Making a MOUNTAIN HOT SPRING in my Backyard

After 28 years of living in my parents' house, I finally bought them something they always wanted: a new hot tub. Okay, I think this one leaked, so maybe I'll build you one in this video. Going way out of my comfort zone and tearing up my parents'

backyard

for almost three months to build this one-of-a-kind,

mountain

-inspired, wood-fired natural stone hot

spring

, so I'm taking on a huge build that It will take months. and it all starts with this blank area of ​​grass around these evergreen trees in my parents'

backyard

, so step number one was to bring the rock here so we could visualize before we started digging a big hole in the yard rear.

I decided to go. with some weathered limestone to give it that really natural

mountain

ous look, so I sent it to Select Stone in Burlington Ontario and a truckload of this stone was about $3,500. I started to dig up the dirt and change the view of this landscape. It hasn't been touched since I was a baby, so before I started digging up the actual body from the hot tub, I dug a trench five feet deep from the house to about the end of this stretch of evergreens, where it will pass the main electricity. back to a subpanel in the backyard as well as a water line for some future construction that I can't tell you, although this trench will also feed back another power line to another pole that is closer to where the hot tub is. it has two 20 amp GFCI outlets, this part was done by some actual licensed electricians because it is too permanent for me to have the internet telling me everything I did wrong and not be able to fix it because it is five feet under, inspected by a foreigner.

I filled in the trench and started grading the area where I'm actually going to build this hot

spring

, so over the next few days I took a while and measured all the stones and had a basic idea of ​​where I wanted these. to fit the final design in my head and once I was somewhat sure I knew some of what I was doing, it was time to start digging out the approximate dimensions of the dug hole. I just used a shovel to go around and do a little more fine detail work. I have this step about halfway through the hole that will help shore up the stones a little higher and then I also shaped this mound of dirt that will eventually become a waterfall.

I just used a long two by four level to make sure the ground around this hole is roughly level which will save me a lot of work in the long run and the next day I just touched up the hole some more. To prepare it for the subfloor and pond liner, I also removed any roots, sticks, stones, or anything sharp that could pierce the liner and then put some of this subfloor in place. This is just a quarter inch thick piece of felt. which goes under the liner of our pond and gives us even more area of ​​protection from anything sharp coming through the liner in the long run, so this is being built very similar to the way a pond would be built, so to do that I have this 45 mil EPDM pond liner it is a very thick elastic rubber liner that should resist punctures very well it is also quite expensive it cost about two thousand dollars to get this liner in place so I have this two inch tow strap that has a ten thousand pound braking capacity and most of the rocks we are moving here weigh around 500 to 2000 pounds so it should be fine to lift them into place so I would hang the rock and would make a sort of figure eight pattern and then as the excavator lifted the rocks the tension would actually tighten the sling and not allow the rock to fall through this sling was connected to the excavator using a single point balanced on the rock that way I could rotate the rock and get the exact face I want exposed as We were placing it in the dog tub after placing some base rocks.

I would take some smaller rocks and plug the holes and then level them with some gravel so we could place more rocks on top in the next few days. I went through laying rocks and at this point in the construction I was getting quite nervous and over my head I would go out here at night and just look at the hole and think about how much work still needs to be done and how much. things could go wrong on the trail, a small puncture in the coating would render the whole thing useless or my biggest concern was having a looser, more out of place rock that settles over time and becomes unstable and ultimately, a threat to anyone inside at this point, every part of me.

I wanted to just throw in the towel and start another build and fill this hole, but so far the only way out is through and I just have to make it as safe as possible now before placing some of the last Stones I have. to run the plumbing pipes for the pump intakes and return jets so I have this flexible inch and a half PVC pipe that is usually used in hot tubs or spas but I guess I'm usually going to use this in my hot tub or spa. It is used in more traditional hot tubs and elevated spas built by people who really know what they are doing, so I dug some cracks behind the liner and then ran two pipes that run from the bottom outside of the tub that will connect to the pumps and then a pipe that surrounds the entire circumference of the bathtub that will have our return jets.

