Can each bather in an Ella two-seat tub control their own therapies?

Partly, and the split is the same on every Ella two-seat tub (Companion, Escape, Tub4Two and Big4Two). Each bather has their own foot hydro massage, driven by a separate pump with its own on/off button and intensity dial for each side, and with the heated seat option each seat has its own heater box and keypad. The air massage, the seat and back hydro jets and the LED chromatherapy light run from one digital controller shared by both bathers, so those therapies are on or off for the whole tub at once. Two-Seat Tub: Only One Side Massages, One Heated Seat Is Cold, or One Foot Well Has No Jets explains the same split from the repair side; this page explains it from the bather's side.

What Each Seat Has to Itself

The two-seat schematic Ella publishes is drawn around two bathers rather than one, and it duplicates the parts that belong to each bather while sharing the parts that belong to the tub. What the Two-Seat Full Package Schematic Shows reads the diagram line by line. The per-side equipment is:

• A foot jets hydro pump for each seat side, each with its own air flow intensity dial and its own on/off button. The pumps live under the tub behind the front apron access panels, and the two foot pumps sit on separate sides.
• With the heated seat option, a Heat Keypad and an HSB (heated seat and back) box for each side, each box driving the surface heater pads on that seat.
• A dedicated footwell for each bather. The brochure callout for the Big4Two reads "4 foot hydro jets (each seat)", and the point of the callout is that every bather gets their own footwell massage.

The video on this page is Ella's overview of the two-seat line. It makes the point that these are true two-seat tubs with two separate seats, each seat with its own jets and no sharing of jets between the bathing spaces, and it shows the habit of kicking your feet up on the other seat when you bathe alone. It also warns not to confuse an extra-large single tub with a two-seat tub, which has two independent bathing spaces.

What Both Bathers Share

The shared equipment sits on the digital controller and the master control box:

• The air massage system, one variable speed pump with Auto Purge, switched on and off from the digital controller. Auto Purge starts about 20 minutes after the air pump is turned off and runs 120 seconds.
• The seat hydro massage system, one hydro pump feeding the seat and back jets on both sides, with a single hydro massage air flow intensity control and on/off from the digital controller. On the brochure diagram this is the "Digital Push Control" pad and the "Hydro intensity dial control" that adjusts hydro jet strength.
• The LED chromatherapy light, the ozone generator, and the in-line water heater, which sits on the second hydro loop.
• The optional Infusion Microbubble system, a single shared pump with a pressure vessel and its own on/off push button.

In practice this means one bather can run a foot and calf massage at their own strength while the other has theirs off, and each seat can be warm or cold on its own. Anything you switch from the digital controller, the air speed, the seat hydro jets and the light, applies to both seats at once and at one intensity. The jets themselves are not shared: each bather has their own seat jets and their own footwell, so both get the same massage, they simply share the switch for the seat and air systems.

What the Jet Counts Look Like on a Real Model

The Ella Escape 36x72 spec sheet shows how the shared systems are still divided evenly between the seats. Seat hydro: a 7 amp pump with an intensity dial feeding 18 upper seat jets, 9 per seat, from the digital controller. Foot and calf hydro: a 7 amp pump with intensity dial, 4 foot and 4 calf jets, push control, in-line water heater and ozone sterilization. Air: a 4.5 amp three-speed pump with auto purge feeding 16 seat jets, 8 per seat, and 3 foot jets from the digital controller. The Escape also ships with twin two-piece fast-fill faucets and two pull-out hand showers, so each bather has their own spout and hand shower even though the therapies are partly shared. The brochure callout diagram shows where each of these pieces sits on a Big4Two.

What the Layout Means for Your Electrician

Because there are two foot pumps plus the shared air and seat hydro pumps, the two-seat full package schematic shows three dedicated lines. The Escape comparison chart lists dedicated GFCI-protected 115 V, 60 Hz lines: two 20 amp lines for Air + Hydro + Hydro, and three with microbubble. Have a local licensed electrician plan the circuits from your tub's own spec sheet before installation, since the per-seat design is what drives the line count.

When One Side Stops Matching the Other

The per-seat design also explains a common owner observation. If one footwell has no jets or one seat stays cold while the other warms up, the fault is on that side's pump, dial, relay, cord or circuit, not in the controller the seats share. If the air, the seat hydro and the light all fail together, the shared controller or control box is the place to look. Either way, Ella does not send technicians: open a ticket at ellasbubbles.com/support or call (800) 480-6850 with your model and serial number, and any replacement part ships under the parts warranty for a local licensed plumber or electrician to fit.

Watch: Two Seat Walk-In Tub with Door: Best for Couples - Voted Best/Safest 2020 | Ella's Bubbles with chapters and a full transcript.

Related Guides

• What the Air + Hydro + Hydro Foot Digital Controller Schematic Shows (Companion, Escape, Tub4Two, Big4Two, Shak, Big4One, Transfer60, TransferXXL)
• Choosing a Two-Seat Walk-In Tub: Companion, Escape, Tub4Two, and Big4Two Compared

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