Hot Tub Journal

Eight wood fired hot tubs on the shore of St. Margaret's Bay, each drained, cleaned and refilled with Atlantic sea water pumped straight from the bay for every reservation. How a small cottage resort thirty minutes from Halifax runs the most demanding tub program we know of.

What a cedar hot tub actually is, the genuine upsides of the material, the drawbacks worth knowing before you buy, and the one construction decision that shapes the whole ownership experience.

A hot tub deck does one of three things: it sits beside the tub so you step in from deck height, it wraps the tub so the rim meets the boards, or it swallows the...

A new-build cabin on Lake Sylvan in the Brainerd Lakes, designed around a Standard Electric AlumiTub sunk into a teak deck beside a glass-walled cedar sauna. Joel Gaalswyk on building it in, hiding the equipment, and turning it over in 90 minutes between guests.

The whole routine as a checklist by how often it comes round: every soak, after every fire including ash and coals, every two weeks, monthly, at each water change and once a year, with the Electric and Hybrid additions at the end.

Yes, a hot tub can run with no electricity at all. A wood fired tub heats the water with a submerged firebox, circulates by convection, and needs only a flat surface, water and dry wood. The short version, with the off-grid guide for the rest.

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.

Stainless is not a better hot tub material than aluminum; it is a different one. Neither corrodes in a tub kept in range. Aluminum is a third the weight, conducts heat better, is riveted like an aircraft and takes sea water; stainless tolerates chlorine, which matters only where chlorine is required. Fourteen buyer questions, one at a time.

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.

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.