By law, at least one light must be installed in a hot tub. Older and cheaper hot tubs sometimes come with a single incandescent bulb to light things up under the waterline. But since LEDs have become more commonplace, most models now come with LED lighting. Contrary to popular belief, LED lights can actually have quite a short lifespan, and it’s very common for used hot tubs to have glitchy lighting – especially multicoloured perimeter lighting. Oftentimes one, some, or all the lights don’t work properly.

A single multicoloured LED light is actually made up of several smaller ones, consisting of Red, Green and Blue diodes which work together to produce differnt colours. When one or two of the diodes stop working in any given light, it throws off the colour scheme in such a way that it doesn’t match the other lights on its string, and the light will disappear when a failed diode’s colour is being featured in the light string.

Diodes can die any time, unpredictably – there’s no way to anticipate this problem in advance. It’s often a big job to fix, and in some cases, it can be a cost-prohibitive repair. Since this is the nature of LED lighting, it is excluded from Hot Tubs Galore’s functionality guarantee.

Is imperfect hot tub lighting a first world problem? Absolutely. But it can be annoying if you have OCD tendencies. So be warned, if you choose to go with a used hot tub, there’s a chance that you might have to suffer through it this hardship.