A luxury item found only in the best bathrooms across the United Kingdom, the whirlpool bath is one of the most pleasurable and most cherished bathroom appliances in the country. Also known in some places as a hot tub or Jacuzzi, the whirlpool bath is a regular bathtub fitted out with jets that circulate streams of hot water within the tub.
Many whirlpool baths are made specifically for therapeutic purposes and the health advantages are many. An increasing number of these playfully healthy therapeutic toys, however, are being installed in private homes simply for the sheer fun of the experience. And there is no denying that whirlpool baths are a world of swirling fun.
Depending on your budget, whirlpool baths can come as basic or as luxuriously intricate as you can afford. Whether you need that polished, futuristic look to your modern bathroom or the breezier, softer tones of a subdued comfort zone, whirlpool baths come made from many different materials including steel and extra durable acrylic. You may not mind taking your whirlpool bath apart every once in a while to scrupulously clean the embedded pipes and other hidden parts, or you may appreciate an integrated disinfection system that can take care of all that for you and allow you to never have to worry about it. In every case, there is a whirlpool bath for you.
Certain whirlpool baths offer combinations of the whirlpool technology with other therapeutic or just plain fun effects. There are air spa whirlpool baths that shoot out jets of air as well as water. There are Chroma therapy whirlpool baths that feature slowly changing underwater coloured lighting display effects. There are ozone generating whirlpool baths, hydro pools and hydro spas, which are two relatively evolved forms of the same thing, jetted hydrotherapy baths, and many more. Whether fun or remedial, what all of these baths have in common is that they all use special nozzles to pump streams of water through the tub to create a full body effect that is both soothing and massaging for the entire person.
The ancient Romans were famous for their use of baths that featured rapidly circulating water to both relax their stressed upper class citizens and revitalise their fatigued upper class citizens. The famous Roman baths relied on natural means to both heat and circulate their water systems and were some of the earliest ancestors of the modern whirlpool bath. These baths were are also an important feature of the Roman social structure as they allowed nobles and senators to associate with each other in their down time and develop strong bonds and alliances in a relaxed and comfortable setting. Today, many whirlpool baths are private and individual affairs enjoyed alone or with a friend from the comfort of one’s home. Even though the whirlpool bath has lost much of the original social spice given to it by the Romans, it has still managed to retain all of the original fun and therapeutic effects and has maybe even gotten better with time.
The idea of a domestic whirlpool bath was developed in California in the early 1900s by a group of Italian brothers who were known at the time for manufacturing aircraft and agricultural pumps. Due to the combination of the death of one of the brothers in an aircraft accident and the development of rheumatoid arthritis in one of the children of another brother, these innovative men turned their attention toward developing personal submersible bathtub pumps. Although the original idea was simply to attempt to sooth the suffering of the young boy’s chronic pain, these water-based therapeutic aids turned out to be a hit in the celebrity market and began receiving rave reviews from famous personalities across the United States.
Soon the brothers incorporated the submersible pump and the tub into a single unit and called it the Jacuzzi, after their own last name. These first Jacuzzi units quickly became icons of the luxurious Hollywood lifestyle and were soon being ordered and delivered around the country and then around the world.
The Jacuzzi brothers kept on steadily improving their design until, by the late 1970s, the Jacuzzi whirlpool bath featured an internal heating system to make sure the water stayed warm and an internal filtration system to make sure it stayed clean and fresh. They also began marketing what they called spa units — larger versions of the original Jacuzzi design, geared toward more commercial and public use. Soon other companies around the world began offering their own takes on the jet stream bath concept, which had originated in California with the Jacuzzi brothers, and the modern whirlpool bath was born