For now, I'm just taping some of the pipes along the siding until we have the walls actually built that will hold it up. set it up rigidly and with the rough pipes laid out, we can go ahead and lay those last stones and finish the waterfall area. You won't be going anywhere with this rented excavator for a full week to place these stones and I would say on average it took at least an hour to place each individual rock, usually the area under the tarp would have to be dug with a shovel just to to fit the contour of the rock and then we would have to place it several times to get it to sit properly. and make me feel confident that it will never go anywhere, but after a week of doing it, most of the stones are set and I can move on to a concrete job, so I have a bunch of bags of this Quikrete 5000 and I'm just mixing it up these by hand and then poured a pad into the lowest level of the tub.

I think I used about 10 bags on this and in the end I had a pad that was about three or four inches thick and this is basically just it. By the way, the floor and everything else for the walls and the seats will be built from here. If you think it's crazy that I'm using a shovel around this fragile coating, here's a clip showing how durable this EPDM is. The liner is digging through this on settled land, it still didn't make a hole in it, it just dug into the ground with the shovel, that doesn't mean you can't make a hole in it, but it's pretty durable and if you're

making

a construction like this, you definitely need this type of coating with the concrete poured in place.

I just rolled it out nice and smooth and made sure it was as level as possible; Then, a couple of days later, it's time to start working your way up. So I have these concrete patio pavers that I had lying around and I'm going to use them to make bricks and mortar up to the level where the seats will be, so I mixed up some mortar and used the run to lay down a bed of mortar and then add butter to the end of the brick and set it in place, since I couldn't run a string or any type of level over this, I had to level every brick I put in during the entire process of

making

this. once I finished a coat or two and the mortar was still a little soft, I ran my finger through it and just smoothed out any weird joints.

After putting down a few coats it was time to connect the inlet pipes of the two pumps so I'm just using normal PVC fittings for this and then I'm using this primer and priming both the fitting and the pipe and then I have this cement of PVC that is designed specifically for this flexible PVC pipe and then I add cement to the joints of each of these pipes. These pipes need two openings to draw in water, just like any pool pump does, so I first cemented them into a T joint and then into a small section of pipe and then this female threaded fitting arranged them in place hanging about a half inch or so out of the brick, I have four of these sockets in total, two for each pump, the next day I took some gravel and leveled it to about two or three inches below the top of the brick level and then we'll mix a bunch by hand. more concrete and pour this seat slab, this was probably another 10 bag job but with my brother and I mixing it's not that bad, this concrete probably should have had some rebar but it didn't have any and honestly it didn't even I thought about it until the concrete was ready, at which point it was too late, so I guess we'll see how this holds up in the long run.

That's another cost of doing something new every month. You don't know what you're doing most of the time and you do a lot of thinking after the fact when it's too late, and with that leveled and set up for a few days I started on the final Brick Lane walls. I also had to install some pipes behind these walls, so this is the return jet from the heater and this line runs through the entire tub with six different return jets, place them on the walls pretty much exactly the same way as I did in the previous case. previous shots thanks now we loved mixing concrete by hand so much that we decided to mix another 25 bags to fill Behind the walls I decided to do this in concrete instead of gravel like I did on the lower level just to give The walls have a little more strength and a lot of casing in the pipes, but the gravel I used behind the walls at the bottom will actually help filter the entire hot tub because enough water coming down from the waterfall is not going to make it into the main body water, in It will actually leak behind the rocks and end up behind the main walls of the hot tub and then it will filter through all that gravel and sand and come out through some drainage holes that I drilled in it. wall and go in with the main water, that's the theory anyway, but it was mainly because I didn't think about pouring concrete, at first I have some mortar and some smaller rocks and I'm trying to take a couple of steps here to go in and get out of the hot tub, so I used the small stones and mortar to make a ring around the large rocks and then used some sand and concrete mix to level a flat step.

Well, I also took out the mortar. I tied off a couple spots around the rocks, either to keep some gravel in place or, in this case, to cover the base that was still sticking out of the concrete. Now it's time to add the tiles so I have this Mega light tile adhesive and I just got this because it said it's safe for outdoors and for submerged or pool use so I mixed it according to your instructions and then I have this Riverstone Pebble tile that I am going to use to cover the entire inside of the body in a hot spring.

So using a quarter inch square notched trowel, I spread a thin layer of adhesive over the brick and then use the notched side to scrape off any excess to make sure I get the right amount of adhesive on the wall and then wherever I can. I would take one of these four one foot square mesh tiles and press it into place, but for the most part I just took the Pebbles out of the mesh and placed each Pebble individually on the outside. I worked on this for the next few days. Starting with all the walls and then the seats and finally the floor, it took me about three days total just to lay the tiles, but in the end I was really excited because it looks pretty good.

