After repairing and replacing an old bathtub with a new one, it often happens that you don’t have the courage to throw out another good-quality cast-iron product. But what to do with it next? People who have a dacha usually take things that have become unnecessary to their country plot, doing this with the expectation that they will definitely find some use for them in the future. We will tell you how to make a sauna stove from an old cast iron bathtub.
A cast-iron bathtub that had to be replaced with a more modern version may no longer look very fresh in appearance. But it still remains a strong and durable container of a fairly large volume, which you want to somehow adapt for your household needs.
Most often in the countryside, a bathtub is used as a reservoir for water used for irrigation, or as a container for preparing compost. But there are other ideas. For example, from a bathtub you can make original garden furniture or build a small artificial pond, which will become a real decoration of the site. And here a lot depends on the imagination of the dacha owner. And looking at photos of options that have already been implemented will help you navigate the situation and find something extraordinary for yourself. But you can also make a stove from a cast-iron bathtub, because they are quite expensive in the store. Cast iron is a perfectly suitable material for this purpose, which differs:
Of course, all cast iron products, despite their strength, are quite fragile. Therefore, you need to handle them carefully and avoid applying excessive mechanical forces to them. But still, an old bathtub will make a good stove structure. From it you can make one of several options for stoves for your summer cottage:
All of these options are completely doable with your own hands, and watching a video on this topic will help you better understand the process of actions that will be required to build a stove yourself. The bath itself will have to be cut into pieces. But cutting cast iron is not an easy task, requiring certain skills, effort and time.
This operation must be approached with full responsibility. You need to act very carefully so as not to damage the cast iron product. For cutting you will need a grinder and several metal discs. If possible, it is better to carry out work not indoors, but outdoors, doing it in a respirator, safety glasses and construction gloves. The following sequence of actions must be followed:
Advice. It is advisable to cut the cast iron base at an angle. In this case, as a result of the reverse motion of the disc, the enamel will not peel off, and the cut itself will be smooth. With a good tool in hand, the job of cutting a cast iron bathtub into pieces can be completed in about an hour.
Building a sauna stove is much more difficult than installing an ordinary garden stove on a site. After all, it must be not only effective, but also safe. Therefore, you need to take a responsible approach to installing a stove indoors. And in order to quickly navigate the process of necessary actions, you can look at the photo or get acquainted with the corresponding video material.
Attention! The construction of a sauna or any other stove requires compliance with fire safety rules. To properly equip it, you need to have at least minimal knowledge and experience. It is better, even before starting work, to first consult on this issue with a specialist, finding out all the subtleties and nuances.
The stove structure in the bathhouse must meet the following parameters:
After cutting the bathtub, you can begin building the stove structure. In this case, you can use only one half of the cast iron container to equip the combustion chamber. But bath stoves are also made from two parts of the bath. The second half can be used to build a heater or to add a compartment for heating water.
Those who love to make things with their own hands can build such an unusual sauna stove on their own. To do this you need:
A fairly simple sauna stove can be built in two tiers. Heat will accumulate in the upper chamber. The principle of operation is this: the gas, passing through the bath, warms up the stones, goes to the opposite side, then goes down, and then up, after which it exits the pipe.
Such a non-standard solution as a sauna stove from an old bathtub is not only original, but also quite simple. Its construction does not require the use of any special materials. A stove structure made independently will last as long as a purchased product. In addition, this option requires a significantly smaller investment than purchasing a ready-made stove.
The first thing you should do before starting work is to be patient and purchase some tools. Next, you need to clearly measure half of the bath and draw a line exactly in this place. At this stage of work, you will need an angle grinder with a working diameter of 250 millimeters, as well as several high-quality cutting wheels for metal.
Using these tools, we cut our now former bathtub in half. Remember, the most important point at this stage of work is to take the correct measurement. A mistake, even by one centimeter, will lead to the fact that the stove from a cast-iron bathtub will no longer work.
