Intex PureSpa heat pump & solar kit

The Intex PureSpa has earned its place in UK gardens for good reason. It's well built for an inflatable, the bubble and jet models are genuinely relaxing, and the fibre-tech walls feel a step up from the basic pool-toy end of the market. Whether yours is a four-seater or a larger six-person PureSpa, it's a lot of hot tub for the money.

What Intex can't design around is physics. Like nearly every inflatable spa, a PureSpa heats its water with a resistive element — and that's the single reason these otherwise sensible tubs can be so expensive to keep warm in Britain.

Here's why that is, and how a straightforward retrofit fixes the running cost without replacing your PureSpa.

Why Intex PureSpa tubs cost what they do to run

The PureSpa's heater is a resistive element — a simple, reliable, and fundamentally inefficient way to make heat. Across the Intex range these sit somewhere in the region of 1.5–3 kW (treat that as approximate and check your model, as PureSpa specs vary between the smaller and larger tubs). Resistive heating runs at close to 100% efficiency, which in practice means a COP of 1: one kilowatt-hour bought, one kilowatt-hour of heat delivered, no bonus.

At the Ofgem price cap of roughly 26p/kWh (Ofgem cap, Jul–Sep 2026), everything the PureSpa does is billed at full whack — heating from cold, recovering after a soak, and quietly topping up heat lost through the inflatable walls overnight. Intex hasn't cut a corner here; it's the same resistive limitation every inflatable brand shares. One extra thing worth flagging for Intex owners specifically: in hard-water areas the element and pipework are prone to limescale, and a scaled-up heater works harder still for the same warmth.

What an Intex PureSpa costs to run

Intex publishes tub specs, but not a tidy single running-cost figure — and we're not going to fabricate one, because the honest answer depends on your model, your target temperature, how often you use it and how well it's insulated. As an industry comparator, here's what a competing inflatable brand quotes for a similar tub:

• Lay-Z-Spa's own figures: around £0.60–£1.70 a day, or roughly £18–£50 a month.

Read that as an optimistic manufacturer estimate, not a floor — real UK winter use tends to land at or above the top of it. Whatever your actual number, it's all being charged at COP 1 today. Reduce the electricity needed to hit the same temperature and the bill drops in step. Our guide to UK hot-tub running costs breaks down what genuinely moves that figure.

How our retrofit kit fits your Intex PureSpa

Eco Hot Tubs builds a retrofit kit — a UK-made, efficient air-source heat pump, optionally paired with a solar panel and battery — that attaches to the PureSpa you already own. You keep the tub, the pump housing, the seats and the jets. We just change the thing doing the heating.

• Heat Pump Only — £895. The efficient heat source by itself, for owners focused on lower grid running costs.
• Full Eco Conversion Kit — £2,195 (founder price £1,845). Adds solar and battery storage, so more of your heat comes from the sun and cheap overnight power.

It's a self-fit kit designed to work with any inflatable PureSpa model, from the compact four-person tubs up to the six-seaters. You're not swapping out your Intex — you're retiring its weakest link. Both options are currently reserve / enquiry rather than instant checkout, which lets us confirm the right fit for your particular PureSpa before it goes out.

An upgrade that learns your PureSpa's habits

Fit our Full Eco Conversion Kit to your Intex PureSpa and you're not just adding solar and a heat pump — you're adding a system that gets smarter every single day. The app quietly builds a picture of three things: when your garden generates the most power, when you actually tend to use the tub, and how fast your PureSpa loses heat once it's up to temperature.

Then it plans around them. It reads the local weather forecast and pre-warms while free solar is on offer, and it deliberately holds back on paid energy when a bright day is coming. Set your target temperature — around 40°C — and it works out the greenest, cheapest route to get there and hold it.

You can also commit ahead: tell it Saturday evening and it'll have the water ready, having bought as little full-price energy as possible along the way. It's the difference between a timer and something that genuinely anticipates. See how much it could save on your tub with the savings calculator.

The heat-pump efficiency story — honestly

The difference is in the verb. A resistive element generates heat from electricity — COP 1, full price. An air-source heat pump moves heat, drawing warmth from the outside air into your water. Because relocating heat is far cheaper than creating it, a heat pump can achieve a COP of about 3–5 in milder conditions — the same soak for roughly a third to a fifth of the electricity.

We'll be straight with you about the winter, though. Colder air holds less harvestable heat, so efficiency slides — near freezing you're realistically at a COP of about 2–2.5, meaning a sensible planning figure of roughly COP 2–3 through a UK winter, with better numbers in the shoulder seasons. Even then it comfortably beats the resistive element it replaces. And unlike that element, a sealed heat pump sidesteps much of the in-line limescale grief that hard-water PureSpa owners know too well.

Choose the Full Eco Conversion Kit and the battery lets you bank solar by day and cheap Economy 7 / off-peak electricity overnight — that roughly seven-hour window at around 12.5p/kWh, about half the cap — then heat from stored energy instead of peak-rate grid power.

What will it save on my Intex PureSpa?

The honest answer is that it varies with your model, your tariff, your temperature and your winter — so a blanket "£X a year" would be a guess dressed up as a fact. Instead, we'd rather you see a number built from your own inputs. We run this kit on our own hot tubs in the UK and track measured performance, and we've packed that into an interactive savings calculator so you can estimate the effect on your specific PureSpa.

Want us to check fit or talk through your setup first? Get in touch and we'll give you a plain, no-hype answer.

Hot water needn't cost the earth.

Intex and PureSpa are trademarks of their owner; we are not affiliated — our kit is simply compatible with them.

Intex PureSpa retrofit — frequently asked questions

Which PureSpa models does it fit?

It's designed for the inflatable PureSpa range generally, across the usual four-to-six-person sizes. Because litres and heater ratings differ between models, we confirm fit for your exact PureSpa when you enquire — one reason we sell on a reserve basis rather than direct checkout.

I'm in a hard-water area — does that matter?

It's actually a point in the heat pump's favour. Scale build-up on a resistive element makes it work harder over time; a sealed air-source heat pump keeps the water side cleaner and avoids much of that in-line limescale trouble. Normal filter and water-care routines still apply.

Is it still worth running in a cold British winter?

Yes, with honesty attached: efficiency falls in the cold, nearer COP 2–2.5 close to freezing rather than the 3–5 of milder weather. It stays more efficient than resistive heating year-round, and adding solar and battery to lean on cheap off-peak power helps most in exactly those colder months.