I first got to try an outdoor bath with my wife many years ago at my good mate Keith Garaway’s holiday house. This place to me at the time was about as close as one could get to paradise, it was situated at Parera in the Taieri gorge. This place was that secluded that when you went through the first locked gate you would drive two km to the next locked gate then another two km to the car park where you leave the vehicle and walk one km around the Taieri gorge railway line through a tunnel to the house.
The house is situated just below the railway line and used to be a railway house that Keith’s grandfather used to work at before getting the chance to buy it and it has stayed in his family even since. This house has been well looked after over the years as well as the garden and lawns and at the bottom of the lawn there is a track leading down to the Taieri river where they have a bath set up. At one and of the bath you had a pump that you worked backwards and forwards to pump water into the bath out of the river. If the fire under the bath was to hot you could pump more cold water in to get the temperature right.
Since soaking in this bath we have had a couple of our own baths that I have put in. When we lived at peel forest I put a bath in as a 40th present for my wife and at the time we had a pet possum Yoda. When soaking in the bath sometimes Yoda would come and sit close by.
Now we have a good bath up above our hut where we have spent many relaxing nights watching the stars and just chilling out.
For any person that has not soaked in an out door bath you are really missing out. Any person thinking of putting in a bath there are a couple of things that you want to get right when building.
A good sized fire box underneath.
Don’t let the fire get to the plug end of your bath to melt the pipe you have to drain the water away.
Place your bath on an angle so that when you get in the water does not go over all of the sides and put your fire out, rather you want the water to go over one end and drain away if it is to full.
Seal around your fire so that the smoke does not get in your eyes while your in the bath.
Put in a chimney to draw the smoke away.
Always put something in the bottom of your bath like a piece of plywood unless of course you like to burn you bum.
Before you light your fire just put about 8 -10 inches of water into the bath and let that heat up before you put more water in.
Don’t make to big a fire or you will have to keep adding more cold water all the time and overflow your bath.
I find that when I have got the fire going I put two good bits of wood on the fire and that keeps the bath about right.
Have a hose handy where you can turn it off and on from the comfort of the bath and make the hose long enough so that it can go under your piece of plywood that way the cold water is not straight on you or your partner.
Don’t drain the water out of your bath when it is still hot because the change in temperature can cause the bath to crack.
Getting the fire right can be a little bit of trail and era
To spice the bath up we have put concrete pavers around to stand on and a couple of solar lights.