Once all the preparatory work has been completed, it is time to assemble the stove. To do this, you need to carefully match all the previously made holes and fasten them with reliable bolts. At this stage, you should also take care of the tightness of the future furnace. To do this, you can use a special sealant, basalt cardboard or even asbestos.
Once each bolt is tightened as tightly as possible, the stove assembly is complete.
In order for our design to acquire a finished look, it is also necessary to take care of the doors. They are best cut from pieces of metal whose thickness is 5-8 mm. The resulting stove is installed on a pedestal made of brick and insulated with basalt fiber. This is necessary in order to maintain the highest temperature in the oven.
But do not forget that stoves of this type can be used not only for cooking, but also, for example, for heating rooms. Therefore, it should be taken into account that it is simply necessary to insulate garden stoves, otherwise all the heat will be spent on warming up the surrounding air. And if the stove is supposed to be a sauna stove, it is better to refuse insulation, since its main task is to transfer heat to the room in which it is located.
In order for the resulting structure to acquire a beautiful appearance, it should be refined. It is best to paint the stove itself with black refractory paint, and decorate the brick on which it is installed with a variety of finishing materials.
The main advantage of this design, of course, is its cost. If you have an old bathroom, you will need very little money to turn it into a stove.
The second equally important advantage can rightfully be considered the durability of such a stove. It depends solely on how well you have worked the joints between the two halves of the bathtub. But even if you didn’t succeed in making perfect seams the first time, you can always disassemble the oven and correct the defect.
But if we consider this design from the point of view of thermal engineering, then its operating efficiency will not exceed 40%. This happens because the flue gases have a direct exit to the outside, which means they transfer only part of the heat to the furnace itself, while the rest is sent into the atmosphere. That is why this design is an excellent device for a bathhouse. In this case, no efficiency indicators play a role, since only the temperature to which the furnace can heat up is important.
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There are never many stoves in a well-equipped dacha, especially good ones, and it’s a pity to sell an old cast-iron bathtub for scrap. These are exactly the thoughts that came to me after installing a brand new quaril font in my apartment. And I decided not to get rid of the previous massive tank, but to take it to a country site and convert it into an efficient stove structure. Next I will describe how it happened.
As for transporting the bathtub to the dacha, the most difficult thing was to bring it to the trailer. Cast iron is incredibly heavy and has the magical property of gaining weight with every step you take. But somehow, my comrades and I, nevertheless, put the “hippopotamus” into a prepared vehicle and I delivered it to the site of further work.
Only after everyone had suffered as loaders did the brilliant idea come to me that it was necessary to saw the font in the bathroom, because this would still need to be done in the future to create a stove. But two halves are much more convenient and easier to carry than the entire cast iron product.
After delivering the main “beast”, I set about preparing all the other supplies necessary to complete the plan:
When working with a cast-iron bathtub cast back in Soviet times, I recommend using only high-quality power tools from well-known foreign brands, since cheap Chinese copies simply may not withstand such a difficult confrontation and burn out.
In addition to the cast iron container itself, I needed:
I want to warn you right away that This process is very labor intensive, requiring great patience and caution., since during its execution it is possible to break both the tool and the disc, resulting in a high probability of serious injury to people nearby.
In my execution it looked like this:
If you cut containers indoors, be sure to cover the walls and furniture with plastic film or old rags, otherwise cast iron dust will settle on them, which is almost impossible to remove.
Now it’s time to assemble a real stove from an old bathtub that you cut up with your own hands. I, in turn, will conditionally divide this part of the work into three phases:
I already mentioned above that a cast iron font is very, very heavy, so the structure being constructed will be even heavier. Consequently, without a reliable foundation, shrinkage processes will constantly occur, which will lead to deformation of the body, which is absolutely unacceptable. Therefore, I started the assembly by pouring a reliable foundation:
In a good way, the foundation should be poured long before even dismantling the old bathtub, since it will take time to set. But this moment turned out to be ill-conceived for me, and therefore there was a break in my activities aimed at making the stove.
