About Ice & Cedar
A reference for people building a home recovery setup, who want the numbers rather than the vibe.
Last verified · Ice & Cedar editorial
Why this site exists
Because the specification that decides your purchase is missing from almost every listing in this category.
We surveyed every cold plunge, chiller, sauna and heater listing we compare here on 16 July 2026. Manufacturers publish kilowatts, seat counts, wood species and horsepower enthusiastically. Exactly one published its amperage. None of the five chillers published a rated wattage. One of five published a cooling capacity in BTU. So the buyer discovers the circuit at installation and the running cost on the next bill.
That gap is not hard to close. Current is power divided by voltage. The code’s continuous-load rule is published and citable. Cost is energy times rate. None of it requires owning the equipment — it requires doing arithmetic in public and being willing to write “Not published” in a table cell. That is the whole product.
Who we are
Ice & Cedar is an independent publisher, owned and operated by Type 5 Marketing LLC. We are not a manufacturer, a retailer, or a studio. We do not sell cold plunges, install saunas, or take bookings.
We are also new, and we would rather tell you that than perform a heritage we do not have. There is no crest in our logo and no “since 19xx” in our footer. This site launched in 2026 and the way to judge it is to check its arithmetic, not its founding date.
What we are not
We are not testers. We own none of the units on this site. Every competitor worth ranking against leads with a count of products tested; ours would be zero, and we are not going to invent one. How we review sets out exactly what we do instead.
We are not electricians. The arithmetic on our Setup pages is correct and the code sections are cited, but your installation belongs to a licensed electrician and your local authority having jurisdiction. We publish the load; they size the wire.
We are not doctors. Cold immersion is a health topic with real contraindications. Where we discuss it we cite published clinical guidance and peer-reviewed research, and where the evidence is mixed we say it is mixed rather than picking the flattering half.
Who this is for
Someone measuring a garage wall and wondering whether the panel can take a 6kW heater. Someone working out whether a 1/3 HP chiller will actually hold 200 gallons in August. Someone who has read four “best cold plunge” roundups and noticed that none of them mention electricity.
Not spa buyers. Not people looking for a wellness journey. The tone here is closer to an instrument manual than a brochure, and that is deliberate.
How we are funded
Amazon Associates commissions, disclosed on every page that carries a link. We do not sell placement and we do not accept free product — both of which are common in this category and both of which are disclosed by publishers who do them. Full detail in our affiliate disclosure.
Contact
Corrections, missing specs, or arithmetic we got wrong: info@iceandcedar.com or the contact form. Corrections get published with a date, not quietly edited in.