Spring evenings in the hot tub
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Our much-anticipated hot tub from Skargards arrived last Summer, to huge excitement from everyone in our family!
We are huge fans of wood fired tubs and have longed for a Skargards tub of our own for years, so we were really excited to add one to our garden - and even more pleased when Skargards came to use it for a location shoot for their website…
We’d designed the space next to our pond ready to house the hot tub – with a covered area close by for towels and drinks, and a view of the stars above. It’s added a whole new dimension to our enjoyment of our garden.
We’d used the hot tub in the Summer last year and all through Autumn and Winter, but we’re really looking forward to sitting out there as the Spring evenings get warmer, winding down after the end of a busy day and watching the new growth appear around us in the garden.
Spring is the busiest time of year for gardening, and a soothing evening relaxing in the hot tub at the end of a busy day planting is just what’s needed!
I’ve already had some really special evenings, with friends and with family, over the past few months. Here are a few of the highlights, and I’m looking forward to making more memories over the next year…
Our Skargards wood fired hot tub. Photos by Jason Ingram
Moments with friends
One Tuesday last Autumn, my four best friends were all free at one time, and I asked them round to come and sit in the tub and catch up. We’ve known each other since we were children and they all feel like sisters, but it’s a rare moment when we get to spend time just the five of us together – especially child free!
It was a special evening to sit in the calm water, no distractions from phones, spending quality time together and just having a really good chat. Catching up on the big stuff, laughing at in-jokes, or just sitting in companiable silence listening to the crackle of the woodsmoke. It reminded me of being back at school, when you’d go round to each others’ houses just to hang out and do nothing – a rare treat these days in adulthood.
We would have stayed in all night, until we all remembered it was the middle of the week and everyone had to be up for work the next morning. My friends bundled up in towels and drove home in their dressing gowns…
…and family
Another night, my Mum and I sat out and watched our neighbour’s Divali fireworks. We stayed in for hours, and – this being Wales – it soon started to rain. Just a drizzle at first, which was quite nice as the water was hot. But it gradually turned into a full-blown rainstorm; huge, cold, hard drops of rain that bounced off the surface and had us ducking under the water with just our noses and eyes poking out, laughing hilariously.
Photos by Jason Ingram
The hot tub ritual
We’ve been using the tub every few weeks as a treat, enjoying the relaxation of the warm water, and the gorgeous smell of the wood burning.
We use it in the traditional way, with fresh water that we drain out onto the garden the next day. Chlorine always makes me itchy so I love this method. Even better, no maintenance is required. We enjoy the ritual of getting it ready beforehand, which is fairly straightforward:
Open the cover and depending on how long it’s been since we last used it, we give it a clean, a spray with an eco-friendly anti-bac, wipe it with a microfibre cloth and rinse it off.
Close the water outlet, put the lid back on, leave the hose in and set an alarm on my phone for an hour, to come back and turn the hose off.
Once it’s filled (it takes about an hour for us, we have pretty good water pressure…) the very best bit is lighting the fire! It’s exactly the same as lighting a log burner – very simple and easy to control. You can let more air in by pulling out the drawer at the bottom that catches the ash.
It’s quicker to heat when the weather is warm (the water coming in from the hose has often been warmed by the sun first). In the summer, it took about 1.5 hours to get hot.
What I really love is to get it really toasty hot! I find that normal electric hot tubs aren’t quite warm enough. For me, the perfect temperature is 39-40 degrees, though I keep it less hot if the weather is warmer, or if kids are going to be getting in. For our little one, around 37 degrees is just right. We have a floating thermometer, so we keep an eye on that to get it perfect…
The next day, there’s no need to pump the water out, there is a lever on the bottom and a hose so it can flow into the garden. Just give it a chance to cool down first!
Overall, we’ve loved the tub, especially its eco credentials. Skargards is a brand we have admired for a really long time, so we were delighted to collaborate with them. (And Jason – who took the photos, is such a talented photographer, that we found the whole shoot a dream combination!) You can see more of the photos on our interview on their website…
This post was sponsored by Skargards, but all opinions are 100 per cent our own!
