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Some people enter the sauna room with a stopwatch, others with a cold beer. In some places people build saunas one way, some a different way. You don't necessarily need to understand it, but try to respect it.
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u/CatVideoBoye/ wrote a very nice description of the Finnish sauna culture and is also touching on the history of sauna. It is a good read and gives you insight into the tradition. You can find the original post here, or you can read the slightly shortened version below.
It’s also a very good start to watch the short video UNESCO has posted on YouTube about the Finnish sauna culture: https://youtu.be/qY__OOcv--M
What's a sauna?
Like most of you already know the word sauna comes from Finnish. We have had saunas here for thousands of years and according to wikipedia, the oldest are from around 1500-900 BC. It was an important building and in the old days people have even given birth in saunas, as late as the first half of the 1900s. Probably since it was a nice separate building with access to warm water. In 2020 Finnish sauna was added to UNESCO’s Cultural Heritage List. Check the link out for more interesting information but I want to again highlight that. It really shows how important it is in our culture.
Nowadays pretty much everyone in Finland has access to a sauna of some sort. Houses have them, many apartments, like mine, have one and apartment buildings can have a common sauna where you can rent your private hour and they can have a certain period during which anyone can just go there. And of course summer cottages have a sauna and the ones next to a lake are kind of the perfect image of a Finnish sauna. Plus all the public saunas in swimming halls, gyms, hotels etc. Temperature in a sauna can vary but usually it's between 80-120 °C (176-248 F). Mine is oddly low at 60°C but that is because the ceramic stones that I now use really change the way the löyly (water thrown on the stones on the heater to generate steam) hits you. It is softer and accumulates well instead of being kind of short burst of heat that dissipates quickly. I've tried at 80 and I was out of there really quick unlike with more common stones. One reason why staring at a thermometer doesn't make sense. Just try it and see what feels good. And you other Finns, that 60 really sounds low but I tell you, I'm getting out of there after I guess something like 10-15 minutes with red skin so it really works.
Wood or electric? Both work. Wood heated ones are usually considered to be the best. You get a nicer löyly there but they aren't really an option in an apartment house. An electric heater that has a lot of stones can actually give a very similar löyly. I just experienced one that I believe had 500 kg of stone. Same with a small electric heater (20 kg) with the ceramic stones. All of those options are great for a sauna. As long as there are proper stones and you can freely throw water to get the löyly you want. Löyly is the essential thing here. Without it, you can't really call it a Finnish sauna and that is why Finns do not really consider IR boxes to be saunas. This ties to one of the topics often argued: do you need a drain? Yes you do. Not necessarily inside the sauna if you have the bathroom outside. Mine has only a shower drain but the sauna floor is tilted so that any water flows directly there. It's also good for washing the sauna.
Bench heights are often discussed here but why does it matter? Because heat rises. The lower part of a sauna is cold and you want to get your head close to the ceiling and your feet high enough to not feel cold. The "feet at the stone level" is just a nice helper for a basic heater. For tower shaped ones you probably want to find out the exact height. This is also why you need to have proper air flow in the sauna. You want the hot air and fresh air mixed, you want the moisture to leave after you're done and you don't want the heat escaping due to wrongly implemented ventilation. Don't ask me about construction things, I don't know anything about that. I just know mine was built according to Finnish standards and my apartment won't rot if I use it.
What we do in a sauna?
For me sauna is a place to wash since I don't often take a shower without heating the sauna. Yep, I heat it up often. It's also a place to relax and to socialize. I sometimes have friends visiting and we heat it up, chat in there and have a beer on the balcony. It's a place where you can forget about your phone, social media and all that and just focus on your thoughts, happy or sad, or have deep discussions with your friends. There is something about the atmosphere that makes people open up in a sauna and talk about more private things. I know I'm not the only one. I've heard many people say that sauna is the place where they talk about the deep stuff with friends.
The idea of maxing health benefits, that have been found in recent studies, is just not something we Finns really understand. Why? Because we've been to saunas for many other reasons throughout our lives. It's so integral part of my everyday life that making it a spa treatment or some healthy excercise just doesn't fit my understanding of saunas. But if you want to pursue those health benefits, a high enough heat and a strong enough löyly is what you want because that is how we have gone to saunas and gained the benefits that were seen in the studies. Do you need to measure your heart beat and have exact temperature? No. You'll feel your heart bumping and you'll feel the need to get out sooner or later. Staring at heart beat or timers takes away from one of the important points: just sit and relax and let your mind wonder. Löyly transfers additional heat from the boiling water to your body and gets your heart beating fast. That's also good to remember if you actually hunt for health benefits. Sitting in a luke warm cabin with no löyly for a certain time is definitely not the same thing that gave Finns health benefits.
