So a friend of mine bought a hot tub from the son of a friend of mine. It was agreed that the son would deliver the hot tub on trailer to dad’s house so he could deliver it to the friend’s house, move it into place and wire it. All is good. I was asked to help move the beast, along with another friend. There is a good chance none of us will be friends by the end of this. So, Monday night is the night of the big move and I call to ask when the tub will arrive. Turns out son didn’t deliver it, dad had to go borrow a trailer drive to son’s house and pick up the tub, so not gonna happen next Monday.

Tonight is moving night, dad picks up friend, drives to London to purchasing friend’s house and all is good. I arrive about 6:30 with a 1,000 Lb moving dolly and we are ready to rock. But what is this? All three friends are frantically taking a homemade dolly off the side of the tub because when they tried to stand it up, everything buckled and things went sideways…literally. No tools to speak of just three guys cursing, laughing and calling each other vile things…a regular guy day.

So dolly off…my dolly ready to go…lets lift this puppy. Now I should mention that a brand new hot tub of this size weighs a lot…a used hot tub that has picked up a bit of water in the foam insulation weighs about 1,687,462.5 Lbs or like 600 Kilos if you are into metric. So we give a mighty heave and lift the beast onto my furniture dolly. Great!

So maybe I should pause here and set the scene…the tub (yes all 1,687,462.5 Lbs of it) needs to be moved off the driveway over a six inch drop, rolled down about 30ft of sidewalk – careful not to go on the lawn which drops off at about 45 degrees, turn a 90 degree corner (guess we will be using the neighbor’s lawn after all) up 4 steps, through a gate, across a wooden patio and into place on a concrete pad. Piece of cake!

So the beast is now standing on edge on the furniture dolly, four smiling village idiots trying to hold it upright and head it towards the 6″ precipice. All heave toward the drop while trying to keep the towering beast upright and…NOTHING! Seems that one of the wheels marched to a different drummer and was pointing at a 90 degree angle to the direction the rest of us were rowing. Simple…get down on your hands and knees and straighten the wheel, while your friends hold up 1,687,462.5 Lbs so it doesn’t drop on you when the wheel spins. Except…the wheel isn’t spinning, the wheel isn’t rolling, the wheel isn’t doing anything that anyone expects wheels to do. So, lay the behemoth down. Re-assess. Remember the wheels that were coming off when I arrived? Well they need to go back on.

So, 7:45PM run home grab tools, grab gloves (give me a break it is cold out) and head back. Now the plan is to put a 4X4 under one side (it was my plan…HEY! am I a friggin engineer?) so that when we stand the tub up, the taller wheels will be off the ground and the tub, which was already like 12 feet tall will now stand 13 foot 7 inches. That will be easy to control (that was sarcasm).

That night I had a couple of jobs to do…lift the behemoth, get tools, get gloves etc, The 4X4 had one job…sit still and act as a pivot point. But oh no! Instead as we lift… it feels the need to roll. No one asked it to roll. No one wanted it to roll, but roll it did. So put the behemoth back down Did I mention that the age of the liftees was from 50 to 60, not 20 to 30 so the tub now seemed to weigh 2, 687,462.25 Lbs.

So, new plan. Move the pivot point of the 4X4 back, add some cross members to the makeshift dolly, wrap a safety strap around it and stand it up once again. Looking good! Things are coming together…heave…and the damn tire turns and try’s to roll the tub off into the neighbor’s yard. WHAT IS IT WITH THESE DAMN TIRES? They don’t turn when you want them to…they turn when you want them to stay straight. So, put the behemoth down yet again. It is now 9:30…we have been at this for 3 hours, and the tub is 3 feet from where it was when I arrived. Going home…having a drink or two, and jumping into my Hot tub. TO BE CONTINUED.