How To Build Your Own Hot Tub

Imagine sitting in your own, self built hot tub, enjoying the sunset and sipping a drink. Feeling the water jet and smelling your freshly finished above ground hot tub deck. This post will help you find the best resources and give you tips on how to build your own hot tub
Building your own wooden hot tub is by far the cheapest way to go, but if you are not such a skilled craftsman you can also buy a (plastic) hot tub and build a deck around it. It will look just as awesome.

Included is a link to a FREE hot tub building plan further down the article.

The Best Wood For Building A Wood Hot Tub

Wooden hot tubs are best built with cedar wood or redwood, as these are the best for a longer life span of your wood hot tub.
Of course using a cheaper wood species would work too, but I advise you to use cedar or a hard wood like oak.
Cedar wood is well known for it’s dimensional stability and decay resistance.
It’s best to use only vertical grain staves for your side and flooring as these vertical grain milled planks tend to be more stable when contracting and expanding.

Use Staves and Bands

The greatest challenge when building a cedar or redwood hot tub lies in the perfect alignment of the staves and the right pressure of the metal bands that hold the construction in place. This is crucial, as the tub will not hold the enormous water pressure on the wand and flooring. This is where the use of multiple metal bands comes in.
A wooden tub has some of the same building principles as a wooden barrel, but luckily the staves do not need to be round shaped over a fire.
Another important aspect is that the wooden tub flooring needs to be  tightly jointed and fit perfectly in the bottom of the tub.

Apply the first metal band at the bottom and clinch it tight with a screw bolt mechanism. Then work your way up. Usually three or four bands will do for a 5 ft high tub.

Now fill the tub with water and led the wood seep. The wood will expand and thus the tub will become watertight.

Above Ground Hot Tub Deck Plans

The other way to go is to buy a (used) premolded plastic hot tub and build a beautiful above ground hot tub deck around it. Building a deck is not hard, and there are plenty of (free) plans available online.
A good resource would be Ted’s Woodworking.

Make sure you get the right wood  for your deck. As stated before, it is wise to go for vertical grain lumber. Teak decks are very popular, but cheaper larch wood will do fine as a deck too.

How To Keep Your Wooden Hot Tub Maintained

• Never ever let it dry out! Always keep some water or snow in the tub.

• It’s important to keep your hot tub hygienic, as wood is a perfect home for bacteria and fungi.
• Adding sanitizers that contain chlorine and bromine to the water helps, but regular cleaning with soft soap and refreshing the water is the best way to go.
• In the worst case one can do a so called chemical shock, but that is definitely not good for the wood.

Free Hot Tub Plan

I did some research and cam up with an amazing Free Hot Tub Plan I can share with you. You can download it here.

This plan is truly amazing and also can be a great resource if you are looking for general building info.

To get you inspired I added a video and some images of wood hot tubs and above ground hot tub decks to get you inspired to build your own hot tub !

 Hot Tub Assembly Kits

When building your own tub and deck seems too daunting or too time intensive there are plenty of prefabricated hot tub kits on the market. The great benefits of a prefab hot tub kit are:

• All parts will fit
• No uncomfortable surprises
• Near 100% chance the thing works

Amazon.com has a great collection of hot tubs and spas and My tip is to take a peek around and to get inspired. Maybe you can build a gazebo yourself and build your own hot tub of your dreams!

 

 

 

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