumes, so first heat-up is broadly similar either way. Once up to temperature, the heater cycles to hold the set point — no more than a few hours of actual heater-on time per day in average conditions.

Practically, no — not night after night. Our 5″ tapered hard-top covers weigh roughly 30–40kg on a 5/6-seat, 40kg+ on a 7-seat. That's a genuinely heavy awkward object to wrestle off the tub every evening, especially in wind, rain or on a cold night when the cover's picked up surface water. A cover lifter isn't optional on a 5+ seat tub; it's part of the install.

Cover lifters add £300–£600 to the spa cost and make the difference between a tub you use every evening and a tub you don't use because dealing with the cover is annoying. This is the one accessory we'd say is not negotiable at this size — budget for it in the original quote rather than adding it six months in.

Potentially, yes — the 220–245cm tub width is the usual constraint. Standard garden-gate access (800–900mm) won't fit a 6-seat; you'll need a 1,000mm+ clear passage from the kerbside drop to the final position, or an over-the-fence crane lift, or the ability to remove a fence panel temporarily. Before ordering, measure the narrowest point of the access route — including any turns — and compare to the spa's exact width on the product listing.

If access is tight, we can arrange a site survey. A crane lift is the usual solution and typically runs £400–£800 depending on reach and overhead complexity. We'd rather quote that honestly up front than have a spa arrive kerbside with no way to get it to the patio.

Yes. Same 5″→3″ tapered hard-top cover, same silver-foil reflection panels, same high-density shell foam, same Balboa BP control system. The build spec doesn't scale with size — only the seat count, pump HP and water volume do. Real-world insulation check: with all pumps at full power across a 45-minute soak, our tubs lose roughly 1–2°C regardless of size. A lesser-insulated competitor tub at any size drops closer to 5°C in the same session, pushing users out of the water before they're ready to leave.

Honestly, no — not full pressurised hydrotherapy on six different jet banks simultaneously. No 6-seat tub is plumbed that way; the pump HP needed would be enormous and the electrical spec would push the tub into commercial territory. What a proper 6-seat does is run 3–4 jet banks at full pressure while the remaining seats have reduced-intensity circulation. In practice, six people in the tub cycle through the high-pressure seats naturally — someone moves to the cool-down, someone else takes the captain's chair, the lounger is freed up.

If the primary use case is six adults all getting simultaneous maximum-pressure jets, that's a commercial-grade spa or a swim-spa, not a domestic 6-seat. For the real-world case — six people sharing the tub, cycling seats over a 45-minute session — the domestic 6-seat is exactly the right product.

It happens — usually 3–5 years in, once the kids have left home or the entertaining pattern has settled. A used 6-seat in good condition has a healthy resale market (hot tubs depreciate more slowly than people expect), so 'trading down' is realistic. We'd rather have this conversation before you buy, though — buying the right-sized spa from the start is cheaper than cycling through two tubs in a decade. If you're uncertain about household-size trajectory, the honest conversation to have with us is about the next five years, not the next twenty.

Same manufacturer warranties as our smaller hard-shells — shell structure, cabinet, plumbing and equipment cover, with wear items (filters, jets, pillows, cover fabric) treated as consumables. Warranty length and inclusions vary by model; full per-product terms on each listing. UK support is handled from our Redhill, Surrey office — same team, same phone number. On the bigger tubs we'd specifically flag that keeping up with filter changes and water chemistry matters more than on a smaller tub — more water through more jets means more filter load, and ignoring it is the fastest way to invalidate a pump warranty.