Yes, I'm going to finish now. top of these walls with some paver, so I filled it flush to the top of the wall with a little more gravel and then placed these pavers roughly in place for a full length so I could cut the ends to size and make I just use this cheap concrete saw that I bought at Canadian Tire for a couple hundred dollars and just cut the paver to the basic shape I need once I was confident with the rough fit, mixed up some mortar and put a good thick mortar. bed and then glued these pavers in place just like the bricks and walls.

I leveled each stone as I placed them in relation to the ones next to them, as well as the ones on the other side of the pool, oddly and now that's starting to show a lot. It's more finished now, so let's move on to grouting the tiles. I have the silver color, but before I mix that I'm going to cover all these shots andsquirt with some masking tape and tape around the stones to basically act as a bit of painter's tape for this grout, then I mixed the grout with a little water according to the manufacturer's instructions.

I used a sponge trowel to apply the grout, working into every little crease between each of these stone slabs is a time consuming task, not only did I apply but then I cleaned it up, once I filled a section with some grout , I took a tile sponge and started removing all the excess. You have to clean this sponge regularly, so I would save two buckets of water, one for rinsing. most of the grout and then one containing much cleaner water to basically get a two stage wash before it goes back to the tiles. I also had to change this water pretty regularly because I'm removing quite a bit of grout.

Here with the sponge, so basically I just have to sponge it over and over again making sure the water is as clean as possible and after doing that, oh I don't know, maybe 15 times the stones started to turn pretty clear and the actual result. The inner body of this hot spring is now pretty much finished, now we had to rent an excavator for one last day just to move our final stones into place. Now I'm ready to start trimming and hiding the lining, so basically I would first cut a bunch of the extra siding and then I would hold it to the edge of the wall and fold over the excess. a little more here in case it needs any modifications in the future, then I would temporarily stick it against the wall and use some gravel to push it into place since I placed it right against the wall even if we get in case of heavy rain, Most of the runoff should exit and surround the liner rather than entering the pool, which should keep it much cleaner.

Around some of the rocks, I could hide a little more creatively in the siding using some smaller rocks and gravel. to just hide it right where it is, once that's done I can move on to some of the gardens around the foreign hot springs. I received a load of topsoil and spread it with my tractor and shovel to make a couple of flower beds around it. hot springs and as a base for some fresh grass. Now I'm going to build this waterfall area, so I'm going to place some smaller rocks that the water will spill over and then I'm going to use this waterfall to expand.

Foam to seal around all gaps and cracks. The idea of ​​this is to basically eliminate any other place where the water can flow except over the top of the rocks, which you want it to spill over, so I have two main spill stones that I really had to foam up a lot, especially underneath. because water will find its way no matter what crack there is. I would use some smaller rocks and gravel to hide the look of the foam as it was still wet and would just cling to them and after it hardened for an hour I cut off anything that was sticking out, after that I just brought in some more of gravel to level it with the rocks and I used some smaller rocks to make it look a little more natural and I'll see what that looks like once we turn on the pumps and the next thing I'm going to build is this little outside pump hose for hose from our two pumps and filters, so I'm just building a frame for the floor with some pressure treated twos and fours and then I'm using a cedar deck board over this outside, then I'm framing my four walls using a little more wood pressure treated two by four and one wall is taller than the rest because I'm going to have a sloped roof style, then I clad this entire structure using some cedar fence boards.

Also a good tip to not split the fence boards when you drill them is to start with the impact in reverse just for a second or two and then click forward and put the screw in this, just pre-drill the hole a little bit and avoid it breaks like 98 of the time. Note that I also left about a half inch gap between all of these boards so there is still air flow. Here to cool the pumps, I'm now building a removable roof for this pump house, so I temporarily screwed these fascia boards in place and then marked the cut lines parallel to the building and then screwed the whole thing off the roof. about half an inch wider in all directions than the top of the frame, so it just pops up on top and can be easily removed to access the pumps.

Then I simply cut out one of these clear roof panels and screwed it into place with some roofing screws. and then this should fit both of our pumps and a few other things inside and we're going to move this to the hot springs so I started installing all the plumbing on our pumps so we have a dedicated pump that goes directly to the waterfall this one doesn't have a filter or anything, just the skimmer box that comes connected to the pump. I now have another pump that runs the main circulation of the hot tub, which will run itself through a cartridge filter and then. on the heater, so with those connected, I primed the waterfall pump and turned it on to see if it works.

