How Plungepedia checks its data

Every number on this site can be traced to a manufacturer's own page and a date. This page explains how the catalogue is built, what we check, what we refuse to guess, and how our money and our verdicts are kept apart. It is the page to read if you want to know whether to trust a figure here more than the same figure on a brand's page or in a "best of" list.

Where the catalogue comes from

The catalogue holds every cold plunge tub, ice bath and chiller we can find on sale to UK buyers, from UK companies and from overseas brands that ship here with UK pricing: 151 products from 23 brands at the last check. After every weekly price pull a script lists anything on a tracked brand's store that looks like a tub or chiller but is not in the catalogue, so gaps are found rather than waited for. Products are added when a brand is found, not when it pays or asks; brands that do not sell to the UK are kept as reference entries and left out of the indexes.

Prices are read from each brand's own UK storefront, not from a launch announcement, a "from" price, a press release or a retailer. Where a brand has a product feed we pull it weekly; where it does not (Odyssey Plunge, for example) the prices are read by hand from the product page. Each price carries the date it was captured, shown on the product page, and every capture is kept, so the price history on a product page is what the brand actually charged on those dates. Where a tub and a chiller are sold separately and as a bundle, we list the bundle price, because that is what a buyer pays.

Specifications are read from the manufacturer's product page, specification sheet or manual, and each one is stored with the URL it came from. We record capacity in litres, whether a chiller is included, its power in watts or horsepower, minimum and maximum temperature, heating, materials, insulation thickness, filtration, voltage and plug, app control, dimensions, weight and warranty. Where a brand states a figure in different units we convert it and say so.

What "not stated" means

If a brand does not publish a figure, the product page says "not stated". We do not fill the gap from a retailer's listing, a review, a forum post or a similar product. There is one exception, and it is always labelled: where a maker publishes a tub's dimensions but not its water capacity, we calculate an approximate capacity from those dimensions (internal measurements where given, otherwise external less a typical wall thickness, filled to about 150 mm below the rim) and show it as "approx., estimated". It is our figure, not the manufacturer's, it is rounded to the nearest 10 litres, and it is replaced the moment the maker publishes a real one. We do not estimate any other specification. The gaps are not random: of the 126 tubs, only 78 state their capacity, 49 a minimum temperature and 16 an insulation thickness, and across the catalogue 38 products publish no warranty on the product page at all. Those gaps are themselves useful information, and our buying guides say so.

Comparison pages follow the same rule. A comparison between two products is only published for search engines when both products state at least three of the main specifications, so that a "versus" page is a real comparison and not two columns of "not stated". Pages that fall below that line still exist for anyone who navigates to them but are marked so search engines do not index them.

Ratings and tests

No product on this site has a star rating from us unless we have owned and used it. Where a product page shows an owner rating from Amazon UK or Trustpilot, the source and the number of reviews are shown with it, and the rating is Amazon's or Trustpilot's, not ours. We do not publish "editor's ratings" derived from specifications, and we do not use rating markup that would make a search result look like a review when it is not one.

We have not tested any product ourselves, and no page on the site claims otherwise. If we ever test one, the unit will be bought at retail (if a manufacturer ever supplies one, the review will say so) and it will be labelled "Tested by us" on its product page with the date and what was measured: how cold it holds in a UK garden or garage, how long the chiller runs, how loud it is, what it costs to run at the tariff on the day, and what went wrong.

Owner feedback

Owner reviews from Amazon UK, Trustpilot, Reddit and YouTube are read for the brand pages and buying guides. They are used to raise questions (a run of leak reports on one brand's pods, for example, is mentioned on that brand's pages) and to describe what owners report, never to invent a specification or a verdict. A single review is never treated as a pattern.

How often things are checked

Prices and product feeds: weekly. Specifications: re-read when a product page changes, and in full every quarter. Owner reviews and forum threads: every three weeks. Every brand page shows a "data last checked" date and every product page shows the date of its last price capture. If a figure on the site is older than its stated date, that date is the honest answer to "when was this true".

How we make money, and how that is kept apart

Some links are affiliate links: if you buy through them the brand or Amazon pays us a commission and you pay the same price. Every page with a buy link says so. Commission rates are never a factor in which product is picked, which is ranked first, or what a verdict says; the brands that pay us nothing (Brass Monkey has no affiliate programme, for example) are compared on the same terms as those that do. Where we have a direct arrangement with a brand, such as a reader discount code, it is disclosed on that brand's page and on every page where the link appears. No brand can pay to be added to, removed from or reworded in the catalogue, and a commercial arrangement with a brand never changes where it sits in a comparison or what its product page says; anything a brand pays for is labelled as such where it appears. Full details are in the affiliate disclosure.

Corrections

If a price, specification or warranty on this site is wrong, or a brand has changed something we have not caught, email hello@plungepedia.com with the product page and the source and we will check it and correct the page, with the correction dated. Manufacturers can use the same address to send specification sheets and manuals; a document from the maker is treated as the source of record, a claim in an email is not.

Who writes this

Plungepedia is written and edited by Aodhan, who has owned six cold plunges in three years, with no ownership, investment or employment ties to any cold plunge manufacturer or retailer. Every published figure is checked against its source and every verdict is a person's. More on the about page.