It’s my wife’s birthday tomorrow and for a while she has been making little noises about how nice an outdoor bath would be for relaxing…and she loves clawfoot baths, so I figured I’d try to sort something out (the single bathroom in our little house is too small to have a bath, so we only have a shower at home).
I found an old clawfoot bath for cheap on an online auction that passed in and this morning drove out to the southern outskirts of Auckland to a 30ha farm to pick it up. Stepped on not one but two cow piles in the process of loading it on the trailer…talk about being a clueless city kid, huh.
I didn’t take photos before flipping it over (and it weighs over 100 kg’s so wasn’t going to do it again just for a photo), but the enamel is in good order and a bit of rust remover gel did wonders on the rust blemishes around the drain.
These shots are after running an impact driver with a brass brush over the claw feet and spraying them with some rust converter (the black stuff on the claws and around the drain).
I like it that there was a time when a man would walk to his job in the morning, change the date on his metal dating tool, make a bathtub and stamp it with a date to show when it was made. That’s awesome.
The 9th of October in 1914 was a Friday. That week, events of note included the capitulation of Antwerp to the Germans, the birth of Thor Heyerdahl, a Royal Naval Air Service bombing raid by two Sopwith Tabloids to the Dusseldorf Zeppelin sheds and the first flight of Sopwith Gun Bus.
The Gun Bus and the bath look like close cousins. Somebody at Sopwith must have said something like, “Heck, I bet I could make a clawfoot bathtub fly!” And he did.
I had a bath like that indoors at the farmhouse. Karen my wife could not use it as she slid down and when her feet hit the tap end she was under water
Best bath though it takes some filling. I hope your not doing it with a hose it will take hours
It is SOOOO hard to make love that way. I used to yell at my TV, “He doesn’t need Cialis! One of them just needs to leave his or her respective bathtub!”
As much as I love the idea of a fire underneath, convenience won…our old 50’s house has the garden water taps in all the wrong places, so I’m getting a plumber around to install a couple of new ones and at the same time plumb in a hot and a cold tap on the wall by where the tub is going.
I’m not sure if there is enough drop to connect the tub drain to the wastewater too - if not, we can just let the tub drain downhill across the garden / use the water to water the plants manually.
First coat on. Rough but doesn’t matter, it’s a rustic outdoor bath. I didn’t bother paint stripping because it would be good to get this job done fairly quickly. If the coat doesn’t last, I’ll do it properly in a year or two. If I can finish the painting this weekend, I can call in the plumber during the week.
No, not…just explain its is some obscure local ordnance:
Ordnance 35-1: Safe Volume markings for free standing, outdoor water vessels.
a. All free standing receptacles, containers, vessels, basins, tanks, tubs or pools which hold water shall have the volume of liquid that they can safely hold–the Safe Volume–(in liters), prominently and clearly displayed on each side of said receptacle, container, vessel, basin, tank, tub, or pool.
b. Rain barrels are excluded from this requirement.
c. Receptacles, containers, vessels, basins, tanks, tubs or pools, installed before 1978 are permitted to use pints or gallons in lieu of liters. The abbreviation “Pt” or “Gal” shall be annotated next to the numerical indication of the Safe Volume.
hahaha you are not wrong!!
