We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.

Sharon and I recently bought a new hot tub. We’d been using our old one over fifteen years and been very happy with it. We’d had to have minor repairs done on a few occasions, but that’s to be expected. Fifteen years seemed like a pretty reasonable time for a hot tub to last.

Last spring it developed a serious enough leak that I had to replenish about 20% of the water each time I used it. We called a repairman we’d used a few times before, but before he came, the leak suddenly stopped. I don’t understand how those things happen, but for the next six months it held water just like it was supposed to.

Just before Thanksgiving it finally gave up. The leak returned with a vengeance. I called the repairman, and he came and checked it out, The leak turned out to be at a junction where a number of different lines and pipes came together, and it was in a very difficult place to get to. He started adding up what it would take to get it repaired, and when he got to $4,000, I said no. We could almost buy a new one for that.

After checking online with several different manufacturers, we decided to take an hour-and-a-half drive over to the other side of Dallas to Aries Spas. They manufactured our old one, and we were happy with it, so that seemed logical, even though I try to stay out of Dallas County as much as possible. I mean, our Fort Worth traffic is horrible, but Dallas is much worse.

Anyhow, we found what we wanted, and a crew from the factory came out to remove the old one and install the new one. By the way, they went to a lot of trouble to remove the old one, which was huge. They worked with us on getting it positioned just right. The last thing for them to do was hook up the electricity, which is 50 amps and 220 volts.

When the man looked at the cable containing the wiring, he almost threw it back onto the patio, saying there was no ground wire and that couldn’t connect it without one. We had just had an electrician out a couple of days earlier to connect a GFCI breaker, and he hadn’t said anything about it.

After some discussion, we decided to call a Dallas electrician recommended by the spa company. We didn’t want to take any more chances, even though this guy was a good bit more expensive than a local man would have been. Both this electrician and the installers from the spa company told me that any electrician installing that breaker should have realized there was no ground wire and insisted on installing one.

They seemed mortified that I’d been using the old hot tub for fifteen years with no ground wire. They couldn’t believe I hadn’t been fried sometime along the way. I guess God sends special angels to watch over stupid people who don’t know what they’re doing.

Have you had a scary experience with improper electrical wiring? Makes you stop and count your blessings.

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For more information about David N. Walker, click the “About” tab above.

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Contact him at dnwalkertx (at) gmail (dot) com or tweet him at @davidnwalkertx.