Hot Tub & Deck

wood, wood, and more wood

The idea was to bring our cedar wood tub down from Su Casa (pictures of the original set up are seen in 2003) and set it into the deck off the master bedroom. It worked out kind of perfectly

We managed to get a crew of river rats who were willing to work for beer to move the tub downhill and get it up on the deck. A hole was cut into the deck, with the idea of building an elevated deck around the back side of the tub.

Horizontal beams were lagged into deck beams for lateral support, and vertical posts were used to support the tub. This is an idea I saw used well in setting up cistern tanks in California. My carpenter Doug called it my "post forest" and concurred, the build showed much "skookum." I took this as an endorsement of the design.

Getting the tub into the hole was interesting, but accomplished. An intermediate deck was then built that would hold the wood stove in the proper position relative to the tub for good thermo-syphon. This design was a real step up, via a step down, in that now I can stand to feed the stove, rather than crouch. Stairs lead from the upper deck to the stove deck, and further down to ground level where firewood remains dry and protected under the shelter of the overhang off the bedroom above. Railing to come!

A cedar deck was built around the back side of the tub for sitting. The framing will be finished off with cedar siding left over from the  house, next summer. Planter boxes are planned for the back side of the deck, in lieu of a rail system. The white PVC is the beginning of a series of pipes that hold umbrellas for rainy nights.

 UPDATE!! And here we are, in 2008, with the tub deck finished off:

And this  year, we finally got a rail on that upper deck! Next summer, we will install stainless steel cable rails. We don't much like the way the rail gets in the way of some of the view, but we sure like the way it lets us get close to the edge now.

And in my spare time, I split some wood.