As the foundation hardened, I moved on to assembling the two halves of the bathtub into something more practical and functional:
In the condition that the stove had after its assembly was completed, it gave off too much thermal energy to the environment, did not look aesthetically pleasing and was a somewhat shaky structure. So I did the following:
As an alternative, you can cover the front side up to the level of the cooking chamber with bricks. Only in this case it is necessary to install doors for the blower and firebox into the masonry. The upper compartment is then closed simply by a large steel flap with a handle.
Here I had two tasks:
And I started:
You can also add some lime to the mix. This will reduce the risk of cracks appearing during the hardening of the finishing layer.
Also, in the future, I also want to cover the brickwork with ceramic tiles, but in order to save money, I don’t want to specifically purchase expensive materials for this. Therefore, I’m waiting for the time to renovate the bathroom at the dacha to use the ceramics removed from its walls.
It turned out to be quite possible to make a stove from a cast-iron bathtub with your own hands, but not so easy. There is excavation work, bricklaying, cast iron cutting, welding, and even finishing. Not a weak set of tasks. But in the end I:
In fact, these are not even modifications, but, on the contrary, somewhat stripped-down options, which, nevertheless, can also be very useful in the household. Moreover, both of them can be realized from one vessel:
Don’t rush to throw away or sell for scrap an old cast-iron bathtub, because you can make a wonderful garden stove from it, which will repeatedly delight you with very tasty and healthy dishes, decorate the area and become another reason for your friends to come visit you. In addition, you can do most of the work with your own hands; help will only be needed when transporting and installing the upper part of the structure.
The video in this article will offer you a number of additional materials for review that are directly related to the information presented. If you have questions on the topic, please ask them in the comments.
August 20, 2016If you want to express gratitude, add a clarification or objection, or ask the author something - add a comment or say thank you!
Just recently, I came across the brilliant idea of creating a garden stove from an old bathtub. The idea is so simple that any man can implement it. There are a lot of benefits from such a device, because it can be used as a stove, outdoor fireplace, barbecue, and so on.
In order not to bore the reader, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the process of creating this country masterpiece.
For the stove you will need:
- old bath;
- a pipe, it will also be a chimney;
- bricks, maybe old and unnecessary;
- sheet of metal with a thickness of 5 mm;
- grinder or any other device for cutting metal.
The first stage is the most difficult, since the bathtub will need to be cut crosswise into two absolutely equal parts. In one of the parts, a hole should be made to match the diameter of the pipe. We make exactly the same hole in the sheet of metal that we managed to find. When the most difficult stage is left behind, you can proceed directly to assembling the structure.
1. We install one half of the old bathtub, in which there is no hole, as usual. Place a sheet of metal on top of this half. Attention! The hole should be in the area of the far wall. Now on the sheet, we place the second half of the bath upside down, that is, so that the bottom looks into the sky.
2. Our miracle oven is almost ready and all that remains is to add reliability to the entire structure. The edges of the stove bath must be tightly fastened. Bolts are suitable for this, preferably large ones. It is, of course, better to drill holes for the bolts in advance. As a result, it should turn out that the metal sheet will be tightly sandwiched between the two halves of the bath.
3. It's time to build a chimney. We insert a pipe into the hole in the upper half and lower it a couple of centimeters below the metal sheet. If the holes for the pipe are larger in diameter, then you will have to be smart in order to secure the chimney. A thrifty owner who does everything conscientiously will certainly resort to welding and do it right. For greater reliability, welding seams are sealed with sealant.
4. Now the garden stove from the bathtub is ready, the final touch remains - creating a pedestal. We make a stand for the stove from bricks, stones and other materials that you have on your site. You have construction waste that you still can’t take out, right? So turn on your imagination a little, because your brainchild deserves a comfortable installation location.
That's the whole trick. Although it can be improved a little. For example, to make the firebox easier to clean from ash, you can put a grate on the bottom. But you can achieve good retention and transfer of heat, just like in a real oven, using a stone sheet that is laid directly on top of a metal sheet.
