A WOOD-FIRED hot tub is not for everyone. I know because six months ago I purchased one from a Canadian company called Goodland, based in Bowen Island, British Columbia. It’s a handsome object, this rectangular aluminum hull paneled in western red cedar, with its slim stove and tall chimney at one end. It’s also a lot of work. Every time I want a bath, I must haul the necessary wood and split it myself, then coddle a fire for a couple of hours just to bring the water up to temperature. And since I don’t treat the water with chemicals, Goodland recommends emptying the tub every 1 to 2 weeks and wiping down the interior with a “natural” cleaner. (I opt for lemon juice, like a savvy Sicilian fisherman.)
I wonder if all the work this tub demands has triggered a sort of Stockholm syndrome. When I see the kindling catch and the flames reach for the tub’s chimney in a whoosh of precisely focused airflow, my crush on this ingeniously designed apparatus crackles and flares in tandem. I love using the adorable wooden paddle provided to stir the water in the tub and promote its circulation through aluminum pipes that pass through the stove.
For Craig Pearce, Goodland’s founder, the work involved is a feature not a flaw. He set out to create an object that rewarded effort. “We’re not the kind of people that want a hot tub with changing lights and a stereo,” he said.
With a wooden paddle, users of the Goodland hot tub help circulate hot water from stove to tub.
Photo:
Britney Gill
When he launched Goodland in November 2021, Mr. Pearce—who works as a firefighter and also heads Union Wood Co., a Vancouver furniture studio—saw the hot tubs as a sideline. He thought he might sell 50 in a year. “We ended up selling 50 in the first week,” he said. Last year, the company sold about 350 of the tubs, which currently go for $6,295 each.
But his is just one brand of wood-fired hot tub you can currently buy. The market for this kind of tub was really created, back in 1979, by Snorkel Hot Tubs out of Seattle. The titular tub in the movie “Hot Tub Time Machine”? That’s a Snorkel.
These tubs used to be cheaper, said Snorkel’s owner Tom Slater, and appealed to people who wanted a hot tub minus the expensive installation; you can set up a Snorkel wood-fired tub yourself, filling it with water from a nearby lake or garden hose. Since 2020, however, the price of the tub itself has gone up due to a sharp increase in the price of the western red cedar it’s made from, a wood that not only smells fantastic but is highly resistant to rot and an exceptional thermal insulator.
Acolytes still say such tubs are worth the expense and effort. Mark Bollman, founder of the outdoor clothing and gear company Ball and Buck, installed a Snorkel wood-fired hot tub in 2016 outside his home in the Massachusetts Berkshires. An active fly fisherman and upland bird hunter, he welcomes another opportunity to spend time outdoors. “There’s just nothing better than the crackling of the fire, the smell of the wood smoke,” he said. “Not like the chlorine, you know, what I’ll call the modern commercialized experience. It’s much more a kind of meditation.”
This attitude lines up with a growing interest in bathing-as-pastime—no hot tub required. Last year Goodland collaborated on a bath kit with Bathing Culture, a San Francisco Bay Area-based line of “products designed for personal and planetary care” made of biodegradable ingredients and packaged in refillable glass or recycled plastic.
“When I see the kindling catch and the flames reach for the tub’s chimney, my crush on this ingeniously designed apparatus crackles and flares in tandem.”
Bathing Culture’s woodsy signature scent, Cathedral Grove, channels the California coastal redwood environments where co-founders and childhood friends Tim Hollinger and Spencer Arnold spend time swimming and visiting hot springs. They aim to make bathing at home a similarly transformative experience, but wellness is not the sell here. “This is not so much about well-being,” said Mr. Hollinger. “This is about being.”
For Ekin Balcıoğlu, who co-founded Hamam Magazine, a print-only periodical dedicated to the art and culture of bathing, in 2020, it’s about “letting go.” “People want an outlet, in my opinion. They want to be away from the technology, be away from social media and just enjoy being in that moment,” she said.
The founders of Goodland, Bathing Culture and Hamam all acknowledged their debt to Leonard Koren, who founded WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing in 1976. In WET, bathing was a jumping-off point to all sorts of conversations about contemporary art and culture. I asked Mr. Koren, who now lives in Rome, why the concept of gourmet bathing remains relevant, and so appealing. “We think of ourselves as somewhat rational, intelligent beings. And we forget that we’re animals, and we have bodies,” he said. “All animals like immersing themselves in water. So it’s that combination of the sacred and the silly.” An exhibition on the magazine titled “What why WET?” will run at MACRO (Museum of Contemporary Art Rome) March 17-Aug. 27.
Would a rational being do the amount of wood hauling and splitting, fire tending and lemon-juice swabbing I do for my wood-fired hot tub? I only know that these rituals and the tub itself have provided a space for some of my best conversations with friends and family in recent memory. Inviting guests out to the tub after dinner is my new-favorite digestif.
