Architecture
The case against the hot tub.
We were asked for one about forty times. We built a sauna instead, and here is the reasoning.
For a while every cabin on this coast seemed to be acquiring a wooden barrel on its deck. We looked into it seriously, priced it, and decided against it. The reasoning is not snobbery, or not entirely.
It runs whether you are there or not
A hot tub has to be kept at temperature, filtered and chemically balanced continuously, including the eleven weeks a year the house is empty. That is a running cost and a standing environmental one, for something that gets used on perhaps six evenings out of a fortnight.
A wood-fired sauna costs nothing at all when nobody is in it. You light it when you want it, it is ready in forty minutes, and when you leave it goes cold and stays cold. The whole thing is a room with a stove in it.
And it is better in this climate
At minus eight, a tub of warm water is a machine for making you cold the moment you stand up. A sauna works in the other direction: you are hottest at the end, and the walk back across the deck is the point rather than the penalty. People who arrive sceptical tend to use it every evening by the third day.
If you genuinely want to sit in warm water looking at a fjord, there is a bath in the main bathroom positioned for exactly that, and it does not need a chemical regime.
ABOUT THE HOST
Anders Røed
Anders and Marta look after Skandic themselves — the house, the woodpile, and every message before you arrive.
