DIY Wood Fired Hot Tub

today we're gonna make a wood-fired hot tub I'm gonna make the tub out of a hundred and sixty nine gallon galvanized steel stock tank I don't want the tank to sink into the ground so I'm gonna cast a couple of footings on top of some packed gravel I made the forms for the footings out of scrap melamine and I'm gonna make two of them that are about five and a half inches thick I check to make sure that they were level and then mixed in for some fast-setting click create concrete mix into the forms the chicken seemed interested in this project so I decided to immortalize their feet in one of the footings the fast-setting mix which comes in the red bag it's easy to work with sets up fast and it's nice because it comes in 50-pound bags which is easier to carry than the 80 pound bags after letting the concrete pure 24 hours I've removed the forms I just duct-taped and hot glued them together so this was really easy I then added a few bags of quikrete all-purpose gravel and then added two bags of sand on top of it to make the heating coil I cut a piece of half-inch copper tubing about 20 feet long and then wrapped it around a five-gallon bucket I wanted the coil to be about 18 inches tall from top to bottom I then cut some 1 inch by 1/4 inch thick steel bars to make some braces for the coil and then mark the locations for the bolts and drilled a series of holes through the metal bars and then bolted the steel bars around the copper coil I used a hole saw to drill one and 3/8 inch diameter holes 18 inches apart in the stock tank I then threaded the tank fittings through the holes and sealed them with some silicone I then screwed in some compression fittings that could receive the ends of the copper the ends of the copper were a little bit bent so I had to trim them before inserting them into the fittings I then pounded the steel bars into the ground before adding a second set of steel bars I then did a quick test fire to see if I could get the hot water to rise within the copper coil and circulate into the tub success I was actually really surprised at how quickly the water started circulating through the coil before heating the water all the way up I decide to build a lid so that less of the heat would escape I screwed together some pieces of 3/4 inch thick redwood and then trace the curve of the tub on to the underside of the lid and then use my jigsaw to cut along the curve I did a little bit of finish sanding with the orbital sander the wood was a little bit wet from the previous night's brain so I compensated with a liberal amount of lighter fluid it was about 63 degrees outside and the water temperature started off at 56 degrees it took two big armfuls of firewood and about two hours to heat the water up to 110 degrees I then spread out the hot coal so the water would stop heating up as fast took the lid off and I mix the water since it it sort of stratified and the top of the water was much warmer than the bottom I was able to keep the water at a nice comfortable 104 degrees the whole system worked better than I expected but there's definitely some room for improvement adding a second copper coil or using larger diameter copper tubing would speed up the amount of times it takes to heat the water building a wood stove like enclosure around the copper coil would make the whole system more fuel efficient after heating up the water multiple times I checked a copper tubing and fittings and they seemed to be holding up great for more detailed instructions check our website and if you want to see what I'm working on next be sure to follow me on Instagram feel free to check out our other videos and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already thanks bye

Channel: HomeMadeModern

Views: 5,978,123

Rating: 4.7303605 out of 5

Keywords: DIY, do it yourself, diy furniture, ben uyeda, Modern furniture, how to make furniture, how to make a hot tub, diy hot tub, wood fired hot tub, wood burning hot tub, red neck hot tub, cowboy tub, diy wood burning hot tub

Id: HMjpWlgcK-M

Length: 4min 31sec (271 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 05 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/cinaak]

wtf this isnt diwhy

these are pretty nice actually. probably safer than the method i use where i build the fire underneath and use a leaf blower as bellows.

[u/haloone]

More like doitWHYNOT? we build these when we winter camp all the time.

[u/sasquatch_diddler]

This is something I'd like to build but assumed a pump would be needed to move the water. Solid redneck engineering here.