Floating solo—fully floating, the way this long tub lets me—I can give my attention to a screech owl trilling just beyond the microclimate of fragrant steam and wood smoke I’ve created, more fully than I’ve given my attention to anything in a very long time.
Build Your Own Bathing Ritual
You don’t necessarily need a wood-fired hot tub to get the wood-fired hot-tub experience
Clockwise from top left: Hamam Magazine, $20, HamamMag.com; Big Dipper Mineral Bath, 8 ounces for $30, BathingCulture.com; Kader Handwoven Bath Towel, $59, OddBirdCo.com; Red Cedar Incense Cones and Holder, 32 cones for $11, PaineProducts.com
Photo:
Hamam; Paine’s; Bathing Culture; Oddbird
Wood-Fired Hot Tub Essentials
A whole battery of beautifully designed objects exists to enhance the wood-fired bathing experience. Here, some must-buys, plus a few items to lighten the burden of wood hauling and splitting.
Photo:
Goodland
Goodland Hot Tub
Made of durable marine-grade aluminum and sustainably harvested western red cedar. Light enough, even filled, to sit on your deck. The rectangular shape, based on Japanese ofuro tubs, uses less water than comparable round tubs. Requires minimal assembly. $6,295
Photo:
Goodland
Goodland Folding Cover
Made of mold-resistant canvas, with cedar slats to keep the fabric off the water. $575
Kindling Cracker King Firewood Splitter
With a hammer, this device splits a log into stove-size pieces with surprising ease. $150
Photo:
LogOX
LogOX WoodOX Sling
Designed to distribute the weight of a slingful, enough to heat the tub, across your body. $80
Photo:
Goodland
Goodland Cedar Steps
You could buy cheaper steps, but these look so much better. $445
Photo:
Goodland
Goodland Aluminum Ash Scoop
The way this tool hugs the stove’s interior makes cleanup elegant and efficient. $195
Photo:
Goodland
Goodland Rigid End Cover
Keeps debris out of the tub. Also a handy resting spot for your beer. $324
Photo:
Fiskars
Fiskars® Pro IsoCore™ 4-pound Club Hammer
It has the exact heft you need to split wood. $54
The Wall Street Journal is not compensated by retailers listed in its articles as outlets for products. Listed retailers frequently are not the sole retail outlets.
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
A WOOD-FIRED hot tub is not for everyone. I know because six months ago I purchased one from a Canadian company called Goodland, based in Bowen Island, British Columbia. It’s a handsome object, this rectangular aluminum hull paneled in western red cedar, with its slim stove and tall chimney at one end. It’s also a lot of work. Every time I want a bath, I must haul the necessary wood and split it myself, then coddle a fire for a couple of hours just to bring the water up to temperature. And since I don’t treat the water with chemicals, Goodland recommends emptying the tub every 1 to 2 weeks and wiping down the interior with a “natural” cleaner. (I opt for lemon juice, like a savvy Sicilian fisherman.)
I wonder if all the work this tub demands has triggered a sort of Stockholm syndrome. When I see the kindling catch and the flames reach for the tub’s chimney in a whoosh of precisely focused airflow, my crush on this ingeniously designed apparatus crackles and flares in tandem. I love using the adorable wooden paddle provided to stir the water in the tub and promote its circulation through aluminum pipes that pass through the stove.
For Craig Pearce, Goodland’s founder, the work involved is a feature not a flaw. He set out to create an object that rewarded effort. “We’re not the kind of people that want a hot tub with changing lights and a stereo,” he said.
With a wooden paddle, users of the Goodland hot tub help circulate hot water from stove to tub.
Photo:
Britney Gill
When he launched Goodland in November 2021, Mr. Pearce—who works as a firefighter and also heads Union Wood Co., a Vancouver furniture studio—saw the hot tubs as a sideline. He thought he might sell 50 in a year. “We ended up selling 50 in the first week,” he said. Last year, the company sold about 350 of the tubs, which currently go for $6,295 each.
But his is just one brand of wood-fired hot tub you can currently buy. The market for this kind of tub was really created, back in 1979, by Snorkel Hot Tubs out of Seattle. The titular tub in the movie “Hot Tub Time Machine”? That’s a Snorkel.
These tubs used to be cheaper, said Snorkel’s owner Tom Slater, and appealed to people who wanted a hot tub minus the expensive installation; you can set up a Snorkel wood-fired tub yourself, filling it with water from a nearby lake or garden hose. Since 2020, however, the price of the tub itself has gone up due to a sharp increase in the price of the western red cedar it’s made from, a wood that not only smells fantastic but is highly resistant to rot and an exceptional thermal insulator.
