Fishermen, tourists and just travelers often have to stay away from civilization for a long time. But this does not mean at all that the achievements of this civilization must be discarded. First of all, we are talking about the restoration of moral and physical strength after exertion. And what will help to cope with this task better than a hiking bath? Even if you are not an avid sweater, bath procedures will bring a storm of emotions and will allow you to quickly restore strength for further adventures. In addition, a mobile camp bath will not be superfluous for summer residents, construction crews and other groups located for a long time away from the city. These baths, in addition to well-known healing effects, allow you to keep your body clean in the field and contribute to a better rest. A visit to the bath provides a deep night's sleep and a boost of energy for the following days. Now in stores for outdoor activities there are hiking baths complete with stoves.
But to make such a bath on your own is not so difficult. After all, what does it take to take a steam bath in nature? It is only to provide a closed, fairly tight room in which the steam room will be located, and to organize a source of heat and steam.
Camping bath design. General information
Having estimated the place of the planned location of the bath and the amount of improvised material for its construction, you need to determine directly the design. When installing a camping bath with a stove, it is first necessary to make a frame. Usually, poles cut in place are used as a frame. Their number depends on several factors. This is the required capacity of the bath, and the type of material for the tent, and the type of stove available, and just the availability of the necessary tools for making poles.
Inside the frame have a stove. A stove for a camping bath, if desired, can be assembled on the spot from large stones in the form of a fireplace, which will accumulate heat from burning wood, and can be made metal. For ease of transportation, it can be made collapsible. To obtain the required amount of steam for bathing procedures, at least two conditions must be met. Firstly, the stones must be very hot. Secondly, the bath should be tight enough.
Choosing an installation location
For the construction of a hiking bath with your own hands, the following conditions must be present in the immediate vicinity of the installation site:
- A pond or other source of water.
- Stones suitable for the construction of the hearth.
- Growing thin trees.
- Stock of firewood.
Below we analyze the influence of each of the factors in more detail.
Body of water or other source of water
Fluid is required for steam and washing. Yes, and cool between visits to the steam room is also necessary. Therefore, it is best to place a hiking bath on the shore of a reservoir. It can be a river, lake, pond or a small stream. However, for safety reasons, it is necessary to choose a place where the descent to the water and access to the shore will be safe.
Best of all - a non-slip, gently sloping shore without a flooded snag.
Stones suitable for the construction of the hearth
The selection of stones should be approached with all seriousness. Making a do-it-yourself oven for a camping bath, it is advisable to use materials of dense rocks with rounded shapes. Down it is necessary to lay the largest boulders that can be moved, since they will serve as the basis for the future furnace.
The higher the hearth wall rises, the smaller stones are worth using. Typically, the stones are laid out in the shape of a circle, gradually building the walls up. It is necessary to ensure that each successive circle of stones is firmly adjacent to the previous one, since if the stones are unstable, the walls may fall apart when heated, and everything will have to be started anew. For the same reason, do not erect too high walls. A sufficient height will be 50-70 cm.
If there are a large number of relatively flat stones, you can assemble the design by the type of fireplace. Lay out an extended hearth, fenced with such stones. Part of the hearth should be left open, and in the second part, perform a small overlap and erect a structure resembling a pipe. This will increase the draft during the burning of firewood and, accordingly, the temperature of the stones.
And the amount of steam that you can get directly depends on this. With a collapsible metal stove, the task is greatly simplified. You will need to collect everything just about a bucket or two round pellets, overlay them with the metal of the stove and you're done. Do not use layered, heterogeneous, and crushed stones to erect a hearth or cover a stove. When heated, they can begin to burst and cause injury to vacationers.
Growing thin trees
From trees it will be possible to chop poles with a diameter of 3-4 cm. Then, using the finished poles, a frame is assembled, measuring no more than two by three meters. It is possible and less. It all depends on the number of people in the group. The height of the frame should be determined based on the growth of the participants. You must understand that the smaller the volume of the room, the easier and faster to warm it up. Therefore, do not get too carried away with the construction of a large bath. The poles of the frame are carefully fastened together. To do this, you can use pieces of wire, rope, torn into strips of fabric. Use everything at hand to ensure that the design is reliable. Remember to wrap the ends of the poles in pieces of cloth. Otherwise, they may pierce the tent fabric during installation. To increase the rigidity of the frame structure, you can take additional poles connecting the opposite corners of the roof, and fix them. If you travel by car, you can use lightweight aluminum tubes instead of poles. In this case, the attachment points for them must be made at home, since it will be very difficult to fasten them together in the field conditions with improvised means. The main advantages of aluminum tubes over poles are light weight and significantly higher assembly speed.
