We have a new hot tub! Back when we were still building the cheese parlor and learning to make cheese, we had spent a few days in Fort Collins making cheese with the Bingham Hill folks. We came home with a drain table (that we still use) and a 200-gallon, batch pastuerizer that we had hoped to use as our cheese vat. Well, after making cheese a few times in our small, 40-gallon vat, we realized the pastuerizer would never work…way too deep to dip curd out of, convex floor not very easy to build harps for, too high off the floor, etc. So, it just sat outside for the last couple of years.
I had always thought that it would make a neat hot tub. Jennifer thought I was crazy, and I never found the time to really think about it. This spring, because of my aching bones, I decided to make time. I began researching different ways to heat it. At first I was interested in a submersible wood stove, but the inside diameter is just right for two people, not two people and a pot-bellied anything else. So I came across a company called Dutch Tub. They make plastic hot tubs that are heated with a wood fire inside a stainless steel coil. Their website, by the way, is www.dutchtub.com. It’s well worth a visit.
So after telling and then showing my good friend Tod what these folks were doing, he decided that he could build me the coil. He found a piston from a locamotive engine, welded it to a huge piece of 12″ channel iron, and talked a co-worker (also big and strong) into helping him walk 20′ lengths of 1 1/4″ stainless tubing around the piston. After a few modifications to his approach, it turned out great. We welded a few coils together and installed it on the pastuerizer. It takes about 3 hours to take tap water from 48º F to 104º F. The trick has been to learn when to let the fire burn down…the first couple of tries, we had to exit the tub prematurely…we were being cooked like lobsters.
And the convex floor is wonderful as a seat. Jennifer had to be coaxed in the first time, but now she admits that it is very comfortable. We still need to work on a small deck…the step ladder isn’t a very good system for getting in and out.
