[Sca-cooks] Bathing,

[James Prescott]

Okay, okay, a blast from the past (original written in 1996,
so the original car-heated hot tub at Clinton War would have
been circa 1986):

There is some ASCII art that I hope comes through okay.

<begin quote>

The scene is the Clinton War, 17th year coming up, Canadian August
long weekend, Kingdom of An Tir.

Bath idea number one. This lasted between two and four years, about
ten years ago, and was done by "Saint" Geoffrey of Cyrtenham and
friends.

Take
   1) an irrigation ditch, complete with water.
   2) a portable assemble-on-site wooden hot tub, rectangular,
      about six or seven feet square by about 2.5 feet high on the
      sides. Lined with heavy plastic sheeting.
   3) use a hand-pump, with filter, to pump water from the ditch
      into the hot tub. Add some bleach.
   4) drive to the site in an old American battleship-sized eight-
      cylinder automobile, whose cooling system has been repeatedly
      flushed and filled with ordinary tap water (no anti-freeeze).
   5) disconnect the engine from its radiator, and reconnect it to
      two pipes running to the hot tub. The intake from the tub to
      the engine is protected with a filter.
   6) run the car until the water is hot. Repeat as necessary.
   7) cover the whole mess with a surplus parachute, provide wooden
      pallets as duckboards, provide some place to hang up the towels
      and clothing.
   8) allow groups to reserve it for half-hour slots during the
      evenings. Each group determined its own gender mix and clothing/
      nudity standards. As an interkingdom anthropology note, the
      majority of the groups hereabouts were of mixed gender and were
      unclothed.
   9) I don't believe that Geoffrey charged money, though I imagine
      that he accepted donations. This may account for the generally
      approved bestowal of the title "Saint" by those who used the
      tub in its very first year.


Bath idea number two. This one first saw the light of day last year
at the Clinton War.

  +-----------------------+
  |       FIRE PIT        |  The firepit is a big eight-foot square
  |    ______     ______  |  three foot deep hole in the ground. The
  |    |    |     |    |  |  two heaters are some kind of surplus
  |    | H  |     | H  |  |  industrial iron tank supported above
  |    | E  |     | E  |  |  the floor of the fire pit on rocks. The
  |    | A  |     | A  |  |  firepit is kept stoked throughout the
  |    | T  |     | T  |  |  evening. The tanks were filled by buckets
  |    | E  |     | E  |  |  through some kind of opening in the tops
  |    | R  |     | R  |  |  of the tanks. The buckets were used to
  |    |    |     |    |  |  bring water from the irrigation ditch.
  |    |_v__|     |__v_|  |  The 'v's at the bottom represent pipes
  |      v           v    |  set up to let the water flow down to the
  +------v-----------v----+  bathtubs.
         v           v
         v           v
  +------v-----------v----+
  |    __v___ |    __v___ | The bathtubs were bought commercially.
  |    |    | |    |    | | They fill by gravity with hot water from
  |    | B  | |    | B  | | the pipes that come from the heaters.
  |    | A  | |    | A  | | There is a tap (faucet) on each pipe.
  |    | T  | |    | T  | | Cooling water to regulate the temperature
  |    | H  | |    | H  | | is provided by throwing in buckets of cold
  |    |    | |    |    | | water from the irrigation ditch -- just
  |    | T  | |    | T  | | out of sight below the picture.
  |    | U  | |    | U  | |
  |    | B  | |    | B  | | The bathtubs are enclosed in privacy walls,
  |    |____| |    |____| | and are separated by a privacy wall.
  |           |           |
  +-----------------------+ There are wooden pallets to walk on.
      door flap   door flap

When you've finished your bath, you pull the plug and the water
runs away downhill under the wooden pallets and into the irrigation
ditch.

In this case, those who provided the bathing facilities (whose names,
alas, I cannot now remember) collected money (about $2 per person per
bath, if I recall correctly). Their proceeds went to pay for the bath
tubs and other materials, to reimburse themselves for their heroic and
smoke-filled labours, and to make a substantial donation to the site-
improvement fund. They also provided an herbal mixture that you could
add to your bathwater (for a small additional fee), and when available,
provided a bath attendant to discreetly wash your back (for another
small additional fee).


So, there are two bath ideas that have actually been used. Both seemed
to work moderately well, and were very popular, although number two is
much more labour-intensive than number one.

All my best,
Thorvald Grimsson/James Prescott

<end quote>

Thorvald