DIY Cold Plunge Spotlight: Jason & Kori's Luxury Plunge
Check out Jason and Kori's Luxury DIY Cold Plunge! It definitely makes me smile to hear about two brothers taking on the project of building their own cold plunges. Read on to learn about their process, lessons learned and how they are enjoying their DIY cold plunges!
Why did you build a DIY cold plunge?
We tried an inflatable ice bath for a bit, I used it for about a week straight but with having to make ice or purchase ice, it was inconvenient to say the least, so we began to look for a more permanent solution to make it an enjoyable experience instead of a pain to plunge.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how much did you enjoy the process of building your cold plunge?
9.5, worked out well, we enjoyed the process most of the time and sitting inside the tubs or just looking at them now enjoying what we have built made it all worth it in the end. Of course, there is anyways room for it to be better but considering it was our first time tacking a project that consisted of this amount of materials it went fairly well and best of all… No leaks!
Were there any unexpected difficulties during the build?
Most of our difficulties came from being unprepared with materials or forgetting to get something, anything that we ran into was minor and easily changed or fixed.
Were the materials and tools readily available in your area?
We are in Canada, so things are a bit more expensive up here. Tools are tools, but the tank and the spa hose were the most difficult products for us to get. (Shipping and duties/taxes were killer really). Everything else we were able to get from local hardware stores or pool places to complete the project.
Tell me about the process you used on finishing the exterior of your plunge - it looks awesome!
We used cedar top and cedar for the lid and pine tongue and grove for the siding. Flame treated the pine and lid but left the topper alone. All of which was stained using a color additive within clear stain to come to our final color.
What pump and chiller did you use?
We used the Active Aqua ½ horsepower chiller, which with the amount of insulation and sealing we did is a bit over kill for us since it holds temperatures very well. For the pump we ended up going down a size then in your plan with the input of the guy that sold us the chiller. We see no issues with this pump, and it moved water well. It was the Danner 950 pump.
How long did it take to complete, from start to finish?
Took us a while, about 6 weeks or so but most of that was waiting for stuff to come in as we may not have had what we needed or waiting for the stain to dry on all the pieces. We didn’t really keep track of our time spent working on them since we were doing it for fun as well.
Would you recommend this plan to others interested in building their own DIY Cold Plunge?
For sure we would recommend your DIY plan, as it takes most of the guess work out and gives people the ability to easily source products to build their own.
