The Real Cost of Cold: What a Plumbed Cold Plunge Actually Costs Your Business vs an Electric Cryotherapy Chamber
Cold is having a moment. Walk into any serious gym, recovery studio or wellness club and there's a good chance cold therapy is either already on the floor or on the wish list. The demand is real, the retention benefits are real, and members increasingly expect it.
So the question for an operator isn't whether to offer cold — it's how. And that decision quietly splits into two very different financial paths: a water-based cold plunge or ice bath, or a 100% electric whole-body cryotherapy chamberlike the KRYO KUBE KUB or EKO.
On the surface they look like competing line items on a quote. They are not. One is a piece of equipment you plug in. The other is a building project with a permanent operating cost attached. This article breaks down where the money actually goes — including the costs that never appear on the initial quote.
A note on the numbers: every figure below is an indicative planning range, not a fixed price. Real costs vary enormously by site, region, trade rates and the spec you choose. Use these ranges to understand the shape of each option's cost, then get local quotes for your own fit-out. Confirm all KRYO KUBE pricing with us directly.
Two ways to put cold on your floor
A cold plunge is, at its heart, a refrigerated tub of water. To run it commercially you need the tub, a chiller to keep the water cold, filtration and sanitation to keep the water clean, and somewhere plumbed and waterproofed to put it.
A KRYO KUBE chamber is a self-contained electric appliance. It chills air, not water. There's no tub, no plumbing, no chemicals and no filtration plant. It runs from a standard Australian 10A power point and a session takes a couple of minutes.
That single difference — water versus no water — is where the entire cost gap comes from.
The cold plunge: what the quote doesn't show you
When you price a commercial cold plunge, the number you're quoted is usually just the tub and chiller. The real cost of getting it operational is a stack of trades and compliance items on top.
1. Plumbing
A commercial plunge needs a water supply line in and a compliant drainage line out, sized and installed by a licensed plumber. Depending on how far your fit-out is from existing supply and waste, and whether you need a tempered fill, backflow prevention and a floor waste, this is rarely a small job.
Indicative: $2,000 – $10,000+
2. Waterproofing and wet-area construction
The moment you put standing water and dripping bodies into a room, that room becomes a wet area — and wet areas carry building requirements. You're looking at waterproofing membranes, correct floor falls to drainage, and often building certification. Get this wrong and you risk water ingress into the slab, neighbouring tenancies or the structure itself. Getting it right costs money.
Indicative: $3,000 – $15,000+
3. Tiling, surfaces and non-slip finishes
Wet areas need appropriate, non-slip, water-resistant finishes for safety and hygiene — which usually means tiling, sealing and slip-rated surfaces around the plunge. This is both a materials and a skilled-labour cost.
Indicative: $2,000 – $10,000+
4. Drainage and the plant room
Beyond the supply and waste runs, you need compliant floor drainage and somewhere to house the chiller, pump and filtration — a "plant" that needs power, ventilation and access for servicing. That's floor space you can't sell.
Indicative: $2,000 – $8,000+
5. The chiller and filtration system
To hold water at single-digit temperatures against ambient heat and the body heat of every person who gets in, you need a genuinely capable commercial chiller, plus circulation pumps and a filtration system. Under-spec it and the water won't hold temperature during busy periods.
Indicative: $2,000 – $10,000+ (often bundled, often not enough on its own)
6. Permits, certification and compliance sign-off
Plumbing work must be certified. Wet-area building work may need approvals. And commercial shared-water immersion can fall under public-health water-quality requirements in many jurisdictions — similar in spirit to how public spa pools are regulated — because shared, warm-ish, recirculated water is a known environment for bacteria. You should check your local and state requirements early, because they shape both your build and your ongoing obligations.
Indicative: variable, but budget for professional fees and time
Add it up. Before you've sold a single session, the "tub" has quietly become a $15,000 – $50,000+ construction project on top of the equipment — and it's now physically bolted into one spot in your building.
The cold plunge: the costs that never stop
Capital is a one-off. Water is forever. A plumbed plunge carries an operating burden that runs every single day you're open.
Chemicals and sanitation. Shared water needs continuous sanitisation — chlorine, bromine, ozone, UV, or a combination — plus pH and balance management. That's an ongoing consumable cost and a skill your staff need to maintain correctly.
Water testing and record-keeping. Commercial water hygiene typically means regular testing and logged records. It's a daily operational task with real labour attached, and in regulated settings it's not optional.
Filtration and water changes. Filters and media need cleaning and replacing. Water needs periodic full draining and refilling — which means water usage, disposal and the cost of refilling and re-chilling a fresh tub from scratch.
Cleaning labour. Between users and at open/close, the plunge and its wet area need cleaning and sanitising. Biofilm, residue and hygiene management are a recurring staff-time cost that scales with how busy you are.
Energy. A chiller holds a large mass of water cold around the clock, fighting both ambient heat and every warm body that enters. Water's thermal mass makes it expensive to keep cold continuously, and a single busy session block can push the chiller hard for hours afterward to recover temperature.
