Hot Tub Journal

A heated soaking tub is a deep, jetless tub for sitting upright in hot water, after the Japanese ofuro. What makes a tub a soaking tub, how outdoor ones are heated, what holds the water, and how to choose.

Four things to settle before buying: permits and bylaws, whether the property suits the heating system, what the site has to provide, and how a tub reaches a cabin. Most people find none are obstacles. Finding out first is what makes the purchase easy.

A barrel hot tub is built like a barrel: cedar staves drawn into a circle by bands and sealed by swelling. A round cedar tub on an aluminum structure looks the same from across the garden and behaves nothing alike. The two formats compared on what matters in use.

A wooden hot tub is wooden on the outside. What is inside decides everything: an all-wood stave tub sealed by swelling, or cedar cladding over a structure that holds the water on its own. The types, the woods, the heating, the care, and six questions to ask before buying one.

The honest answer is that it depends on whether you will use it, and owners who use theirs say the same things: it changed how much time they spend outside, and with the people they spend it with. What it costs, what it asks, and what twenty years of owners say back.

Two to five hours on wood, up to fourteen from a cold fill on electric, and a few minutes of maintenance heat once it is there. Heat-up time for all three systems, what moves it, and why the answer changes after the first fill.

Cedar is the outside; what holds the water is the question. An all-wood barrel tub has to stay full. Heating is not one decision. Depth matters more than diameter. And the cedar looks after itself. Five things that decide whether a cedar hot tub is still in use in twenty years.

Ten thousand acres of open range, a Condé Nast listing and a National Geographic write-up. Why a Star Gazing Camp chose a wood fired tub over a conventional spa, and what siting one at a remote camp actually involves.