Ice Bath Innovation
- Thomas P Seager, PhD
- 4 days ago
- 9 min read
What did Morozko learn from $2.5M invested in ice bath technology R&D?
Summary
Morozko rewrote the rules of refrigeration to invent the world's first ice-bath that makes its own ice. Unlike chiller systems that are notorious for breaking down, Morozko pioneered technologies that are more reliable, higher performing, and longer lasting.
Direct expansion refrigeration for two-phase ice/water systems, ozone, and durability outdoors are some of the engineering innovations that separate Morozko from digital-marketing driven cold plunge companies.
Invention of An Ice Bath Industry
When Morozko was founded in 2018, the only competitor in the cold plunge business was coldtub.com, who manufactured a converted hot tub that didn't make ice. Because we thought "It's not an ice bath if it doesn't make ice!" we had to invent one.
Since then, there's been an explosion of new brands in the cold plunge/ice bath market and they fall into only two types of companies:
Digital marketing, and
Engineering.
Digital Marketing
The digital marketing companies buy equipment on Alibaba and pay the Chinese manufacturers to put an American logo on it. Their expertise is supposedly in paid advertising, affiliate marketing, and tricking American customers into buying their product while the market is hot-hot, then exiting the business with fast profits. There are a hundred of these companies, and they all have names like "Polar Plunge Monkey Arctic-Gizer Pod" and they all use the same AI-generated advertising slogans like "Unlock the Ultimate Wellness of the Revolutionary Innovation of the Gold Standard in Cold."
The biggest, most popular example is Plunge, which was founded a year later than Morozko, but grew to be ten times larger. Plunge is manufactured by the largest pool equipment company in the world: Ambohr, in China. In fact, you can visit ambohr.com and purchase the exact same machine as the Plunge All-in, for less. The only difference between Ambohr and Plunge is the circuit board that interfaces with Plunge's phone-based control app, so when you need parts for your broken Plunge, you can get them cheaper from Ambohr's US-based warehouses and install them yourself -- except for the printed circuit control board, which you still must purchase direct from Plunge.
The big advantage that the digital marketing brands have is that it takes very little investment to get started. You buy a website, have AI create a logo and purchase some Facebook ads, and you're in business. Because the digital marketing brands are reselling from Alibaba, they don't have research & development costs, and that saves them an enormous amount of money. If they never sell a thing, they've lost almost nothing.
Engineering
There are far fewer engineering companies than digital marketing companies in the cold plunge/ice bath industry. These companies put technological or building trades expertise at the core of their business, and may lack expertise in digital marketing.
Morozko is an engineering company, because me and my partners are engineers. When we started, we had no idea what marketing was, so we invested our energy into making the product work better, rather than trying to sell it harder. In the last eight years, Morozko has spent about $2.5 million dollars in research and development, and the most important aspects have been:
refrigeration/ice making,
pumps & filters,
ozone disinfection, and
wood finishes/coatings and protection.
Ice-making Technology
Probably the thing Morozko is best known for is making massive chunks of ice, which is what we always insisted on in the first place. To do it, we had to break some rules.
More than one HVAC/refrigeration expert engineer who has toured our Studio in Phoenix AZ and studied our direct expansion refrigeration technology for maintaining both ice and water at the same time has told us "You can't do that."
Yet, here we are.
Direct Expansion (DX)
There's a big difference between Morozko and almost every other refrigeration system in the world, because all the others are either below freezing or above it -- never right on the 32°F (0°C) line where ice and water can be found together. For example, in grocery stores there are refrigerators for milk and freezers for frozen pizza. There's no machine that has to do both at the same time.
So we had to break some old rules (and invent some new ones) to get our systems to behave outdoors, in all weather conditions, with warm water and freezing, all the time.
Electronic Expansion Valves (EEV)
The more modern approach to refrigeration is to use electronic expansion valves (EEV), which is what Chinese-made chillers typically employ because EEV are more precise, more efficient (meaning the refrigeration compressor can be smaller) and more complex. The DX uses mechanical controls, like an old carburetor in your car. The EEV uses computer controls, like modern fuel-injected engines.
The problem with EEV chillers is that they have many more probable points of failure, and consequently they are less reliable and more difficult to fix. Morozko stayed with DX because failure is less likely, and if the valve does fail, repair is easy because Morozko does not use a chiller.
All chiller systems draw water from the tub, run it it through a heat exchanger to extract heat, and then pump the chilled water back in to the tub. The first cold plunges all used chillers designed for large aquariums. They were never intended to reach near-freezing temperatures, but they were off-the-shelf and cheap. The problem is that if the temperature controller is set near the bottom of the range, say 37°F, then the refrigerant in the heat exchange has to be even colder -- maybe 30°F.
In the inexpensive, all-in-one aquarium style chillers, any disruption in flow of water from the tub, such as might happen when the filter gets dirty or the pump breaks, will cause ice to form on the heat exchanger fins, breaking them open an breaking the chiller. We know one business customer in Tennessee who had replaced his chiller in his Plunge seventeen times.
To guard against this, an EEV system will monitor the temperature at the heat exchanger and adjust the flow of cold refrigerant to match the load. Slower water flow? Then the EEV is supposed to reduce refrigerant flow to prevent freezing. The only problem there is that sensors often fail, causing the chiller to malfunction. We know another business customer in the southern United States who has burnt through five control boards on his Commercial Plunge All-In, and can't get new boards from Ambohr because they won't work with the Plunge control app. He wrote to me to say:
I’m currently trying to hack my Plunge tubs…and bypass their motherboard. The motherboard keep frying. And they, of course, control all of the components since it all plugs into their motherboard. So that means right now, have two pretty white tubs that I can’t turn on. The pump, chiller, led light, ozone, all run through their motherboard. So far, I've replaced 1 pump, 1 chiller, 2 user interfaces, 1 power ribbon, and 1 LED light. I’m on my 5th motherboard. - Contrast Therapy Spa Small Business Owner
When cold plunge companies advertise their chillers systems for temperatures colder then 37°F, they're advertising a capability, not making a recommendation. Just because you can set the thermostat to 37°F doesn't mean you should. Running a chiller close to freezing is like running a car engine with the tachometer spiked to the red line all the time. The engine is working so hard, you know something is eventually going to break.
