Sunday, January 30, 2011

Outdoor Hot tub Spa phone techniques during snow or rainstorms

 Even though during most of the year here in Northern California this isn't necessary because we, at most, usually only get 3 months of rainy weather spread out through the year, when it does rain or hail here on the coast it is a good idea to protect your phone or cell (or both) while hot tubbing in your spa during a storm. So what I do is to get a zip lock bag (the size your choice) and put into it my remote for my land line and also my cell phone in it. That way I have both lines available to me to answer even if I'm in the hot tub in the rain or hail outside in my back yard. I also wear an old baseball cap to keep the rain out of my eyes and off my forehead. Also, because of how the nature of sound works it travels through the plastic bag without opening it during a rain storm. So one can speak and hear from either remote without exposing the phone remote or the cell to water damage of any kind. However, if you live where there is a lot of lightning you might not want to be hot tubbing when the lightning and thunder is going off unless you want to be crispy fried by the lightning bolts. But then, to each his or her own.

I can also remember back to the late 1970s when I learned first hand how much hot tub therapy could take away muscle pain from a strenuous day of skiing, biking, hiking, or sledding or swimming (or any strenuous physical activity). Back then, I lived in Mt. Shasta and a friend of mine owned Morning Star on the mountain at about 5000 feet. He and his wife and kids had a fire wood  stoked hot tub and after a day of skiing (cross country usually) both our families would pile into his  fire wood stoked hut tub out under the stars and heal our muscles from the strenuous activity and look up at the stars with all the snow 3 to 5 feet high all around us. I started to be amazed then how one could be in 15 to 30 degree temperatures Fahrenheit outside in a hot tub(the hot tub was at 102 to 105 degrees to compensate for the low air temperatures outside) and be warm or even hot and happy in those circumstances. One only needed to remember not to get one's hair wet or there would be ice on it when one got out sometimes and with ice on your hair you might get a stiff neck later. Also, if the hot tub was hot enough sometimes we would get out and jump around in the snow or roll in it for fun and then jump back into the hot tub. This seemed to invigorate us and to strengthen our hearts because we were all mostly in our late 20s or early 30s then.

So, when we purchased our latest house in the late 1990s we made sure it had an outside hot tub as well. And this Christmas my wife and I gave ourselves a new one as the old one wasn't working right anymore. So, I hope this article is useful to you in enjoying the stars at night while relaxing sore muscles and talking with friends either together in the hot tub or on the phone. However, to be safe you only want remote phone devices that are not plugged into AC voltage right where the Hot tub is located.

Also, I haven't found a way to have a safe use of laptops in the rain. However, a large plastic ziplock bag might encompass an IPad type of device as long as you are holding it outside the tub while you are using it. (However,  over the years I have lost two cell phones during the last 10 years into the tub accidentally. But, even though you lose the cell permanently when this happens there is no real danger to you or to the people in the hot tub as long as you fish it out and don't just leave it in there. Once it is in the hot tub it is dead but you don't want to leave it in the hot tub just because it is dead. It's not a pool toy. Good luck out under the stars.

However, if it is raining and the zip lock clear plastic bag is sealed and you then accidentally drop your cell phone into the water, if you are really lucky there will be no damage to the phone.

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