Build Your Own Primitive Hot Tub in Your Backyard

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Is your garden missing a hot tub? Then instead of buying and installing a commercially-available one, why not consider making one for yourself? 

Follow this simple guide to find out how. 

As you can imagine, you'll need some tools and materials before you get started.

Materials and gear needed

• Quikrete cement mix and sand
• Reclaimed or old bricks
• uPVC piping
• Spigots
• Metal valley guttering or similar
• Basic tools (shovel, etc)

With all your gear in hand, it is time to get on with this great little build. 

Step 1: Prepare the ground

Like any project of this nature, the first step is to decide where your hot tub will go. With that done, mark out the dimensions of it, and excavate the ground using a shovel or similar tool. 

Dig down to as deep as you want the hot tub to be and then compress the soil at the bottom as much as you can. With that done, mix up your cement according to its instructions and cart it to the hot tub as needed.

Then, line the base of the hot tub with cement as needed. Level and smooth off the cement as needed too using a trowel or length of wood. Leave the cement to cure.

Next, take your bricks, and line the walls of the hot tub with a course of bricks as required. 

Don't worry about making the brickwork clean and tidy as we'll be rendering it anyway. With that done, make a raised platform to one end of the hot tub. Fill it with soil, and then cover it with cement. 

Keep building it up to make space for the main water reservoir for the hot tub. Add in an overflow pipe too. 

With the brickwork complete, fill in any gaps between the brickwork and the ground around it. Then add another course of brickwork around the main curved body of the hot tub. 

Step 2: Render the brickwork

With the basic brickwork complete, render all the exposed brickwork with cement as needed. Smooth and square off as needed. 

With that done, take lengths of valley guttering and place it in the voids around the outside of the hot tub. This will be used to catch and circulate the water for the hot tub from the main tank. 

Cement into place as needed. If not already complete, finish rendering the rest of the construction as needed.

Once complete, leave all cement to fully cure. 

Step 3: Add the water features

Next, add a small length of plastic pipe from the main outside water trough into the center portion of the hot tub. Cement into place as needed. 

Add a spigot to it too. 

Next, mark out a series of points around the main walls of the hot tub into the outer trough, and drill holes as needed. 

With that done, add more spigots to the outflow pipes from the main tank too. 

Next, paint the entire exposed surfaces of the hot tub using waterproof paint. You can choose whichever colors you want, but in this case, an ultramarine blue has been chosen and yellow for the trimmings, outer walls, and tank. 

Step 4: Complete the hot tub

Once the paint has fully cured, you can now go ahead and fill the main tank of the hot tub. Fill it up to the top as needed. 

With that done, open the main tank spigots and allow the water to drain into the trough. While the trough is filling up, light some fires underneath the main trough on either side of the hot tub as shown. 

This will heat up the water and make your hot tub nice and cozy. 

With that done, your hot tub is now complete. Now get in there and enjoy your hard work.

If you enjoyed this project, you might enjoy making another DIY garden infrastructure project. How about, for example, your own miniature hydro dam?