Great! Thanks for that.
The one thing that makes this one approachable, I think, it only has 10 or 12 jets. I'd have to count again to be certain.
One part gives me pause - I've never applied expanding foam in large quantities. I gather that most of them are covered in foam after assembly, maybe there's a protected envelope for the hardware like pumps, heaters, etc. The foam is there for insulation of course, and to give structural rigidity to the fiberglass.
Don't think several hundred cans of Home Depot spray foam are going to be the ticket. I've seen video of people using industrial quantities of expando foam. I need to research that.
. . . snip . . . found this:
https://tinyurl.com/py3k4juw
If I'm going to do it, I want to keep rats out. One idea is to build a square cage of quarter inch steel mesh, commonly used for rodent exclusion around these parts, line the inside with composition paper, I could wire it in place every square foot perhaps, Would probably need to do it three sided at first so I could get the foam in the back side. For the front side, I'd figure a way to secure it to the other two, maybe using some light scale L bracket. At the bottom, you could put a small berm of mortar, maybe a couple of inches high, push that into the mesh, rats aren't gonna get under that.
I hear you though about the labor intensity. My payday might not be nearly as good per hour as I am hoping for. All sorts of obstacles could come up. One thing that makes it appealing, it is literally next-door, and our two houses are sort of a small island amongst a bunch of other islands. This is one of those hill communities, and there are no other houses even in sight.
I'm virtually certain I could arrange regular visitor status as long as I coordinated with them, this in exchange for maintaining the water quality. You would have to see this location. Wow.
The house is grand, 3400 ft.² - two people live there, an early 70s woman and her 95 year old mother.