Splash-Pod: The Personal Water Park

Step 11 Creating a squid

The next step is to mount the jet tubing into the wall and floor of the tub. This step requires the following items:

• 1/2" ID tubing - 6'
• 1/4" ID tubing - 20'
• 1/8" ID tubing - 20'
• Worm-drive hose clamps suitable for 1/2" ID tubing
• Worm-drive hose clamps suitable for 1/4" ID tubing
• Two-part plumber's epoxy putty
• Outdoor-rated caulk
• 2x 1/4" FPT to 1/4" barbed fittings
• 1x 1/8" to 1/4" bushing
• 2x 1/4" washers
• 1/4" tee fitting

The idea here is to thread the tubing into the hole and seal it to the tub with 2-part epoxy putty. This stuff hardens in just a few minutes after mixing it and it SMELLS LIKE DEATH. So you want to work quickly before it hardens or you lose your lunch - whichever comes first. Seriously, it stinks so bad that you want to share the stench with other people. Telling my wife, "hey, come smell this putty," nearly put me on the couch for the weekend. Awful awful stuff. Anyway, the putty is easy to knead and combine. For the 1/4" tubing, a disc about 1/8" thick was sufficient. Knead it up until it's a uniform gray and then squish it into a worm like it was play-dough. Then wrap the worm around the tubing which was pushed through the hole and tightly press it into a cone shape. Try and fill all of the gaps and really get it in there. This will harden as hard as metal and provide a nice and secure joint for the jets. The 1/8" tubing required very little putty. Work your way around the holes and attach all of the tubing.

When you attach the tubing, please be sure to leave more slack than you think will be required. At least 50% more. I did this on ALMOST all of the jets, but those that were left just long enough to reach the manifold seriously hurt me in the final steps. If I had just given myself another foot of slack the final installation would have been much much easier. You will see how cramped things get in later steps and it really stunk having to work with such small margins. This is definitely one of the bigger mistakes I made on this project.

As we talked about in the last step, most of the holes drilled are for the jets. There are a few holes that were drilled for other fixed components and each of these require some thought. The 'fire hose' component was nothing more than a standard jet with 3' of slack inside the tub. Easy enough.

Each of the snakes connect using a threaded fitting and this needs to somehow hook up to a 1/4" tube. The solution is a FPT to barbed fitting. The long snake uses a 1/4" threaded fitting so this was easy, HD sells a convenient 1/4" FPT to 1/4" barbed fitting that was perfect for this. The snake plugs into the female end and the tubing hooks into the barbed end. I was able to securely fasten this union to the tub wall by using a washer. The washer presses into the wall on one side as the copper fitting pulls tight on the other. The short snake uses a 1/8" fitting, and HD didn't sell a 1/8" FPT to 1/4" barbed fitting so I had to use a 1/8" to 1/4" bushing to convert the 1/4" to 1/4" fitting. Now we have our snakes finished.

The ring at the top of the tub receives its water through a 1/4" tee-fitting. The two arms of the tee connect a single loop of 1/4" tubing which was cut to the exact circumference of the tub. The water comes into the tee and then goes out into the ring. 1/16" holes were drilled into the loop for the micro jets and I pressed a thumbtack throughout the ring to create 'misters'. The effect was really nice. This feature completely saturates the inside of the tub because it sprays in all directions.

Mounting the ring to the top was... interesting. My first idea was to use JB Weld because it basically bonds anything. This seemed to work at the start but it did not hold up after a few days. I really wanted this ring to work so I thought up a 'threaded' solution that worked well. I drilled 3/32" holes every few inches around the top of the tub and threaded some coated 28g copper wire through it. This securely fastened the loop to the tub and worked out very well. I was successful in using JB Weld to hold the tee fitting to the wall.

By the time this step is finished, you should have the weirdest looking tub ever. Sixteen tubes will be protruding from warty cones and draping down the sides and bottom. Hopefully you've left enough slack to move onto the critical next step.