Scandinavian Hot Tubs: The Nordic Wood Fired Soak, and How to Bring It Home

Scandinavian Hot Tubs: The Nordic Wood Fired Soak, and How to Bring It Home

A Scandinavian hot tub is a wood fired soak taken outdoors, often between rounds in the sauna and a cold dip. Here is where the tradition comes from, what makes the experience, and how to bring it home.

The Cabin Hot Tub Guide: Power, Access, Water and Winter

The Cabin Hot Tub Guide: Power, Access, Water and Winter

Power or none, how often you are there, how it gets in, the water, leaving it empty and winter.
Beaver Valley Cabin, Beaver Valley Ontario

Beaver Valley Cabin, Beaver Valley Ontario

A mid-century retreat by the river, minutes from the Beaver Valley Ski Club. Why the tub sits on the deck rather than at ground level, and what that solves in an Ontario winter.

Camp Moose Trail, Golden British Columbia

Camp Moose Trail, Golden British Columbia

A glamping camp outside Golden, BC, where the tub sits beside a sauna and a wood fired pizza oven. Why fire-heated suits a winter property, and what a December opening weekend asks of the insulation.

Rocky Mountain Guest House, British Columbia

Rocky Mountain Guest House, British Columbia

Five years of guest cabins on a Rocky Mountain ranch. Leo Downey on cleaning between guests, leaving the tub empty through winter without damage, and the booklet he leaves in the house.

The Cedar Tub That Stays Hot: Quiet Electric Heat Built for Real Winters

The Cedar Tub That Stays Hot: Quiet Electric Heat Built for Real Winters

Quiet electric heat built for real winters. How the Electric holds temperature through a cold snap, what freeze protection actually does, and why included filtration changes the ownership routine.

Can You Use a Wood Fired Hot Tub in Winter? Use, Care and Winterizing

Can You Use a Wood Fired Hot Tub in Winter? Use, Care and Winterizing

Yes, and for many owners winter is the season that makes it. What actually matters in the cold, how to heat from a near-freezing fill, the two things that cause damage, whether to run it through winter or shut it down, and how to winterize an aluminum tub in ten minutes.

Mary Had a Little Off Grid Hot Tub

Mary Had a Little Off Grid Hot Tub

Thirty kilometers outside Yellowknife, on a cabin property reachable only by boat. How Mary got an AlumiTub to her land, and what a decade of off-grid Northwest Territories winters has taught her about running one.

About the Hot Tub Journal

The Hot Tub Journal is AlumiTubs' guide to outdoor living with a cedar hot tub, whatever heats it. It covers choosing between wood fired, electric and hybrid heating; sizing a tub and what one costs to run; where to put it, from a city deck to an island cabin, and how it gets there; what an electric hot tub needs from a site and how the equipment is housed; how a wood burning hot tub works and how long it takes to heat; onsen rituals, cold plunges and soaking after a workout; and what it is like to own a tub for twenty years, told by the people who do. Most of it is written for anyone weighing up a hot tub, not only an AlumiTub owner.

Every AlumiTub is a riveted 5052 marine-grade aluminum structure clad in Canadian Western Red Cedar, handcrafted on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia since 2001 and backed by a 25 year structural warranty. Three heating systems share the same tub: the Electric, which holds a set temperature on a schedule and needs no fire; the Wood Fired, which needs no power and heats a Standard in about three hours; and the Hybrid, which does both. Water care has its own home in the Water Care Academy.

Start with the guide to heating options, hot tub dimensions and sizes, or the electric cedar hot tub.