I am working on rebuilding a 12 year old spa. The cedar skirt panels I have taken off are not in the best of shape. I would really like to replace it with something maintainence free but I have been having trouble finding any materials at local Home Depot/Lowes stores. I was wondering if anyone knows where I can get the material used for today's skirts. I called local spa dealers and they can only get prefabbed replacement skirts for their spas. Any ideas?

This should give you some ideas.... those old skirts are horrible at best for longevity, unless the spa's installed in the house.

http://spasupport.com/support/skirt.html

I have the same issue with my old Jacuzzi Quantum. There are a total of 7 skirts (5-50", 1-22", and the door skirt). Each skirt is composed of a sheet of high-impact styrene plastic with redwood slats stapled to it. Roughly 1/2 of my slats are rot/termite damaged. The individual slats sell for $2.58 from the parts suppliers. There are close to 200 slats.

While rehabbing my spa I've had to do some fiberglass work after removing the old mechanical controller/heater combo. I've found it quite easy, working with the fiberglass, and have given some serious thought to pulling some polyester over the spa framework and dabbing with resin. Reinforce with more glass cloth/resin then Bondo/sand to make smooth. They could then be painted, drilled for mounting. Added benefit is the fiberglass skirts would be water/bug proof.

I haven't costed out such an idea, resin and hardener are cheap, but it might just be cheaper to replace all of the slats with 1x2 redwood from the local lumber yard. That'd be around $240. But then I'd need to stain/seal and maintain the new wood year over year.

I just bought three 4 X 8 sheets of black 1/8 inch ABS plastic. This stuff will go right over my aging redwood and wedge under the lip of the tub. It's 23' 10" from the left side of the access panel all the way around the tub to the right side of the access panel. That means I'll have two seams in the run around the tub. I plan to use 3/4" stainless pan head screws to secure it. I'm going to dab a little black paint (or a black sharpie) on the screws just so they don't stand out so much. If I was darn sure I wasn't going to dig back into it for plumbing issues, I'd probably just slather a bunch of contact cement on the tub and stick the ABS right to the side of it. This ABS has a texture to it about like you'd expect to find on an ABS car stereo adapter panel and it's glossy. It looks like it should wear well. When I'm done, I'll post before and after pics if I'm satisfied with the work. The sheets cost me roughly $60 each plus $8 in stainless screws. I may go buy a blade specifically for cutting it but that depends on how well my Skil saw or my jigsaw gets through it. Either way, $200 is pretty darn good for a complete skirt.

Jeff