My wife and I first purchased our LX7000 this past August 2006. When it arrived from the local dealer, they quickly unloaded it and placed it on the cement pad I poured. They packed up and left. Afterwards, I noted that it had about 6" of dirty water in it. Additionally, the Weir door (this is the floating door assembly that allows water into the filter compartment was partially broken. In addition, my shell had a permanent spot on one of the seats about the size of a half dollar, and on top of the shell by the control, the shell had a marred spot as though something contacted it during the forming process. I brought all this to customer services attention and they shipped up some polish and a new Weir door assembly. The polish did nothing for the spot and marring...this is permanent. I replaced the Weir door and began to fill and use our tub. After about a week I noticed that around the bottom edge of my tub, it was always wet. I opened some panels and found that it was wet throughout the floor area. After alot of searching, I found that one of the jets as leaking water constantly while running. I brought this to their attention and they shipped up a new jet. However, the jet was in the very worst possible spot. Only a man or child with small hands could change it. I tried but couldn't fit my hand in between the jet manifolds and the jet itself. AFter much wrangling on the telephone with customer service, I finally became just a little bit fed up. I then went straight to their VP of manufacturing. He was quite abit more helpful than some of the subordinates. Anyhow, My tub has since been operating quite nicely and we've enjoyed many a soaking during some very cold weather. Since this time, we have been pleased so far with this tub. One of the large drawbacks I see, is that GulfCoast uses 2x2 ordinary framing. I would prefer to see them used a treated lumber for the framing. The slightest undetected leak could result in rotted wood.

AS for the previous post by Alan, the one thing I did for additional insulation was to take my side panels off and insert 1-1/2 inch dow foam board which I had to measure for the insides of each framing member. This should increase some R-value...but do this at your own risk.