It will take a few days or maybe even a few weeks of operation to remove all the dirt and sand from the gravel. but in the meantime it still looks sweet and will look even better when it's crystal clear. I also added this ultrasonic mist maker near the start of the waterfall and this will really set the mood once everything is working, now I need it. To find a way to heat water, so my original idea was to get a sheet of stainless steel and weld my own wood stove heater, so I bought some steel and tried to test my welding ability since I had never welded stainless steel. or sheet metal, so I just wanted to weld a cube with a water inlet and then pressurize it and see how waterproof I can weld well.

Yes, that is waterproof, so I think it's pretty obvious that buying a heater was the only solution to this problem, so I chose. I installed this 70,000 BTU wood hot tub heater from a company called Northern Lights Hot Tubs for $2,200, but first I need a concrete slab to set it on, so I quickly put together a form and just poured in about three bags and a couple of days. Later, the heater is ready to be moved to a location outside of the last stage of this construction, which simply makes it look pretty with a little landscaping. I collected a few more exotic looking trees and then planted them with a mix of peat compost and native soil. and then I got a bunch of plants to make this look as natural as possible and not like I just built it.

I spent like two thousand two hundred dollars on plants for this, which is ridiculous, but as long as I make money on YouTube, I'm going to move on to the next video with everything planted, we moved on to applying mulch and once that was done, it really started to look like a finished product. Thank you. Now the only thing left to do is clean everything up and add the finishing touches. so I power washed the whole body and power washed all the moss off the stones that will be below the water level as the chlorine will kill that, then I filled the body half full, turned on the waterfall and then pumped out the dirty water .

About four times the next day I added this 12 volt magnetic pool light and hid the wire along the rock lines with some mortar. It's also only 12 volts, so even if one of these wires gets cut inside the pool, it won't hurt anyone's swimming. and then I installed some three-quarter inch Eyeball Jets on the main Return Jets and these skimmer caps on the four water intakes. Now I'm going to add some of these landscaping lights, so to do that I'm going to need this 120 to 12 volt transformer and some landscaping wire, so I installed the end of the landscape wire into the transformer and then ran it around the flower beds to install a light.

I used these little easy clips that came with the lights so basically just Clip it around the wire and then screw on this middle piece that has a needle that goes into the wire and then the light wire goes inside this top cap and just you screw it comfortably, it's actually a lot. easier than I thought and you can set a perfectly customizable distance and light settings to pretty much anything you want. Once I had all the lights up and running, I simply buried the wire about two inches under the fresh mulch and then added these solar tiki torches. and that's it for this build, let's fill it with some water and hope it doesn't leak.

Thank you, foreigner, foreigner, by the way, if you appreciate the time and detail that goes into making my videos, consider purchasing some of my products because this is going. directly towards me spending more on videos and creating better and better content in the future, so with the water starting at about 75 degrees when I turned on the heat, it takes about two hours for the water to reach 90. and about another two hours after of that. reach 90 or 100 degrees. This obviously depends on a lot of variables, like whether the waterfall is running or not and the outside ambient temperature, but I've run it about five times and it's pretty consistent in that three to four hour range to take it to the hot tub.

Temps seem like a lot. work, but after the first 10 minutes of lighting the fire it literally just throws in a log every half hour. I might put it on propane in the future just for ease of use, but wood. It's a pretty good proof of concept for now, it stays a little warmer without the waterfall and is still pretty cool but to be honest I'd rather be there at 95 with all Steam and Haze vs 100 without it because it's kind of It makes for a weird overall atmosphere, this was a really challenging build almost every step of the way and turned out to be one of the coolest things I've ever built.

In the end, it took me almost three months to build and cost around twenty thousand dollars. Canadian All In this is in my parents' backyard so they will be able to enjoy it for years to come along with all my nieces and nephews. Thank you so much for watching my video and if you haven't already, hit the Subscribe button and see what. Next I will start building. I'm also curious since there are probably a lot of pool experts watching this. How should I prepare it for winter? Should I drain the water and try to keep it empty all winter so the water behind the walls doesn't expand and break? the walls or should I blow out the pipes and cap them and let them fill over the winter and hope for the best.

Let me know what you think in the comments below or on my Instagram at Drew build things until next time thanks for watching the foreigner.