Category Tech

There is nothing nicer than kicking back under the stars in a steaming hot outdoor bath. Here are a couple of ways you can build your own fire bath.

Cast Iron And Pit Fire Bath

Our own fire bath is a simple design; basically a bath with a fire under it. Though not essential, it is preferable to use a cast iron bathtub as opposed to the thinner pressed iron model. The cast iron allows the heat to be more evenly distributed around the mass of the bathtub and retains heat for longer. Of course this simple design could be complicated by incorporating a rocket stove as the heat source.

How To Build A Cast Iron And Pit Fire Bath

For starters, the site needs to be on reasonably level ground and on soil which can be dug. Also try to position the bath so that you can drain the water to a lower point in the landscape, preferably where the water can be used again in the garden, for instance.

Our family has been recycling and reusing our humanure (human waste) for around seven years. We have used a bucket toilet system in both a suburban home on a small town block and on our current farm. We have always used bucket toilets alongside the existing flush toilet. The bucket literally sits in our bathroom next to the flush loo.

By doing so, we’ve taken the pressure off the septic and town sewerage systems already in place. This saves our precious drinking water, not to mention money and chemicals, from otherwise being poured into a system in which people have the convenience of simply flushing their waste away.

Ideally we’d do away with cars altogether, to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and carbon emissions. We would use bikes, public transport, walk or even go back to saddling up our trusty steed. But the reality is that most people still use cars daily: in our recent Pip survey, 86% of readers said they rely on cars as their main form of transport.

So if you do own a car, and can’t see any way of doing without it in the near future, what can you do to create the least impact on the planet? With technology changing fast, electric vehicles (EVs) seem to be leading the way to create a lower emission, smaller carbon footprint alternative to petrol and diesel powered vehicles.