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can i use my hot tub

3K views 16 replies 13 participants last post by  Trotline 
#1 ·
can i use my hot tub to store water? it doesnt work so its just sitting on my deck looking for a use. my concern is what will happen during the winter when the temp gets down below freezing in Jan/feb. will it crack?
 
#4 ·
I was thinking about the same thing in my thread here...

http://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=204756

I don't have a hot tub, but if I get one I plan on using it. I think a solar still might be sufficient to purify the water.

If you don't plan on using your hot tub anymore it couldn't hurt to try. Just plug and drain the pipes to make it a sealed tub. It'll probably crack if it freezes, so a solution might be to glue closed-cell foam to all the interior surfaces. This gives the water something to expand in to when it freezes. Make sure the adhestive won't mess up the water safety.

A simpler solution might be to get some foam tubes (like pool toys or pipe insulation), weight the end (like embed them in concrete), and toss a bunch of them in the tub, making sure they pierce the surface. Use quite a few. That'll also give the water something to expand in to. Weighted inflatables might also work, but the air might leak out.

I don't guarantee this'll work, but if option B is to just abandon the hot tub and let it decay it's worth a shot.

I can't
 
#7 ·
It'll probably crack if it freezes, so a solution might be to glue closed-cell foam to all the interior surfaces. This gives the water something to expand in to when it freezes.

As long as it isn't sealed airtight, the water will expand just fine upward without cracking the tub. But DO seal the drains & drain the pipes. Simple as putting a thin rubber cover over the drain. The weight of the water trying to escape should seal the drain, ala kitchen sink or bathtub.

Test? Fill a small Rubbermaid type food storage container about 2 inches from the top with water. DON'T put on the lid. Stick in the freezer. Check on it the next day.
(I do this so I have blocks of ice to put in the dog's water bucket during the summer. Haven't had one crack yet)
 
#15 ·
Water doesn't expand just upward. Put a glass of water in the freezer and see what happens. It has all the room in the world to expand upward, but it will also expand outward as the last of it freezes. I've learned this the hard way more than once.

On the positive side, motion helps keep water from freezing. Ranchers often put bubblers in their stock tanks to keep them from freezing over. All these are is a small air pump. That doesn't take much power to run and could easily be run on a small solar panel/battery arrangement. I don't know what temperatures it would protect to, but it might be worth researching.
 
#9 ·
The circulation pump in mine is VERY small. I wonder how long it would last on a battery/inverter setup?????

I guess that'd depend on the inverter as much as anything,,,,,

As far as purifing goes, I'm hoping my Monolithic filter and some buckets will fix that!!!!
Look into a 12v RV type water/shower pump. Might be cheaper than a dedicated inverter.
 
#12 ·
We had a fiberglass one we kept outside years back. The coldest it ever got was 18% we insulated all the pumps and things by covering around the bottom with foam board and then back filling up against the foam board with about a foot of dirt from the yard. (this was not on my porch but on a slab out in the yard) It did not have a roof over but it did have one of those foam covers. It never split. It did get a thin layer of ice on the top but it was not enought to split. But we don't get as cold as you do and the 18% was like for 3 or 4 days then it got up over 32%.
 
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