Building a $10,000 Cold Plunge For Under $1,500

with the recent increase in popularity of cold plunges across the internet i'm gonna mission to create a custom cold plunge for my house now the great thing about cold punches is that you can do it on the cheap you can just fill up your bathtub and throw some ice cubes in you have a perfectly good cold plunge now if we search the old world wide web some of them can get really steep i mean stuff with active cooling you got ten thousand dollars here's one that's eight this one's twenty one thousand dollars i think we can make something as equally as nice as that roughly around a thousand bucks i think we can do it and it's gonna look super cool let's get started so i just got back from the hardware store i got lumber spent about a hundred dollars on lumber and 165 on a horse trough i never thought i'd see the day that i'm building something using a horse drop fancy trough and because this is going to live outside and have a lot of splashing overflowing we got our pressure tree the two by fours that's a no-brainer the first order action is to create a frame around this thing so we could actually fill it with insulation because if we don't insulate this thing then it might as well just be a glorified horse truck so this is the moment that i have to decide do i create this to be a taller platform or do i keep it nice and low and no need to have you know steps something like that i think i'll keep it low that way my wife who's a little bit shorter than me she can get in and out a lot easier and yeah let's that way i don't do these steps either [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so i forgot to mention i decided to tweak the design just a little bit i saw some of the designs online and some of them had the cooling unit on the outside of it some had it built in and i definitely wanted to look as cool as the expensive ones so it caused me to extend this die ah about 20 inches or so that way inside here i will put the chilling unit i want it to be like a statement piece i want it to look as nice as like a hot tub in your backyard and not be an eyesore this will do it for sure [Music] [Applause] so now that i have all four sides in i need to create pocket holes on the bottom that will join them to the sides here so pocket holes just like people come in different shapes and sizes this is one of two different styles that i have some of them are expensive some of them are cheap like this one you can get you know probably under 60 bucks whatever it is just get one it'll make building so much easier look at that effortless [Music] [Applause] that's a snug fit so i'm gonna put another divider right over here just so that doesn't get all squirrely on us and start moving around plus this will give the water chiller an official little utility box all right all right all right so for installation i've got a couple of different methods fiberglass but can't go that moisture will destroy it i was going to go with a foam the spray foam it's going to get very expensive the amount i need to put in here so the best alternative is this thick two inch styrofoam insulation it's got reflective silvering on the back best part is it's moisture resistant i'm gonna start cutting it up i'll have to figure out what's the cleanest way and start shoving it on let's see if a reciprocating style will do this should work right [Music] [Applause] after i install this piece i have this great feeling there's gonna be a legit cold plunge [Music] [Applause] all right so that was exactly one four by eight sheet of styrofoam insulation best 35 dollars i have ever spent everything went perfectly i even shoved the extra pieces down this little crevices so good this thing's gonna be bulletproof next thing we need to figure out is the plumbing situation hey real quick guys thank you helix sleep for sponsoring today's video okay sleep is incredibly important the older i get the less sleep i get the worse i feel the next day and i have the hardest time trying to get through these 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two free pillows now let's get back into this video let's go no plumbing yet uh i'm not gonna be happy or rest easy at night if i know that i i could have added one more step of prevention for moisture damage so i think what i'm gonna do is wrap this thing with tyvek if you know what that is that's waterproofing sheeting that they put around a framing of a house that way when stuff does get splashed underneath it a little bit again it's just it's just gonna prolong the life of this thing just makes me sleep better at night i feel way better about this now let's do the plumbing the aquatic chillers finally here i was able to save a bunch of money these units usually go for about 650 bucks and up depending on the size you get and you want the bigger one i was able to save money on this one for the first time on our projects and only pay about 350 340 bucks for it let's pop her open they said that it was just an open box box looks like it's trashed but who cares we're saving money doesn't look like anything like the box what the freak does this look like this to you open box my ass this is trash what the hell gets the bottom of this it just says just open box that's not the unit at all that i got somebody trying me over i'm going to message them happy to find a resolution for you this is i'm still functional they're going to give me 68 discounts i don't even know if this unit even works um of course this is going to happen to me okay let's see that's great this thing's falling apart let's see if it even works this is going to screw this project over i'm going to be so pissed if this thing doesn't work why is it not turning on yet is this not working is the light on is this a broken unit it is like a rebooting process or something i don't know any day now [Music] so i'm watching this youtube video of how these chillers actually work so i had a misunderstanding they don't suck in the water so