Ubud has the cheapest cold water and the hardest access

Three degrees, and what they are worth over a year

Mains water enters an Ubud house at 25-27 degrees and night air falls to 21, so the closed 400-litre tub absorbs 474 watts instead of the 516 it absorbs an hour away in Canggu. Consumption is 4.5 kWh a day and the bill Rp 195,000 a month against Rp 214,000 on the coast.

That is a saving of about Rp 228,000 a year, which is not the reason to move to Ubud. The figure that matters more is time: a 1.5 PK chiller delivers 2.06 kW against 5-degree water here and pulls a full tub down in 6.1 hours — the fastest of any Bali town on that size of unit. For a retreat refilling before the first class, an hour and a half earlier is the difference between ready and not ready.

Getting a 380-kilogram shell down sixty steps

The most wanted positions in Ubud are the least reachable: a terrace on the Sayan gorge above the Ayung, a Penestanan bale at the bottom of sixty steps, a Tegallalang house on a 1.6-metre lane. An empty 400-litre terrazzo body weighs about 380 kilograms and no trolley descends wet stone. So there are three routes in, chosen from your video.

1. Carried in whole. If a small pickup reaches the last stretch and the path to the tub position is level, the shell goes in as normal. Cheapest and fastest: fourteen working days and one day on site.
2. Cast where it stands. Timber moulds and marble aggregate are carried up by hand and the body is poured and ground in its final position. Four extra working days, two days of wet work, no size limit and no corner joint that can ever leak.
3. A slim 250-litre body. For narrow valley terraces: 359 watts, held comfortably by a 1 PK chiller, Rp 144,000 a month, and light enough for six people to carry down a staircase.

Retreats: ten people before lunch, then nothing until tomorrow

Most commercial orders here come from yoga retreats and healing centres in Penestanan, Sayan and Mas rather than from gyms, and the usage pattern is unlike a rental villa. Not eight guests spread over a day, but ten people in succession inside two hours, then an idle tub until morning. Ten bodies in a row lift the water by a few tenths of a degree and the chiller spends the next hour catching up.

For that shape we suggest two things: set the target to 4 degrees so there is headroom during a session, and fit ozone so the water does not have to be dumped weekly. Above fifteen people a day the sensible move is a commercial ice bath with automatic sanitation. We promise your participants no health benefit of any kind; what we guarantee is that the water is as cold as the timetable on your wall says it is.

The road in, and the towns either side

Tabanan to Ubud is one to one and a half hours, with the caveat that the last kilometre often takes only a small vehicle. Denpasar is an hour south with water three degrees warmer, and Tabanan itself sits between them at 26-28 degrees and 488 watts. If your address is up towards Tegallalang or Payangan we re-measure the incoming water on survey: higher means colder, and colder can mean one chiller size less. The island-wide comparison is on the Bali page.

Questions from Ubud clients