Can You Use a Hot Tub in Summer? Turn It Down

Here’s the sentence that talks more people out of a hot tub than price ever has: “We’d only use it half the year — it’s too hot in summer.” It’s said with total confidence, and it’s built on an assumption nobody ever questions: that a hot tub runs at 104°F because that’s what hot tubs do.

It doesn’t. That’s a setting. You picked it, and you can pick a different one.

104° Was Never Mandatory

Your spa has a thermostat, the same as your house. Nothing about the equipment requires the water to be hotter than the air. People run 104° in January because it feels extraordinary in January — and then leave it there in July, discover it’s miserable, and conclude that hot tubs are a winter product.

Turn it down. That’s the entire fix.

The whole idea in one line: an 80° body of water on a 95° day is more enjoyable than a 104° body of water on a 95° day. Obvious once somebody says it — and almost nobody says it.

The reason is your body, not the spa. At 104° in cold air you’re shedding heat the whole time you soak, which is why it feels so good in a Minnesota February. At 104° in 95° air you’ve got nowhere to put that heat, so you last ten minutes and get out annoyed. Drop the water into the 80s and the same spa becomes the thing you sit in because it’s hot out.

What a Cool Spa Actually Turns Into

Run it in the 80s from June through August and the spa stops being a winter appliance and starts being the small pool most Minnesota backyards can’t justify building.

The kids get in. This is the big one. Children who won’t go near 104° water will live in an 85° spa all afternoon, and you’ll get more use out of it in one July than the previous three Februaries combined.

You can actually stay in. A cool soak has no time limit. You can read out there. You can have a drink without overheating.

It costs less to run. You’re heating the water you own every day either way — holding it at 85° instead of 104° is simply less work in the months when it’s warm out anyway.

It stays in the routine. Which matters more than any of the above, for a reason we’ll get to.

If Summer Is Your Main Season, You May Be Shopping for the Wrong Thing

Everything above is true: a hot tub run cool is a genuinely good summer product. But if summer is the season you’re actually buying for — if the picture in your head is the kids in the water all afternoon and you doing laps — then a swim spa isn’t a workaround for the season. It’s built for it.

More water, enough length to actually swim against a current, and on dual-temp models a cool swim end and a hot end at the same time. The cool-it-down trick stops being a clever adjustment and becomes the whole design.

Worth knowing who’s saying this: our distributors are telling us more Minnesota backyards will get a swim spa than a pool in 2026 and 2027. Those same distributors sell above-ground pools and supply inground pool products — so that’s them calling it against their own pool business, which is the kind of opinion worth listening to.

The running-cost math is the part that surprises people. A swim spa is insulated, covered when it’s not in use, and holds a fraction of the water a pool does. A pool is tens of thousands of gallons, open to the sky, losing heat to evaporation across a huge surface every hour it’s uncovered — and in Minnesota it’s usually heated on natural gas from April to October. Run the two side by side and a swim spa operating all twelve months on electricity comes in under a pool heated for seven.

And the swim spa is usable in January, which the pool is not. If you want the numbers for your own backyard, our swim spa cost guide lays them out, and the honest entry point is a refurbished 12-footer rather than anything under $10,000 — we’ll show you why in person.

How to Actually Do It

Set the temperature down and give it time — a spa cools far more slowly than it heats, because it’s insulated and there’s no active chiller in a standard hot tub. Expect a day or two, not an afternoon. Leaving the cover off overnight in warm weather helps it along.

Most spas will go down to 80°F — that’s the minimum setting on the majority of models. But 80° is the floor, not the recommendation. Where you actually want to sit depends on the day and on your backyard.

Here’s one dealer’s own ladder, for whatever it’s worth:

Summer: 92–95°F — and which end of that depends on whether the spa is in direct sun, in the shade, or catching wind. The same setting feels like three different temperatures across those three spots.
Fall: creeping up as the evenings cool off. You follow the weather rather than pick a number and leave it.
Dead of a Minnesota winter: 100–101°F — out of the wind, with a view of the stars. Not 104°. You don’t need it.

That’s personal preference, not prescription. The point is that the dial has a whole range on it and most people use exactly one number on it, all year, forever.

One honest wrinkle: in genuinely hot weather a spa can sit above its setpoint anyway. Pump motors put heat into the water, the sun works on the cabinet and cover, and a well-insulated spa is very good at not letting heat out — which is the one time that’s inconvenient. If yours runs warmer than you set it in August, that’s normal rather than broken, and there are things we can suggest.

If the temperature won’t come down at all, or won’t hold where you put it, that’s a different conversation — talk to our service department rather than assuming it’s just summer.

Why This Matters More Than It Sounds

A hot tub is like a country club or a gym membership. You pay to keep the water ready whether you get in or not, so the entire value depends on use. A spa you’re in four nights a week is one of the best purchases in the house. A spa you’re in four times a year is an expensive lid.