Downtime and risk. Cloudy water, a chemical imbalance, a failed pump or a contamination event doesn't just cost money to fix — it closes the plunge. Every hour it's offline is recovery revenue you can't sell, and shared water carries a hygiene-liability profile you have to actively manage.
None of these line items ever disappears. They are the price of admission for running water commercially.
The electric chamber: what you actually pay for
A KRYO KUBE KUB or EKO removes the entire water problem — and with it, most of the cost stack above.
Install. It runs on a standard 10A power point. No plumbing. No drainage. No waterproofing. No tiling. No plant room. No wet-area certification. In most cases it's delivered, positioned and plugged in — operational the same day, with no licensed-trade construction project around it.
Running cost. It chills air on demand rather than holding a tank of water cold forever, and it's 100% electric — so there's no water, no chemicals, no filters, no testing and no water changes, ever. The day-to-day cost is electricity, which for these models is in the order of a few dollars a day.
Maintenance and compliance. No water-hygiene regime, no chemical handling, no daily water logs. KRYO KUBE chambers ship with a 24-month all-inclusive warranty and 48-hour national service response.
Throughput. A whole-body session takes two to three minutes, and the chamber is 24/7 capable with no "recovery" period for the water to re-chill between users — so you can run back-to-back sessions all day. A plunge is effectively one person at a time, with filtration and temperature recovery between heavy use.
Flexibility. Because it isn't plumbed into the building, it can be repositioned or relocated. A plumbed wet area cannot.
Side-by-side: cold plunge vs KRYO KUBE KUB / EKO
Equipment Plumbed cold plunge: tub + commercial chiller + filtration. KRYO KUBE KUB / EKO: self-contained chamber.
Install required Plumbed cold plunge: plumbing, drainage, waterproofing, tiling, plant room. KRYO KUBE KUB / EKO:standard 10A power point — plug & run.
Fit-out cost on top of equipment Plumbed cold plunge: $15,000 – $50,000+. KRYO KUBE KUB / EKO: minimal.
Ongoing consumables Plumbed cold plunge: water, chemicals, filter media. KRYO KUBE KUB / EKO: none.
Daily operating tasks Plumbed cold plunge: water testing, chemical dosing, cleaning, logs. KRYO KUBE KUB / EKO:wipe-down between users.
Energy Plumbed cold plunge: chiller running continuously. KRYO KUBE KUB / EKO: a few dollars a day, on demand.
Wet-area / water-hygiene compliance Plumbed cold plunge: likely applies. KRYO KUBE KUB / EKO: not applicable.
Throughput Plumbed cold plunge: one at a time + recovery time. KRYO KUBE KUB / EKO: back-to-back, 24/7 capable.
Relocatable Plumbed cold plunge: no — fixed wet area. KRYO KUBE KUB / EKO: yes.
KUB and EKO are indicative commercial models — confirm current specifications and pricing with KRYO KUBE.
The part most operators miss: revenue, not just cost
Cost is only half the equation. The other half is how many sessions you can actually sell.
A plunge's throughput is capped by physics: one body in the water at a time, then filtration and temperature recovery before the next. A chamber's two-to-three-minute, 24/7 sessions mean the constraint becomes your booking sheet, not your equipment. Over a busy week, that difference in sellable sessions compounds — and it's the lever that drives payback. If you want to model this for your own pricing and volume, our ROI calculator does exactly that.
In fairness: where a cold plunge still makes sense
An honest comparison has to acknowledge what water does well. Some clients simply prefer immersion — the full-body sensation of cold water is a different experience to cold air, and for certain audiences that ritual is the draw. A plunge can also suit a venue that already has wet-area infrastructure (an existing pool deck, spa or change-room plant) where much of the costly groundwork is already in place, dramatically changing the maths.
If your members specifically want water immersion, and your building is already plumbed and waterproofed for it, a plunge can be the right call. The point of this article isn't that water is wrong — it's that the water option's true cost is far larger than the equipment quote, and that cost is easy to miss until you're committed.
The bottom line
A cold plunge looks like buying a tub. In reality it's a construction project with a permanent operating cost: plumbing, waterproofing, tiling, a chiller and filtration plant, plus water, chemicals, testing, cleaning and compliance that run every day for the life of the installation.
An electric chamber is the opposite proposition. The chamber is the project. It plugs into a normal power point, it carries no water and no chemicals, it costs a few dollars a day to run, and it sells sessions back-to-back without ever needing the water to recover.
For most gyms and recovery businesses weighing the two, the deciding factor isn't the sticker price — it's everything behind the sticker price. Once you account for the full cost of running water commercially, the simpler, drier, plug-and-run option is usually the one that pays for itself faster and stays out of your way while it does.
Want to see the numbers for your space? Run your own figures in the KRYO KUBE ROI calculator, or get in touch to talk through which model fits your floor.
Breathe · Chill · Perform · kryokube.au
This article is provided for general business-planning information and is not financial, building, plumbing or regulatory advice. Cost ranges are indicative only and vary by site, specification and region. Always obtain local quotes and confirm building, plumbing and public-health requirements for your jurisdiction before proceeding.