I am looking for information or plans on how to build your own hot tub or spa, also I am looking for ways or plans on how to heat or build a heater to heat an above pool. thank you robin

-- robin noble (robin16440@yahoo.com), September 16, 2001

Answers

Just built a 6'x3' round hot tub out of building grade hemlock for about 150.00 (not including the wood stove that heats it) Got an old book from ebay called, "build your own hot tub". Works great!

Mark

-- Mark (dogcabin@juno.com), November 26, 2001.

I was just in British Columbia for a few days and saw a neat homemade one. It was poured concrete with a firebox in one end of it and benches in the other. Worked great and was cheap to make. Not too sure how easy it is to make a form for the concrete, though.

-- Elizabeth (ekfla@aol.com), November 26, 2001.

I made one years ago at my parents cabin which had no power and only gravity water system. I found an old cedar hottub by advertising in the wanted section it was dried out but free as many people have these things just sitting taking up space. I got the idea for heating the tub one day watching a coffee perculator. This is what I did: bought two forty foot coils of copper tubing, built a beehize fire box out of creekstone, coil approc 35 feet of each tube into the beehive as such i had 4 ends sticking out the back of the beehize two near the top and two near the bottom, from the copper end i attached poly pipe; I then drilled two holes approx 5 inches below my full water height (the holes are approx 2 feet apart on the same horizontal line) I then drilled two more holes approx 1 inch above the floor again 2 feet apart and again on the same horizontal line. All the lines were siliconed at the drill sights. The way this works is cold water is sucked through the bottom hoses and is super heated in the 35 feet of coiled tubing and begins a "chugging motion" through the tubes and is shot out the top tubes. By shot I do mean what I say as the first time I tried it I did not have the water level over the top tubes and was burnt by a 4 foot blast of hot water/steam. After filing the tub completely the suystem just chugged away like a locamotive it was amazing. It took about 5 hours to get the tub to a decent temperture. Everyone who attended was amazed. This was more of a summer project and I never did use it much. But I can see the principle works but needs some tinkering and would be pretty slick if one had proper tools available to do it.

-- Peter (prantucci@lmls.com), December 10, 2001.