there's no built-in pump in there it's only like a refrigerated kind of cooling mechanism so i have to go get a pump like a water feature pump or aquarium pump to have the water sucked into this inlet hose and then this will get pumped out to the outlet hose ah that'll be nice to know before this thing showed up okay hopefully this will work yeah this pump is wild [Applause] water's coming in it should have a return here and there it is and that'll be cooling it as much money as they cost they should have a pump in there now oh yeah this is already cold oh that's wild now that we figured that part out let's do our plumbing these are three quarter inch flip connectors they allow for you to create maybe a water tight surface and create a hole through the middle um on to that we're gonna screw on a three quarter to a half inch hose receiver so i'm going to drill a hole at the bottom here to pump the water or suck the water into the pump and then put a hole on top to refill the cold water into this plunge because warm water is going to cycle on top cold water will stay below and then we can keep the cycle going most efficiently [Music] i actually don't need any adapters i can just screw this on like that what a fun cover i'm loving the fact that that just incorporated itself like that so sick i think what i'm gonna do is create a notch over here so that could sit in a little u-channel there [Music] so it's come to my attention that as you're sitting in water here there's a cable in here looks like a recipe to get electrocuted i don't know how to solve for this problem i think what we'll have to do is have it run and then when you're going to use the cold plunge unplug it then you can safely get in after you're done re-plug it might as well throw like a hair dryer in there as well the lid the lid needs to be two things waterproof insulated donuts and easily removable and appealing here's my strategy for the wood itself first before we insulate it cedar planks and i'm going to make them horizontal so not length i don't want to look like a tomb instead or a coffin instead what i'm going to do is go horizontal i'm going to panel glue them but i want to have a little more strength than just wood glue so i'm going to put pocket holes on the inside of it the only problem is some of them the seams they're not so hot i'm going to give it a quick pass on my joiner to make sure i have a nice tight seam [Music] i just realized by cutting them shorter like this you got rid of the bow so they're great seams we just saved ourselves a step i'm not using this thing let's start throwing pocket holes baby [Music] oh cedar smells so good better smell good i just spent 100 on just seven boards [Music] so in case you're going to be wondering why i'm doing two pieces it has to be light enough if it's one giant piece it'd be way too heavy to open and close it this way we'll keep the weight down see there's a relatively lighter wood shouldn't have a problem opening this thing up let's let it dry and then we'll start figuring out the installation part this is my wild idea for insulating the lid this is half inch styrofoam insulation it's got foil on the back which is kind of nice but mold resistant bug resistant moisture resistant perfect then on top of it we're gonna have this little plastic waterproofing uh four by eight sheet it's essentially so the moisture doesn't start rotting and destroying this over time especially breaking it down with pressure i'm gonna attach them using flex glue nice thing about this stuff is it grabs it very quickly and it goes on really thick then we're just going to glue it all on the back of the cedar boards that we just made i hope it'll work you think we'll find out oh by the way you see my new work boots they just showed up they're the area work boots the best part it's got the boa system no more titan shoes for this guy link in the description i got a discount code you guys get pair [Music] now i made this an inch wider and a couple inches longer so that i can make a final trim to make a nice clean profile now we just let it dry overnight and then we'll do the trimmings and the sides good job guys before we start wrapping the sucker with cedar tongue and groove i want to clean up this edge because this is going to be a finished level as you can see it's perfectly plumb the thing that i want to do creating this frame is i want to create a nice perfect cut around these radiuses so it actually looks fitted and built in i'm going to approach it in a more of a weird kind of fashion we'll cut it up make a square i'll glue and screw a piece in there and then i'll start cutting out a profile it'll just make it so much nicer that's where we're in the business for nicer [Music] oh no blood okay you're doing good onwards [Music] all right so this is the ugly side we're gonna flip it over this will be the pretty side but in order to set the pretty side we need to draw out our template for uh this radius oh yeah it's connected huh [Music] you see it's not something forward whether you could make something it's more important if you could figure it out and how to do it a different way maybe a more easier way i don't even last really well but i can make a template [Music] so the strategy here is going to glue these two pieces together trace the template and take it to my bandsaw create this radius i'll be able to get actually two out of each one of these now i can't wait i don't have time to wait for the glue to dry so we're going to use a little bit of ca glue and wood glue the ca glue will just hold it in place while the glue dries and that'll buy us enough time there we go let me start putting on the bandsaw [Music] i think putting pocket holes on these sides will attach it on a very strong bond [Music] i was planning on using this wood this is the cedar tongue and group i didn't realize how expensive it was folks there are 18 pieces here maybe 14 14 pieces spent 480 wild [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so it slides