And here’s the part worth taking seriously: the drift starts in summer. The cover goes on in June, the water gets ignored, the chemistry slides, and by October getting it going again feels like a project instead of a pleasure. That’s the road that ends with a spa sitting unused for two years and eventually listed free on Facebook — not because it was a bad spa, but because somebody lost the habit in July.

Rule of thumb: turn it down in June, turn it up in September, and use it all twelve months. A spa in the routine stays maintained, stays enjoyed, and holds its value. A spa that goes quiet for a season often never really comes back.

It’s Always Hot Tub Season at MinnSpas

Which brings us to the thing we get asked every September: should I winterize it?

Our answer is no — keep it hot, full and running, 24/7/365. A hot tub is built to run continuously. The water moving through it and the heat in it are what protect the plumbing through a Minnesota January. A spa that’s up and running is a spa that’s looking after itself; a spa sitting drained and cold in a Minnesota winter is the one we worry about, because water left anywhere in the pumps or plumbing has all winter to find something to crack.

Running it cool in July and warm in January is the same idea from both ends: the spa stays in use, stays maintained, and stays yours. Shutting it down for a season is how the habit breaks.

How far does this go? One of us moves his spa into the third stall of the garage for football season — flat screen on the wall, out of the wind, and the hot tub becomes the couch from September through the playoffs.

Full disclosure on that one: he’s a spa tech with a delivery truck, moving equipment, two 50-amp circuits in the garage and a history of running a third 110V spa in there at the same time — while another one sat out on the patio. That is not a normal setup and nobody should read it as a how-to.

The consumer version of the same idea is a Softub: 70 lbs, rolls into place, plugs into a standard 120V outlet, and moves without a crew. If the idea of a spa that follows the season appeals to you, that’s the easy way in.

On humidity, which is the obvious objection. The simplest answer is also the nicest one: open the garage door while you’re in it. You get the airflow and you get the view — snow coming down ten feet away, and you’re out of the wind with the game on. That’s most of the ventilation problem solved by the thing you’d want to do anyway.

For the rest of the time, a spa living in a garage full-time still wants the space to breathe. A ventilation fan on a humidity sensor handles it without you thinking about it; at minimum, wire one to a switch you’re already flipping when you use the spa. In an attached garage that’s worth doing properly rather than finding out about it in the drywall.

And if moving a spa twice a year sounds extravagant, run the numbers against the alternative. Call it $300 in the spring and $300 in the fall to have it exactly where you want it for each season. Then ask what 17 Vikings games and a playoff loss costs a family — tickets, parking, concessions, the drive — and which one delivered more hours of actual enjoyment.

To be straightforward about it: MinnSpas does not currently offer winterization as a service. We’d rather help you keep it running. If your situation genuinely calls for shutting a spa down — an unoccupied cabin, a property going empty for months, a house being sold — call us and we’ll talk through what’s actually at stake before you do anything.

Still Think It’s a Three-Season Purchase?

Come sit in one. We keep 115+ spas on the floor in Apple Valley, and the fastest way to settle this is to stop theorizing about water temperature and get in some.

Thinking it through? Let’s put together your custom spa setup plan.

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Summer Hot Tub FAQs

Yes — you turn the temperature down. A hot tub has a thermostat, not a fixed setting, and 104°F is a choice people make in winter and then forget to change. An 80° body of water on a 95° day is genuinely refreshing; a 104° one on the same day is punishing, because your body has nowhere to shed the heat. Same spa, completely different experience.

Most spas will go as low as 80°F, but that's the floor rather than the target. One dealer's own ladder: 92–95°F through summer — closer to 92° if the spa sits in direct sun, closer to 95° if it's shaded or catching wind, because the same setting feels like three different temperatures depending on exposure. Then up through fall as the evenings cool, and 100–101°F in the dead of a Minnesota winter. Not 104°. It's personal preference, and the real point is that the dial has a range and most people only ever use one number on it.

Longer than you'd expect — usually a day or two rather than an afternoon. A standard hot tub has no active chiller, and the insulation that keeps heat in during January works just as hard in July. Leaving the cover off overnight in warm weather speeds it up considerably.

In hot weather a spa can sit above its setpoint without anything being wrong. The pump motors put heat into the water as they run, the sun works on the cover and cabinet, and good insulation makes it hard for that heat to escape. If it won't come down at all, or won't hold a temperature you set, that's worth a call to our service department rather than writing it off as summer.

It's worth considerably more if you use it year-round, and running it cool in summer is how that happens. The economics work like a gym or country club membership — you pay to keep the water ready whether you get in or not, so value tracks use. The bigger risk isn't the cost of a summer, it's the habit: spas that go quiet for a season often don't come back, and that's where most of the cheap used hot tubs come from.

Far more than they'll use it in winter, once it's cooled down. Children who want nothing to do with 104° water will happily spend an afternoon in a spa running in the mid-80s. For a lot of Minnesota families it becomes the small pool the backyard couldn't otherwise justify — and it's the single most common reason summer use converts a spa from occasional to constant.