Now you can cook whatever your heart desires in this oven, from ordinary porridge to fragrant bread.
There comes a time when plumbing fixtures, due to their type or malfunction, become unsuitable for use. But, having replaced it with a new one, you should not rush to throw it away. Summer residents and home owners can easily make a garden stove from a cast iron bathtub, which in terms of strength and service life will not be inferior to factory models.
This type of metal is rightfully considered one of the best stove materials. Its main advantages include:
The disadvantages of cast iron that are worth paying attention to are brittleness and susceptibility to corrosion. In the first case, unnecessary mechanical influences should be avoided; in the second, the surface should be treated with special solutions.
A homemade cast iron structure will not turn out very beautiful, so it is recommended to cover it with brick or stone.
To create such a miracle stove from a bathtub, you need to prepare:
Materials you will need:
Photo: the material is prepared, all that remains is to choose the purpose of the oven and get to work
When all the materials and tools have been collected, you can start cutting the container. For convenience, you can turn it upside down or lay it on its side.
Users often search:
You need to handle the grinder carefully so as not to damage the surface.
Before you start sawing the bathtub, there are several nuances to consider:
According to reviews from experienced builders, it is better to work with a grinding machine at an angle. This way the enamel will not begin to peel off and all cuts will be smooth without burrs.
If you use a high-quality grinder, processing cast iron will take no more than 1 hour.
For a barbecue you will need two halves of the bath: one part will serve as a fuel loading chamber, the other is necessary for cooking. For a sauna stove or fireplace, one half will be enough.
Without construction experience, it is worth consulting with a specialist about all the intricacies of masonry and installation of parts, and it is better to carry out the work under the supervision of a foreman. This way the product will be of high quality and fire safety standards will be met.
As for the construction of the foundation, its type depends on the total weight of the furnace:
Now let's look at detailed instructions for making each of the stoves for different purposes.
To create the necessary conditions in the steam room, the design must meet the following requirements:
The procedure for constructing a sauna stove:
It is important to note that the foundation must have a protrusion towards the borders of the furnace of at least 50 cm, and 1–1.5 m of free space must be left in front of the firebox.
An interesting idea to make a sauna stove from both halves of the bathtub. The second part will be needed as an extension for heating water, or you can use it to build a Russian heater.
You can’t do without a barbecue or grill at your summer cottage. And the opportunity to bake delicious bread and fry meat in the fresh air forces owners to install small outdoor ovens on the premises.
Here is a description of how to build a barbecue step by step from a bathtub.
The sequence of work is as follows:
Some craftsmen leave the barbecue in this condition, but to keep your stove looking beautiful, you should still do the exterior finishing.
There are several options:
The materials are attached to the oven with heat-resistant adhesives.
A good solution is to install a chimney to the stove through the bathtub drain hole, widening it in advance, and only then weld it to a steel sheet.
At the dacha it is easy to build a fireplace from half a bathtub. He can be:
The advantage of using a cast iron bath for the combustion part is that the fireplace is shaped like an arch and eliminates complex brickwork. The hole for the chimney pipe is made at the top of the bathtub. The outer part is decorated with a fireplace portal.
When building a semi-open fireplace, the following recommendations should be taken into account:
When installing a chimney, it is important to take into account that with a pipe height of up to 5 m, the deflection angle is 45 0, over 5 m - no more than 20 0.
An unusual solution to build a waste incinerator from an old bathtub.
The principle of its construction is similar to a street barbecue.
Layout of the stove on a brick base
An alternative is to remodel an old heater by removing all parts except the grate and body. Part of the cast iron is welded to the base from the inside to strengthen the structure.
You can load waste into this fire bin directly from the top. When burning, the stove should be covered with another part of the bath so that the smoke does not disperse throughout the entire area.
So don’t rush to get rid of things that are out of order or out of shape. In skillful hands, even an old bathtub will get a second life and become a functional stove that will last for many years.
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