Bathing System Selection: A Guide for Senior Care Facilities

Replacing What’s There Without Overbuying

Some facilities know exactly what they need: a working tub that meets code, fits the room, and doesn’t require retraining the whole floor. If that’s you, bathing system selection doesn’t need to be a research project. If you know what you like — the system you have now, the jet type your residents enjoy, the features your staff relies on — tell us what you like and we’ll find the best fit. Have an AirSpa and love it? No problem. Loyal to your whirlpool? Same answer.

You still need to confirm two things before you buy: where the room’s drain is located and where the water supply comes in. The new system has to line up with both. Skipping that check is the most common reason a “simple” replacement turns into a renovation nobody budgeted for — which is why our team reviews room layouts and drawings before you order.

What These Terms Actually Mean

If you want the full picture, start with the vocabulary, because most of the confusion in bathing system selection comes from terms that sound interchangeable but aren’t.

An ADA tub refers to a bathing fixture built to accessibility standards, typically meaning low-threshold entry, grab bar placement, and clearance for a wheelchair or transfer device. It’s a compliance category, not a brand or a feature set.

What most people search for as a hydrotherapy tub is a whirlpool-style bath that uses water jets for agitation, intended to create a relaxing, spa-like bathing experience. The term gets used loosely online to mean almost any tub with jets. When you’re comparing options, ask what’s actually doing the work: water recirculation jets, air jets, or neither. Don’t know? Doesn’t matter to you? No problem — then that’s not the decision you need to start with. Tell us what your residents enjoy, and we’ll handle the matching.

A whirlpool bath specifically means water recirculation through jets, which gives fuller agitation but also means more internal plumbing to clean. A facility choosing between a whirlpool and an air-jet system is really choosing between a fuller spa bathing experience and a simpler cleaning protocol, not choosing between “better” and “worse.”

Why Bathing Equipment Stops Getting Used

This is the part of bathing system selection nobody asks about up front, and it’s the one that costs facilities the most. A tub gets installed, gets used for a few months, and then quietly becomes a storage spot. Or it breaks, and fixing it drops to the bottom of a long list. We’ve been in enough bath rooms since 1978 to know this almost never happens because the equipment was wrong.

It happens because of three things, in roughly this order of frequency: staff workflow, transfer fear, and training gaps after turnover. A tub that takes too long to fill gets skipped on a short-staffed shift. A tub that requires lifting a resident, instead of letting them stay seated through the transfer, gets avoided by aides worried about injury, either theirs or the resident’s. And a tub that one trained CNA understood gets abandoned the day that CNA leaves, if nobody documented how to run it.

This is exactly why fill speed and transfer design matter more than most spec sheets suggest. A reservoir system that pre-fills while the current bath is still in progress turns a 5 to 7 minute wait into a 60 to 90 second one, which removes the single biggest reason a tub gets skipped during a busy shift. A transfer system that lets the resident stay seated throughout, with staff guiding rather than lifting, removes the fear that keeps newer staff from using the equipment at all.

The honest answer to a tub becoming storage is not to avoid that outcome by hoping harder. It’s to engineer around the two failure points, fill time and transfer difficulty, before they cause the abandonment in the first place.

What Fits in the Room You Already Have

If you’re not replacing anything yet and just need to know what’s possible, start with the room, not the catalog. Three measurements determine almost everything: the existing plumbing rough-in location, the door width for equipment delivery and future service access, and the floor drain position relative to where the new unit needs to sit.

Most bathing rooms built in the last 30 years can accommodate a same-footprint replacement without structural work. Rooms built before that, or rooms previously fitted with a standard residential tub, more often need a plumbing adjustment. Neither situation is unusual, and a facility doesn’t need to guess: send us your room drawings, a few photos, or a quick phone video of the space, and our team will confirm what lines up before you order anything.

Space planning for senior care bathing equipment also intersects with broader facility regulation. The CMS nursing home guidance covers the resident-safety standards that bathing room layout and equipment access need to satisfy, and it’s worth a read before finalizing any room plan.

Bathing System Selection: Two Decisions, in Order

Bathing system selection at Apollo comes down to two separate decisions. Getting them in the right order matters.

Decision One: Advantage or ReGen?

This is the bigger decision, and facility type alone doesn’t answer it. An assisted living with high-acuity residents and a demanding bathing schedule is an Advantage facility. A skilled nursing wing with lighter use and lower acuity may be fine with ReGen. The question is what your bathing program actually looks like, not what’s on the license above the door.

And sometimes the answer is both. A campus with a skilled wing and an assisted living wing often runs an Advantage in one bath room and a ReGen in the other — the resident mix decides, wing by wing, not the building as a whole.

Advantage is the right answer when any of these are true: transfers require staff assistance, volume is high and schedule is tight, or the facility has a history of tub abandonment. The Advantage platform was built to remove the three root causes of tub abandonment: Level-Glide™ is available as an option and keeps the resident seated throughout the transfer so staff guide rather than lift (facilities that trust their existing floor or ceiling lift order the Lock-In chair configuration instead — we think Level Glide is the superior transfer, but it is one or the other, with no force); Rapid Fill™ is available as an option and pre-fills while the current bath is still in progress, cutting wait time from five to seven minutes down to sixty to ninety seconds; and ThroughClean™ cleans the internal plumbing from the inside out — the only system on the market that does. Remove those three friction points and a tub gets used.