Morozko doesn't have these chiller problems, because Morozko pumps the refrigerant to water, not the other way around. That is, in Morozko the water filtration and the refrigeration are separate systems. A failure in one will not cause a failure in the other. Morozko doesn't use an aquarium-style chiller. We use an industrial freezer style refrigeration system, and our old-school DX mechanical sensors are more reliable than the EEV electronic systems.
That's why ice can't break a Morozko ice bath, but it can destroy the chiller in a cold plunge.
Pumps & Filters
Early in our history, we tested so many pumps I'd lost count. The problem was that off-the-shelf pumps at that time weren't made for near-freezing temperatures that could withstand the run cycles we needed to maintain clean water. There were either massive swimming pool pumps that were durable, noisy, and intolerable, or there were little submersible pond pumps that were notorious for leaking.
Two things have changed in the last eight years. The first is that we switched to direct current pumps. They require a transformer, but they're quieter, more efficient, and more reliable. The second is that manufacturers have caught on the the cold plunge craze and now make pumps that work well at colder temperatures.
And guess what? Ambohr supplies the best, most reliable DC pump, so after trying a dozen others, we wound up sourcing our pumps from the same Chinese supplier our biggest competitor uses. Maybe some day, Morozko will manufacture its own pump.
Ozone
In my article Ozone is Perfect for Ice Bath I explain the chemistry of ozone, why it has an unreliable reputation -- especially in the United States -- and how we overcame the challenges normally associated with ozone systems for Morozko. In short, ozone is the most powerful, effective, and safe disinfectant available for water treatment, which is why the pools at the 2000 Sydney Olympics used ozone as their primary water disinfectant.
The problem with ozone is not the chemistry, it's the hot tub industry.
Back in 2018 I tested at least ten different hot tub ozone generators in my kitchen sink and I found that only one manufacturer worked: Del Ozone. All the other hot tub ozone gens either did not output the ozone they said they would, or broke almost right away. So Morozko went with Del Ozone.
Then Del Ozone was sold, and the quality of their ozone generators declined. We tested new ozone gens, including those supplied by Ambohr, and we discovered that the industry hadn't improved at all -- hot tub ozone generators are still crap. But, some of the American engineers at Del Ozone weren't no more happy with the buyout than we were. They started their own company called Atek and they resolved to make the best spa ozone generator in the world. So now, Morozko uses Atek ozone generators and they work great. Better and safer than chlorine or bromine, and more effective and reliable than ultraviolet (UV) light.
Just don't tell our competitors, because they haven't done the same testing we have. They didn't spend seven years in environmental engineering graduate school studying water chemistry like I did, and so they might read this article and decide that they're better off stealing Morozko's research rather than replicating i for themselves -- but they'd still have to convince their Chinese manufacturers to use the same technology as Morozko.
Wood Finishes, Coatings & Protection
When Morozko started, we performed all of our work in a backyard in Phoenix AZ. It didn't matter if it was 115F outside, that was our workspace so that's where we worked.
By 2019 we were selling the first Morozko models, and I met with a woman from Scottsdale AZ who was a marketing expert. She had a lot of advice that I was prepared to take, but one thing she said really stood out.
"You have to get rid of the wood," she said. "The ladies all wnat something sleek and plastic and rounded and smooth like its medical equipment. Your product looks like it was built in a barn."
"I wish I had a barn," I told her. "At least we would have some shade."
I never spoke with her again, but she did have a point. When we started selling Morozko to Texas, Florida, and Malibu, California, we discovered that the humid environments there were much more challenging than the dry air in our home town of Phoenix AZ. We had to learn to switch to a marine-grade plywood with a certification from the British Navy for use on warships, and coat it with a clear, weather-resistant polyurea (which is like epoxy) to preserve it in the rain and humidity.
It's not perfect. Although it's pretty durable, if you have the wooden lid, you're much better off keeping in under a porch roof so it's not exposed to direct sun or direct rains and snow.
Nonetheless, for the most part we've kept the rustic, wooden look and there are two good reasons for it. The first is that we can better match big barrel saunas, they best of which are always made of whole wood, and the second is that it better matches the Morozko aesthetic.
The sleek, rounded white plastic, medical-equipment look just isn't Morozko. It reminds us of the stormtroopers from the original Star Wars movie. Remember what Luke Skywalker said when he first saw Han Solo's Millennium Falcon in the docking bay on Mos Eisley?
That scene reminds me that the Chinese-made white plastic, molded acrylic tubs are so Empire. Morozko is more like the Rebel Alliance.
We've made a lot of special modifications ourselves and, like Han Solo says we've "got it where it counts."
About the Author
Thomas P Seager, PhD is an Associate Professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering at Arizona State University. Seager co-founded the Morozko Forge ice bath company and is an expert in the use of ice baths for building metabolic and psychological resilience.
Re: "Remember what Luke Skywalker said when he first saw Han Solo's Millennium Falcon in the docking bay on Mos Eisley?" Yes! LOL I saw that life-changing movie when it premiered in Westwood, CA waaaaay back in 1977 when I was seven! I'm glad that look isn't Morozko, either! ;) #classact