Hello I'm new to the site. I have been given a hot tub and i am trying to figure out how to turn it into a fish pond It cracked over winter so I'm just going to seal it.. It works ... So can I use the jets and it has a little built in waterfall ???I know the jets are powerful so I would have to find a way to weaken them.... Any ideas.... I would like to use as much as the original hot tub as possible .

Do you actually drink your bathwater? That would be the only scenario where lead contamination would be an issue. You could have a solid lead bathtub and bathe in it for 80 years and still be fine healthwise. The other issue is that copper is a living finish and won't always look magazine shot worthy if actually used. Some shampoos and conditioners will take off it's patina, leaving shiny spots. Some bath products will make darker spots. If you use if often, you can expect it to have a tell tale water height ring around it, even with good quality water. With any non neutral water, such as the acidic water of the East or the alkaline water of the West, that water height mark will be of varying visibility. Clearcoating it is only a temporary solution that eventually flakes off and looks worse than if it were not clearcoated at all from the beginning.

I've had my eye on a Toto Clayton tile-in airbath for a while. I can't say they are any better than a kohler or other brand; we just stumbled on it because we'd already bought a toto clayton toilet and thought we might stay in the same line as we redo the bath. As for the step depth, I remember reading about the design work of Shusaku Arakawa and Madeline Gins, who believe that we can defy death through architecture. They believe that houses that are physically challenging to live in are better, and their designs are frankly crazy by any standards we are accustomed to. I rolled my eyes when I first read about their work. One of their designs required crash helmets and hiking boots to tour, and some visitors broke bones. (I couldn't make this up if I tried!). But as bizarre as their designs are (you can check out their website at reversibledestiny.org), it did make me start to wonder, what if our houses required us to move and stretch a little more than they do now? So while I don't want to live in a house where visitors regularly fall and break bones, it seems to me that a navigating a deep step into tub is not asking for that much, especially if you have grab bars in the right places and a non-slip floor next to the tub. I suppose an indigenous hunter-gatherer would roll their eyes at our sedentary coddled lifestyle and think we're crazy to live in a way that allows diabetes and heart disease to become epidemic. So go ahead and get that airbath. Maybe you'll live a little bit longer :-) Here is a link that might be useful: toto clayton airbath.

I have had a Hydrosystems Fuji 6040 fiberglass for years and find it wonderful... sitting in a dry tub in a show room isn't a very good way to judge the comfort, since when the tub is full of water your body is almost weightless and very little pressure is put on your body. I put my overflows on the deck of the tub, so as to get the full 32 inch depth immersion. This placement of the overflows means you must recess the tub an additional 6 inches into the deck and tile the recess to make it waterproof when the tub overflows during vigorous activity. I use two 50 gallon 40,000 BTU hot water heaters to fill the tub through a one inch copper line with ball valves and side spout. The filling takes about 5 minutes. I also have installed the Fuji in some of my apartment units and the tenants love them. Here in Venice Beach, California, the cost of filling the tub is about 50 cents total for the water and the gas to heat the water. Feel free to contact me for any questions.