ReGen is the right answer when acuity is lower, transfers are minimal-assist or self-directed, and the priority is resident comfort and a genuine spa bathing experience. ReGen does not include Rapid Fill or Level-Glide. It is a different tier built for a different use case — not a lesser product.

Decision Two: Whirlpool or AirSpa?

This question applies to both platforms, and the honest answer is that it is a closer call than most facilities expect — because most of what separates a good whirlpool from a good AirSpa has already been solved at the platform level.

Water purification is a concern for any bathing system, whirlpool or AirSpa. It is an industry-wide issue, not a whirlpool-specific one. AirSpa addresses one dimension of it by design: without a recirculating plumbing loop, there is no internal circuit where biofilm can develop between uses. That is a real characteristic of air-jet systems and worth knowing. What AirSpa does not provide is active purification during the bath itself. Apollo’s whirlpool with The Remedy™ UV system — available as an option on both Advantage and ReGen whirlpool configurations — purifies the water during the bath and creates a cleaner bathing environment throughout. For facilities where water purification is a priority for their infection prevention protocols, that difference matters.

ThroughClean is available on both Advantage configurations — whirlpool and AirSpa. Level-Glide and Rapid Fill are available as options on both. The cleaning protocol, the transfer system, and the fill time are available regardless of which jet type a facility chooses. The only meaningful difference between Advantage whirlpool and Advantage AirSpa is The Remedy.

Facilities choose AirSpa because their residents love the feel of the air-jet bath, and because no water recirculation means a simpler cleaning routine between baths. Facilities choose whirlpool for the fuller agitation and the option of Remedy® UV. Pick the experience your residents will actually enjoy — either way, you’re getting a full Apollo system.

Feature	Advantage Whirlpool	Advantage AirSpa	ReGen Whirlpool	ReGen AirSpa
Rapid Fill™	Option	Option	—	—
Level-Glide™ transfer	✓	✓	—	—
ThroughClean™	✓	✓	Option	Option
The Remedy™ UV purification	Option	—	Option	—
Water recirculation jets	✓	—	✓	—
Air jets	—	✓	—	✓
Level-Glide™ transfer	Option	Option	—	—

Every model in this table is built for the same job: making bathing system selection something a facility figures out once and doesn’t have to revisit because the equipment sat unused. The full Advantage bathing system page covers the higher-acuity option in more detail if that’s the direction your facility is heading.

Get a free equipment review — send us your room drawings, photos, or a quick video, and our team will document what you have and show you what’s possible. Contact Apollo Bath here.

Quick answers

How do I choose a commercial bathing system for a care facility?

Two decisions, in order. First: assisted or ambulatory? Residents who need help transferring require a seated-transfer system like the Advantage™. Residents who can step in on their own can use a walk-in spa like the ReGen™. Second: whirlpool or AirSpa? Whirlpool uses pressurised water jets; AirSpa uses warmed air. Facility type alone does not decide it — who your residents are does.

How do I know if a bathing system will work in my space?

Work through it in this order — the resident decides the system, the system decides the room. Steps 1 and 2 below are the two decisions covered above; steps 3 and 4 are the room and the plumbing.

1. What does the resident need to be able to do? Do they arrive in a wheelchair? Do they need a floor lift? Can they walk in with a hand? A resident who cannot transfer independently needs a seated-transfer system. A resident who can step in needs a walk-in. That answer drives everything else.

2. Which system fits that? The Advantage™ handles assisted, seated transfer — Level Glide™ moves the resident without a lift or a pivot. The ReGen™ is for residents who enter on their own, and its adjustable-height feet allow a floor lift to fit underneath if you need one.

3. Does the room work? ReGen™ is 59.6 in long × 30.1 in wide × 40.5 in high — an 8 ft × 8 ft room is workable if the space is clear and usable, so an existing bathing room usually fits it. The Advantage™ needs a minimum 72 in × 114 in (72 × 102 in Space Saver), because the carrier needs room to approach and rotate. Then add caregiver clearance: many states require access on three sides — plan at least 18 in around the sides plus space in front of the door. Check your state, as requirements vary.

4. What about plumbing? Usually less of an obstacle than facilities expect. Apollo systems connect to a floor drain, a floor sink, or a wall drain — whichever your room already has. Water supply is two 3/4 in garden hose thread faucets at a minimum 30 PSI and 10 GPM, with a 2 in waste line and a dedicated 115 VAC receptacle on a 15A GFCI circuit.

Rough-in drawings for every model are in the resource library. Not sure your room works? Send dimensions, a drawing or a photo and we will tell you honestly before you commit.

Are commercial bathing systems certified?

They should be — and ask for the listing file number, not a logo. Apollo systems hold IAPMO R&T Certificates of Listing: the Advantage™ under file SP-13351 (IAPMO IGC 260-2020, CSA B45.5-2017, CSA B45.10-2020) and the ReGen™ under file SP-17702 (ASME A112.19.15-2012 R2017, ASME A112.19.7-2020/CSA B45.10-2020). Both include quarterly factory audits and can be verified at pld.iapmo.org.

What is the difference between a commercial and a residential walk-in tub?

A residential tub is built for a few baths a week in one household. A commercial system is built for many baths a day, every day, for decades — which changes duty cycle, transfer method, fill speed, cleanability between residents, certification and long-term parts availability. See the full comparison →

Why does bathing equipment stop getting used?

Usually because it is slow, hard on staff, or unpleasant for residents. A tub that takes fifteen minutes to fill, needs two people to transfer one resident, or cannot be cleaned quickly between uses gets avoided — and an avoided bathing room is a capital purchase that returns nothing.