What is the best ozone generator for your cold plunge?
Currently, the market offers limited choices for ozone generators designed for water treatment, speicifically for cold plunges. A popular choice is the JED brand, but it tends to be on the pricier side. Although JED ozone generators are efficient, they come with a bulky design and potential long-term issues. Notably, JED relies heavily on nuts and screws to assemble their electrical units. With prolonged use, vibrations from the bubbler can cause these nuts to loosen from the screws, potentially resulting in equipment failure. That’s why we recomend this compact ozone generator as the best alternative.
What’s the ideal ozone output for your cold plunge?
An ozone generator capable of delivering anywhere from 50 to 200mg/hr should be more than enough for your cold plunge to get sanitized (assuming a volume of water of up to 200 gallons). Also, ozone diffuses much better in colder water which means you really don’t need an ozone generator that outputs a lot of ozone. The best way to control ozone output is to use a timer.
What types of Ozone generator are out there?
For water-treating purposes the two common options are:
The ones that need a Venturi injector for diffusing ozone in the water. These are tricky because you’ll ether need a separate water pump to drive the Venturi injector or a pretty robust water flow in your filtration system which will need plumbing similar to the plumbing done below. Some may claim these are better because they diffuse the ozone more evenly across the water but then again, your cold plunge is such a small water tank that this may not be relevant.
The most user friendly ones are the type with a built-in bubbler (similar to an aquarium bubbler). These will diffuse the ozone in the form of bubbles directly onto your cold plunge via a “diffusing stone”. A lot of people will prefer this option as their DIY choice because it is very easy to set up and retro-fit onto your exisitng cold plunge. All you’ll need with this type of ozone generator is found here. In other words, these really are a “plug and play” solution.
Which ozone generator is the best?
If one considers price, ease of use and quality this is the best ozone generator. This ozone generator delivers more than sufficient ozone to fully sanitized your cold plunge water and requires no venturi injector. Best part? You may use this generator to only for your cold plunges but also in other places such as a sauna, bathroom etc… because been underwater is not required (in contrast with the JED difussing stone that must be under water)
Best timers to control your ozone generator
There are three main types of timers that I would comment for hooking it up with your ozone generator. One should consider that when it comes to DIY cold plunge set-up unplugging before plunging in is important and if your timer doesnt have back-up or wifi it may delay over time. Here are some options:
Mechanical Timer: A good choice and easy to use although the problem is that they don’t offer battery back up so after sometime if you disconnect your cold plunge frequently, you’ll need to programm it again.
Digital Timer with back up: This is a solid choice that is very robust, but it may be tricky to program it.
Wifi timerPerharps the best choice if you have got a relieable wifi signal. You can easily control it from your phone and even connects to smart systems such as alexa.
In conclusion, the best ozone generator for your cold plunge is going to depend on your partciular needs and how much work are you willing to put into the crafting of it. The venturi injector ozone generators are harder to install, required of advanced plumbing or a separate water pump to drive the venturi, in the other hand, difussing stone ozone generators are much easier to install because they don’t need any plumbing work at all. If you would like to learn more about different sanitation systems please read this. Or if you want to have the best plug & play filtration system for your cold plunge refer to this post.