Acolytes still say such tubs are worth the expense and effort. Mark Bollman, founder of the outdoor clothing and gear company Ball and Buck, installed a Snorkel wood-fired hot tub in 2016 outside his home in the Massachusetts Berkshires. An active fly fisherman and upland bird hunter, he welcomes another opportunity to spend time outdoors. “There’s just nothing better than the crackling of the fire, the smell of the wood smoke,” he said. “Not like the chlorine, you know, what I’ll call the modern commercialized experience. It’s much more a kind of meditation.”
This attitude lines up with a growing interest in bathing-as-pastime—no hot tub required. Last year Goodland collaborated on a bath kit with Bathing Culture, a San Francisco Bay Area-based line of “products designed for personal and planetary care” made of biodegradable ingredients and packaged in refillable glass or recycled plastic.
“When I see the kindling catch and the flames reach for the tub’s chimney, my crush on this ingeniously designed apparatus crackles and flares in tandem.”
Bathing Culture’s woodsy signature scent, Cathedral Grove, channels the California coastal redwood environments where co-founders and childhood friends Tim Hollinger and Spencer Arnold spend time swimming and visiting hot springs. They aim to make bathing at home a similarly transformative experience, but wellness is not the sell here. “This is not so much about well-being,” said Mr. Hollinger. “This is about being.”
For Ekin Balcıoğlu, who co-founded Hamam Magazine, a print-only periodical dedicated to the art and culture of bathing, in 2020, it’s about “letting go.” “People want an outlet, in my opinion. They want to be away from the technology, be away from social media and just enjoy being in that moment,” she said.
The founders of Goodland, Bathing Culture and Hamam all acknowledged their debt to Leonard Koren, who founded WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing in 1976. In WET, bathing was a jumping-off point to all sorts of conversations about contemporary art and culture. I asked Mr. Koren, who now lives in Rome, why the concept of gourmet bathing remains relevant, and so appealing. “We think of ourselves as somewhat rational, intelligent beings. And we forget that we’re animals, and we have bodies,” he said. “All animals like immersing themselves in water. So it’s that combination of the sacred and the silly.” An exhibition on the magazine titled “What why WET?” will run at MACRO (Museum of Contemporary Art Rome) March 17-Aug. 27.
Would a rational being do the amount of wood hauling and splitting, fire tending and lemon-juice swabbing I do for my wood-fired hot tub? I only know that these rituals and the tub itself have provided a space for some of my best conversations with friends and family in recent memory. Inviting guests out to the tub after dinner is my new-favorite digestif.
Floating solo—fully floating, the way this long tub lets me—I can give my attention to a screech owl trilling just beyond the microclimate of fragrant steam and wood smoke I’ve created, more fully than I’ve given my attention to anything in a very long time.
Build Your Own Bathing Ritual
You don’t necessarily need a wood-fired hot tub to get the wood-fired hot-tub experience
Clockwise from top left: Hamam Magazine, $20, HamamMag.com; Big Dipper Mineral Bath, 8 ounces for $30, BathingCulture.com; Kader Handwoven Bath Towel, $59, OddBirdCo.com; Red Cedar Incense Cones and Holder, 32 cones for $11, PaineProducts.com
Photo:
Hamam; Paine’s; Bathing Culture; Oddbird
Wood-Fired Hot Tub Essentials
A whole battery of beautifully designed objects exists to enhance the wood-fired bathing experience. Here, some must-buys, plus a few items to lighten the burden of wood hauling and splitting.
Photo:
Goodland
Goodland Hot Tub
Made of durable marine-grade aluminum and sustainably harvested western red cedar. Light enough, even filled, to sit on your deck. The rectangular shape, based on Japanese ofuro tubs, uses less water than comparable round tubs. Requires minimal assembly. $6,295
Photo:
Goodland
Goodland Folding Cover
Made of mold-resistant canvas, with cedar slats to keep the fabric off the water. $575
Kindling Cracker King Firewood Splitter
With a hammer, this device splits a log into stove-size pieces with surprising ease. $150
Photo:
LogOX
LogOX WoodOX Sling
Designed to distribute the weight of a slingful, enough to heat the tub, across your body. $80
Photo:
Goodland
Goodland Cedar Steps
You could buy cheaper steps, but these look so much better. $445
Photo:
Goodland
Goodland Aluminum Ash Scoop
The way this tool hugs the stove’s interior makes cleanup elegant and efficient. $195
Photo:
Goodland
Goodland Rigid End Cover
Keeps debris out of the tub. Also a handy resting spot for your beer. $324
Photo:
Fiskars
Fiskars® Pro IsoCore™ 4-pound Club Hammer
It has the exact heft you need to split wood. $54
The Wall Street Journal is not compensated by retailers listed in its articles as outlets for products. Listed retailers frequently are not the sole retail outlets.
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8