I'm looking at heating my pool in Tampa Florida. I'm interested in either a solar solution or a heat pump solution. I'm leaning more toward the heat pump solution but my question is "Do I have to hire someone to install it?". I do most things (electrical, repair, etc...) myself so my question is how hard is it to install one of these heat pumps?

Well...We're very new to this. We inherited this spa through our recently purchased house, and it seemed to work fine at first, but the hideous gas bill caused us to drain it over the winter as per the manufacturers instructions (ran the lines dry, etc). We tried filling it up at the weekend, and it seemed to be holding water well until we turned the jets on, and then a very noticeable steady pouring leak was seen from the mid way point of the spa. The 'FLO' indicator was on also, and one of the back 'turbo jets' didn't seem to have any flow at all. 3 days later and almost the entire water content has disappeared and seems to have stopped at just below the 4 water intakes at near the very bottom of the spa. The spa itself is set flush into a large raised deck, underneath of which is a small crawl space. We tried calling some spa and pool places and got some rather surprising reactions from them about possibly repairing it that made it sound like they'd be doing us a favor to let us pay them to look at it at all, and the smallest call out fee was 100 dollars. This cost factor has made me wonder if this is something I should try to tackle on my own. I'm a fairly competent person in general when it comes to things like this, but I'm just at a complete loss as to where I should start and the best methods of tracking down a leak that's so enclosed. I've looked on-line and found some fairly informative sites, but they're also very generic and don't seem to cover advice where fully insulated spas (insulated in spray on foam) are concerned. The brand is Safari Spa. All motor assemblies and a gas heater are located indoors inthe adjacent garage and seem to be functioning well, so hopefully this narrows problems down to the fittings on the tub themselves. My apologies for asking such a general question as this, but I really just need some advice in how to start and diagnose what's wrong here. I know the foam will need to be removed to some degree, but again, I can't find out any information on how to minimize the removal or how to remove it at all... Where do I start? My thanks in advance. Rob.