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 abandoned. First of all, we are talking about the restoration of moral and physical strength after stress. And what will help to cope with this task better than a camping bath? Even if you are not an avid bather, bath procedures will bring a storm of emotions and allow you to quickly restore strength for further adventures. In addition, a mobile camping bath will not be superfluous for summer residents, construction teams and other groups who are away from the city for a long time. These baths, in addition to the well-known he alth effects, allow you to keep your body clean in the field and contribute to better rest. A visit to the bath provides a deep night's sleep and a boost of energy for the following days. Now in shops for outdoor activities there are camping baths complete with stoves.
But making such a bath on your own is not so difficult. After all, what do you need to have plenty of steam in nature? Only to ensure a closed,a sufficiently sealed room in which the steam room will be located, and organize a source of heat and steam.
Construction of a camping bath. General information
After evaluating the location of the planned location of the bath and the amount of material at hand for its construction, you need to decide directly on the design. When installing a camping bath with a stove, you first need to make a frame. Usually, poles cut on the spot 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 awning, and the type of stove available, and simply the availability of the necessary improvised means for making poles.
The stove is placed inside the frame. A stove for a camping bath, if desired, can be either assembled on site from large stones in the form of a fireplace, which will accumulate heat from burning firewood, or made of metal. For ease of transportation, it can be made collapsible. To obtain the amount of steam required for bath procedures, at least two conditions must be met. First, the stones must be very hot. Secondly, the bath must be sufficiently airtight.
Select installation location
To build a camping bath with your own hands, you must have the following conditions in the immediate vicinity of its installation site:
- A body of water or other source of water.
- Stones suitable for building a hearth.
- Growing thin trees.
- Storage of firewood.
Below we analyze the influence of each of the factors morein detail.
A body of water or other source of water
Liquid will be required to get steam and wash. Yes, and cool down between visits to the steam room is also necessary. Therefore, it is best to place a camping bath on the shore of a reservoir. It can be a river, a lake, a 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 - non-slip, gently sloping shore without submerged snags.
Stones suitable for building a hearth
The selection of stones should be approached with all seriousness. When making a stove for a camping bath with your own hands, it is advisable to use materials of dense rocks with rounded shapes. It is necessary to lay the largest boulders that can be moved down, as they will serve as the basis for the future furnace.
The higher the wall of the hearth rises, the smaller stones should be used. Usually the stones are laid out in the form of a circle, gradually building up the walls upwards. It is necessary to ensure that each next circle of stones fits snugly enough to the previous one, since if the stones lie unstable, the walls may fall apart when heated, and everything will have to be started anew. For the same reason, you should not build too high walls. A sufficient height will be 50-70 cm.
If there are a large number of relatively flat stones, you can assemble a structure like a fireplace. Lay out an elongated hearth, fenced with such stones. Leave part of the hearth open, and in the second part, make a small overlap and erect a structure resembling a pipe. This will increase the draft when burning 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 only need to collect everything about a bucket or two round pellets, overlay the metal of the stove with them and you're done. Do not use layered, heterogeneous and chipped stones for building a hearth or lining a stove. When heated, they may burst and cause injury to campers.
Growing thin trees
From the trees it will be possible to cut poles with a diameter of 3-4 cm. Then, using ready-made poles, a frame is assembled, no more than two by three meters in size. Maybe less. It all depends on the number of people in the group. The height of the frame should be determined based on the height of the participants. It must be understood that the smaller the volume of the room, the easier and faster it is to warm 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, fabric torn into strips. Use everything that is at hand, if only the design is reliable. Do not forget to wrap the ends of the poles with pieces of cloth. Otherwise, they may pierce the fabric of the awning during installation. To increase the rigidity of the frame structure, you can take additional poles connecting opposite corners of the roof, andfasten them. If you are traveling by car, then light aluminum tubes can be used 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 field conditions with improvised means. The main advantages of aluminum tubes over poles are light weight and significantly faster assembly speed.
Stock of firewood
An essential condition for spending a sauna day in nature is the presence of a sufficient amount of firewood in the immediate vicinity. Considering that it will take at least three to four hours to maintain the fire, a lot of firewood must be prepared. Do not load too thick logs into the hearth of the bath. They will not burn well 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, which gives a high combustion temperature and high-quality coals. Larger logs need to be split.
External awning device
Material for covering the frame must be taken with you. It is unlikely to be found locally. To ensure the tightness of the space for the steam room, it is necessary to use materials with low vapor permeability. 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 outer tent of modern tents, but this is not a good option, since this material is not designed for high temperatures. After tension, the awning should be pressedalong the perimeter of the junction with the ground with stones or other improvised material. If the awning consists of several parts, it must be glued with adhesive tape at the joints.
Installation of the bath on the spot
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 reservoir, so that after the steam room there is an opportunity to quickly jump out and take a dip.
If the group of vacationers is small or there is no time and opportunity to build a frame, you can resort to the following method: a large boulder or a group of large stones are covered with smaller stones, achieving the shape of a cone 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 coals outside the future bath or fill them with water.
Comfort is never enough
Before steaming, you can lay several layers of coniferous tree branches on the bottom. Preferably with soft needles, such as pine, fir or cedar. In addition to comfort for the feet, steamed needles also give 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, a variant is also possible in which there is no need to arrange a hearth in a camping bath. At the same time, the stones for the steam room are heated away from the bath fora separate fire. You can use a bucket or iron box for this. Well-heated stones are brought into the bath. As they cool down, they can be changed again heated.
Important little things
To fully take a bath, you need to stock up on a couple of brooms. Fresh brooms can not be steamed, but simply kept in cold water. To increase the healing and invigorating effect, you can add an infusion of aromatic herbs to the water that is splashed on the stones to get steam. Remember, it is better to water hot stones with hot water, so they will stay warm longer. In addition, they are much more likely to crack from cold water. With the right organization, bath procedures can be carried out in any season of the year.
Mobile baths
With all the advantages of the baths, collected in field conditions with their own hands, they have several serious drawbacks:
- Long installation time.
- Necessity of procurement of poles for the frame.
- The complexity of creating a sealed room.
Ready-made collapsible structures are deprived of all these shortcomings. For example, Nova Tour hiking baths. This company offers several types of finished mobile products. They differ in weight, the number of people who can fit inside at the same time, and the type of frame. The most common and budget option is, according to reviews, the hiking bath N Nova Tour. It can be installed both on a stationary frame included in the kit, and in field conditions, using improvised material. An awning without a frame weighs only 2.4 kg, whichIt allows you to take it with you on a hike as a group equipment. According to reviews, 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. Whether you are building on site from scrap materials or using ready-made collapsible mobile kits, take this activity with full responsibility. If you have done all the stages of work correctly, then positive feedback about the camping bath from the lips of your friends will be the biggest reward.
Enjoy Your Bath!