Stock of firewood
An essential condition for spending a bathing day in nature is the presence in the immediate vicinity of a sufficient amount of firewood. Given that it will take at least three to four hours to maintain fire, a lot of firewood needs to be prepared. Do not put in the center of the bath too thick logs. They will burn badly and will not give a temperature sufficient to heat the stones. It is better to use hardwood firewood with a diameter of up to 15 cm, giving a high combustion temperature and high-quality coals. Larger logs need to be chopped.
External awning device
Material for covering the frame must be taken with you. It’s unlikely to be found at the place. To ensure the tightness of the steam room, materials with low vapor permeability must be used. It can be polyethylene, tarpaulin or any other dense material that is wrapped around a rigid frame.
In the most extreme case, you can use the external tent of modern tents, but this is not a good option, since this material is not designed for high temperatures. After tensioning, the awning should be pressed along the perimeter of the abutment to the ground with stones or other improvised material. If the tent consists of several parts, at the joints it must be glued with tape.
Installation of the bath in place
When installing a bath, several conditions should be considered:
- The entrance to the bath is provided on the side opposite from the hearth or stove.
- The bath has an entrance to the pond, so that after the steam room there was an opportunity to quickly jump out and plunge.
If the group of vacationers is small or there is no time and opportunity to arrange the frame, you can resort to the following method: a large boulder or a group of large stones is covered with smaller stones, achieving a cone shape with a height of up to one meter. Firewood is laid on top of the stones for a burning period of several hours and set on fire. As soon as the fire burns out, it is necessary to sweep the remaining embers out of the limits of the future bathhouse or fill them with water.
There is not much comfort
Before steaming, several layers of coniferous branches can be laid to the bottom. It is advisable with soft needles, such as pine, fir or cedar. In addition to comfort for the feet, the steamed needles also provide an amazing aroma, which is also very healing.
Then you need to bring inside the container with warm and cold water. If possible, you can make a bench out of improvised materials. In general, an option is also possible in which there is no need to arrange a hearth in a camp bath. At the same time, the stones for the steam room are heated away from the bathhouse on a separate fire. You can use a bucket or an iron box for this. Well-heated stones are entered into the bathhouse. As they cool, they can be changed again heated.
Important little things
For a full bath, you need to stock up on a pair of brooms. Fresh brooms can not be steamed, but just keep them in cold water. To increase the healing and invigorating effect in the water, which is splashed on the stones to obtain steam, you can add an infusion of aromatic herbs. Remember, it is better to water hot stones with hot water, so they will remain heated longer. In addition, from cold water, they can crack with a much greater probability. With proper organization, bath procedures can be carried out in any season of the year.
Mobile saunas
With all the advantages of baths, assembled in the field with their own hands, they have several serious drawbacks:
- Long installation time.
- The need to prepare poles for the frame.
- The complexity of creating a sealed room.
Ready-made collapsible structures are deprived of all these shortcomings. For example, baths hiking Nova Tour. This company offers several types of finished mobile products . They differ in weight, the number of people who can simultaneously fit inside, and the type of frame. The most common and budget option is, according to reviews, a sauna bath N Nova Tour. It can be installed both on the stationary frame included in the kit, and in field conditions using improvised material. A tent without a frame weighs only 2.4 kg, which allows you to take it with you on a camping trip as a group equipment. According to reviews, the Nova Tour hiking baths are distinguished by high workmanship, thoughtful design, practical design and bright colors, which makes them one of the leaders in this segment. Regardless of whether you are doing the construction on site from improvised materials or using ready-made collapsible mobile kits, take this lesson with full responsibility. If you have done all the stages of work correctly, then positive feedback about the bathhouse from the lips of your friends will be the biggest reward.
Enjoy Your Bath!