on top you don't see any nails all you do is you start your bottom piece just so it does have grip and then after that slide it on top like a lego piece and you just hit the tongue part at an angle and from that point on there will be no snails [Music] [Applause] oh crap here we go again well folks it's not a mr builder project unless things go wrong this piece was wrong what i needed to do is create like a silhouette take one full piece and cut out a chunk out here if i continue with this the pattern on the side is now going to match the pattern on this side [Music] because we need to cover this transition pieces i'm going to make a little l bracket i'm going to cut my remaining boards of cedar into like an inch and a half by inch and a half make an l bracket and then cover all of these sides corners and tops to make sure this looks flawless and seamless just trimmed up all the lid covers i had a last minute design change i was going to do one giant piece but then i thought you know what this looks like a really basic coffin and i need to just give it a little more depth of feel a little more detailed so we're going to do two lids one's going to have a hand grip one's just going to like blend in with it but you can like lift it up once the first one's open and the third one is going to have access to the water chiller they're going to be gapped out separated out and i'll give it the perfect amount of finishing details what we need to do right now is to start wrapping these suckers to conceal all this foam all i did was just cut up a bunch of one by twos and uh we're gonna take it on the miter saw and create a little miter so it looks so much more nicer so much more cleaner 45s here we go [Music] [Applause] i'm going to take a hair off of that i swear miter saws need to have a setting called just the hair they call it probably a 16 or 30 seconds i don't know how thick your hair is mine's not very thick balding that doesn't look like an official freezer lid i don't know what does did a good job guys um to stay on theme of i changed my mind when it comes to the design i also changed it in regards to the hinges i will do the hinges it's a lot cleaner it's a lot nicer yeah sorry who cares it's my cold punch i can do what i want but anyways these are the brackets that i got nice simple black ones they're gonna connect in here and the back of this one by two and it should be able to all three lift independently doesn't go all the way up because oh because that piece is in the way that's not a bad mistake just gotta swing with the punches folks what we got next on the agenda here is uh well this ventilation box here this opening is 19 by 19 which is comfortable to take this thing out but i couldn't find anything big enough that will cover it so what i'm going to do is create a little frame here that will sit on four screws and then this will cover over it so that one day when this thing does fail we'll take the four screws out and then we'll be able to take this whole water chiller out of there and put in the new one gonna be helpful if we actually had a hole for the cable to run through that'd be super helpful [Music] all right everything's done now all that's left is to set our temperature on our water cooler down to 39 degrees that's the maximum we'll go fill it up with water let it sit overnight to actually get the temperature that we need and make sure you stick around because you'll see me get into a cold plunge for the first time ever in my life we'll see if i cry [Music] so [Music] hmm [Music] oh my god i feel like i have like nine cups of coffee right now i'm so jittery laser pinpoint it's a weird feeling alarm's going off oh man i gotta throw an endorphin release for sure let's do some math problems all right guys the original budget for this cold punch was supposed to be a thousand dollars let's see how we did the pressure treated two by fours were a hundred dollars insulation was fifty three dollars the moisture barrier was thirty three dollars the cedar tongue grew was four hundred and eighty dollars the plastic waterproofing for the lid was 18 the horse trough was 126 the additional cedar was an extra 100 the screws were 35 dollars for all the hardware including the vent was 32 dollars the water chiller we saved money by getting it on ebay for 340 the water pump was 75 the plumbing connectors for everything was 52 total making this cold plunge covered for 1 44 and yeah we went over budget by 440 bucks by considering that some of these units go between 10 and 20 000 i think we did pretty good that was incredible so a couple of disclaimers i want to give to you guys number one where i want to address the pump it is a pump that goes into aquariums or you know any kind of water features and they're insulated and all that stuff but still it's a good idea to unplug that pump and then you can get in so you're safely you know around any kind of issues like that that's number one number two uh temperature wise it's 95 degrees where we're at right now and it's having a hard time cooling off the water chiller unit so i realized that i can't have a door on top i have to put another vent to help evaporate any heat there also because it's 95 degrees outside the pump is having the hardest time to cool down as much as it can so i kind of anticipate that in the summertime unless you have this thing inside your house or your basement or your garage probably a few bags of ice will be needed in order to get it down cold enough to submerge them they say between 35 and 50 degrees fahrenheit is a good place to be and between you know three and five minutes i don't know where the science goes in but i did five minutes and it felt great now another thing is the water chiller the entry level is one tenth horsepower that's not enough to power a unit like this or a reservoir like this they i got the quarter horsepower unit they say it's rated for about a hundred gallons of water that i'm using sure but again summertime winter time springtime should be…