Designer Brandon Flores Discusses Practical Application & Bringing His Inspiration To The Coasts Of Oregon
The key to any great invention is its texture and practicality of use. With the Nomad Portable Hot Tub, designer/creator Brandon Flores brought together his years of design work optimizing products for other companies and applied those problem solving applications to a new goal. In creating this new outdoor refinement, Flores talks to The Buzz about growing up camping in Oregon and sharing that love of the outdoors with his family but also engaging his engineering focus and helping to create something dynamic.
The Buzz: How did the gestation of this idea begin?
Brandon Flores: To give you a small background, I own a small manufacturing company (Pistola) and we do a lot of products for other companies. I've been doing a lot of things for myself but never brought them to market. This is first go-off where I knew that it was something I could do. The way it started out was...I grew up camping. I have memories when I was 4 [doing that]. I have a 4-year-old now and we have been starting, over the last couple years, to start camping. Even [near our] house... there's a ton of rivers here in Oregon and sometimes, with a child, you don't get out as much as you'd like to. So I thought to myself...let's think of some alternatives. One of those was a hot tub, which is something I can produce [myself]. I went and got a horse trough. That was great for kind of cooling off but, at other times when it was cold, [the question] became “How do I attach a heating element to it?” So I built a turkey fryer and a crackpot...welded a cable to it and pumped it to the horse trough. It worked but it was inefficient. It worked but took a while to heat up. That was about 3 ½ or 4 years ago and I had quite a few people who were like “This is a real good idea”. So I kept working on it and [went] through probably 20 different heating prototypes. It took a long time of failures to get to the point where we are now. There are a couple other products out there like The Dutch, which is great and a beautiful product...but it's impractical. It can be 6000 dollars and [weighs] 350 pounds and you can't really take it anywhere. They like to market it as a portable tub but it's really not.
When I saw this, I started looking at like the smaller swimming pools and kiddie pools and trying to [find ways to] make it easier. There is just nothing out in the market. I drew up [my thoughts], reached out to a PVC welder, and they [helped do] our first solid workings [of the tub]. A couple months after that we had the first prototype. It was a PVC Tub and it worked out well. Everything started snowballing once we had our prototype. We started testing it and hooking up the heater coils to it. It had been constantly working so we've just been trying to make it better and more efficient. Since we brought [the tub] to market we have probably revised the burn unit three different times...again to make it more efficient.
The Buzz: Can you talk about balance of making it portable and ease of use when traveling?
BF: It's kind of a circle as far as that [is concerned]. There weren't any kind of burners out on the market...[specifically] horizontal burner units [using] something inside the four core walls. There wasn't anything out there like that. I bought a couple wok heating units with a cooking box. What I did was take the glass jets off off that and created my own tube. I welded [it] up and routed it to the jets. [From there] it [was] just trial and error [using] a mix of oxygen and gas. Now, it's a very simple easy set up. The whole unit itself fits in a duffel bag. My goal is that I wanted to have versatility and make it very low obligation. It doesn't take up a lot of real estate. It is something you can bring along and not feel guilty if you don't use it. It [becomes] simply a utility that you have there. Even if you in a small vehicle or even an RV, it hardly takes up any space at all. Collectively it weighs 6 pounds. And as far as a water source, most established campgrounds with an RV are going to have water spickets. If they don't, you can go to a river, beach or lake. We bring a small 4 -stroke Honda [water pump]...and it fills it up in about 20 minutes.
The Buzz: What about the heat time?
BF: It will heat up the water temperature...50 to 55 degrees in about 3 ½ hours if the air temperature is about 66 degrees. Say maybe 2 ½ hours to get it up to 104 or 105. [It is] really efficient if you think about it since most [conventional] hot tubs will take about 16 hours. Then you have those portable inflatable electric hot tubs and they take 18-20 hours. Not really efficient...they take up a lot of energy and chances are, you're not going to use it. [For Nomad], after that 3 ½ hours heating time, it doesn't take a lot to maintain that temperature.
The Buzz: Can you talk about finding the right consistent tub material, both rugged and effective?
BF: I did some research. I had had some kiddie pools. We do everything [at Pistola]. Our main advantage is our agility. We can design, engineer and manufacturer a prototype here so it's not like it would take a long time for us to make these things. It [can] just be waiting on other people's time-lines. Once I found a vendor that could produce the [fabric] for the tub...I drew it up. Virtual 3D is great but it doesn't factor in flexibility. I was a bit concerned and worried when we first got the prototype. However, once we got it, we were able to take the measurements. [From that point], we just let the tub [and how it functioned] dictate how everything flowed. And even though we had drawn up [a specific way], we didn't realize that we had to make sure that [it was all congruent] to move directly forward. When I first started it was like attaching [the coil] to galvanized [material]...[in this case] a horse trough. The burner unit is very versatile. You could attach it to a garbage tub (chuckling). I tell my customers that if you have a cast iron tub you wanted to attach it [the burner/coil] to or something of that nature, you could buy a coil and attach it that way. It works very well with other applications.
The Buzz: So the package can be fluid in a certain way.
BF: Some people will just purchase the coil and attach it to a galvanized tub. We do sell the coil separately, just for that. But we sell the combo with the tub and the coil together for $700. As I said... ow obligation. It is not a huge price pull. It doesn't take a lot of energy. It doesn't take a lot of time to set up and it's not going to take up a lot of space. These are the types of products that I found interesting I am looking to enhance the outdoor experience for myself as well as for anyone else. If it enhances their outdoor experience, that's great.
Tim Wassberg
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The Original Nomad, based in Oregon, designs and manufacture their own unique outdoor products, inspired by the great outdoors and the creative, seeking the best human spirit. Our experience has been greatly impressed by family and friends who have adventured creatively.