Original wooden tub donated by a friend and placed on the small ridge behind the farm house.
It was homemade and the 5' redwood staves fit together with bands and made a watertight tub.
We cut into the east sidehill  and made a level spot. Note the small retaining wall of peeled cedar logs.
 

After the 1986 clear cut
We thought this would be a great place to sit in a tub of hot water.
Farm house is in the other side of the hill. We used a surplus store $40 pump to pump water up to it and another one to circulate the water.
There was little growth of brush the first three years so we just laid black pipe on the ground to heat the water in the summer. Later we built another solar collector
In ten years the newly planted fir plantation around it grew so fast that the fantastic view was greatly diminished

View of the foundation of 4x4 on blocks.
Circulation pump and pump house is behind the camera. Piping is roughed in and the object in the lower center is a cartridge filter
In this shot we are  building a deck using Valhalla lumber and cedar log posts. It was a great spot that looked out over the back forty acres (That's huckleberry hill in the background)
Another odd bargain pump from a surplus outlet and 250 ft of 8ga generator wire from the Boeing surplus store brought power up from the other side of the hill.

Soon we started experimenting with wood heat.
Here's a 55 gal barrel stove water heater of our design. This is the final config with 20' of copper pipe wrapped around the outside and four pipes running through the inside. It took 3-4 hours to heat the water to 102F..

 

Shot of Shavon and Shannon having some fun circa 1996.
Note the blue top edge. The tub had begun to have leaks in the bottom. Apparently the builder had made the bottom of plywood which had began to disintegrate. Earl Ingebright bought fiberglass cloth and blue resin and made a whole new inside for the tub. It held 500 Gal of water really well!

Fast forward to 2005
The old location became overgrown with fir trees from our plantation so we decided to move it to Dave's new house and set it up there.
View a picture of pulling it out of the deck with a homemade log crane.
 

Here it sits waiting for a final  location decision
 

Moved to lower E Side of house
It needed more blue resin.
Note the 6x6 beams for the new deck

Building the new pump house.
This one incorporated a new tilt over design for easy access.
 

A friend, Bill Ring gave us two used commercial solar water heater panels.

Earl Enjoying the new location
 

Dave enjoying it too.
The tub was on its last legs. Black ants had gotten into the redwood and really loved the good taste.
It was time to move on.

2007 Moved hot tub from the Brier House

Late afternoon shot
Underground power run from the house.
 

Up and running!

Moved it 4 ft North in 2010
This made room for the circular driveway and connecting to the new garage.
 

 A new tub arrives 2019
The other tub was beyond repair. Too many parts failing.
 

Late afternoon sun illuminates rising steam as we look out on a pastoral scene about a mile away.

  Back to Tree Farm home
 

10/18/23