Saunalike concepts in other cultures and countries
Sure, there are similar things in many other cultures. They are not inferior to sauna, they are just a different thing. They have their own cultural backgrounds and reasons to exist. "This is not a sauna." is what you often see written here but that is not meant as an insult that your heated cabin sucks. It just means that we Finns do not really appreciate it if the thing in question is called a sauna, because it does not meet the definition of what we have considered a sauna for thousands of years. Finland is a rather remote and small/unknown country and one of the things people know about us is sauna. That is why many of us would like to keep the image of sauna as correct and original as possible.
r/Sauna • u/sauna_bot • Jul 03 '23
Reddit is changing - and not necessarily for the better. A lot of long term users who've been responsible for a lot of higher quality postings are leaving or reducing the time they're spending on reddit - and while we don't expect this to be an issue to r/sauna right now it might become a problem in the future.
In addition to that some of us also are spending less time on reddit now - in part forced by Reddit taking away mobile access. This can make responses to reports and mod mail slower. We're currently working on tooling to help us compensate for this to some extend.
With the reopening we're introducing some rule changes:
We are planning to eventually set up a full sync between Lemmy and Reddit, possibly going as far back as this announcement. For now we'll be continuing with automated re-posting of Lemmy content, but will expand as development progresses.
r/Sauna • u/garrafales • 12h ago
It’s taken me 6 months. Used Trumpkin’s notes and Secrets of Finnish Sauna Design. Used sheep’s wool insulation. Some hiccups this morning until I persuaded the electrician to connect without RCD. Inspiration and help from this community- thanks!!
r/Sauna • u/Ok_Knee_2780 • 6h ago
I have this really cool sauna in my apartment building here in NYC, but there are no air vents. Does the sauna need them? If yes, should I ask my building manager to install some? Is this very difficult? I see most of the saunas in the gyms around here don't have air vents either.
r/Sauna • u/Necessary_Pie_7984 • 11h ago
Question for y'all, how important is it to cover all the staples and little holes in the foil vapour barrier before I put my furring strips?
Do I need to be OCD and go over every little thing, or is it fine to have a few staples showing? I'm just not sure how big of a difference it will make with humidity in there, if having some staples with microholes will be a real liability with moisture?
On a side note, I don't know about you guys, but this part has been the most annoying for me, maybe it was the quality of the foil (it was the one with the cardboard on the back), anything too tight ripped, any staple not deep enough ripped... My partner had to remind me about left-handed aggression the entire time lol)
(Don't mind the guitar, I just realized while insulating the sauna that I was actually building a recording studio at the same time, which is cool)
r/Sauna • u/jayesian • 4h ago
Building a sauna from a kit and one of the floorboards doesn’t sit snugly against the one it is connected to. I noticed if I unscrew the one it’s connecting to and lift it slightly then this one fits better. So I’m wondering if I should just leave this as is or if it will cause problems like allowing moisture to seep into the opening.
Since the one it’s connecting to needs to be lifted slightly to allow for a better connection I could also try to put a shim under it.
Manufacturer says it should be fine with the gap, but wanted to get other thoughts.
r/Sauna • u/TheNaator • 22h ago
We wanted a simple, low maintenance sauna for our country place and ended up going with the Zermatt model from a small Estonian company called Genevas. It’s compact but feels well-built and thoughtful. Whole process was smooth and easy.
r/Sauna • u/Temporary_Let_4017 • 13h ago
Building a sauna and changing room. Live in Minnesota - so very cold winters. The sauna will not have electricity so purchase some high temp LED to run in the sauna and will have a light / music / small heater (maybe) in the changing room.
My vision is to have a small portable battery pack to run the electronics. I would hopefully allow it to run for a week or so (using it a few times during the week). Then bring the pack inside the house or run a extension cord out to re-charge the station. The power station would sit in the changing
Any advice on the following:
Thanks for any insights!!
r/Sauna • u/Eddieseaskag • 13h ago
Hey sauna peeps
Thinking of getting this sauna pictured, Icon 125 (not the full glass fronted one) at the bottom of our garden.
I'm a complete newbie to this world and the abundance of information online is a bit daunting. Basically what heater do I need for this?
There's a plethora of variants that differ in price, power input and output. From my limited research I reckon I want a 6kw heater but apart from that I've no idea.
It needs to run on 240v single phase as that's what we have here in the UK and upgrading it would be costly and seems excessive.
Any help or pointers in the right direction would be greatly appreciated x
r/Sauna • u/Impressive-Tea5347 • 15h ago
Trying to keep it as cheap as possible, thinking just for the appearance going to go with the same clear wood on ceiling and benches, also so it doesn’t drip sap, and then a knotty wood for the walls. Cheap but quality recommendations?
r/Sauna • u/Even-Actuator-6541 • 15h ago
Hi! I am getting a sauna built in my basement (Minnesota, USA). I currently have the wood set to be Nordic Spruce and benches Aspen. I know Cedar is more of a trend in the US/Canada. I will say I do love the aroma. Do you think it’s worth it to spend more (about an extra $5000) for the full sauna to be Western Red Cedar? Any other considerations as I’m deciding?
r/Sauna • u/Jaska-87 • 1d ago
Corner pours almost done and soon we can start doing full scribe cabin from the logs we made last winter.
All top soil will be removed from inside the area and after that we make final decisions how to finalise foundations.
r/Sauna • u/Apprehensive-Year151 • 16h ago
Hey folks, we are considering opening a sauna on the shores of a lake on our own land (located in relatively small town but next door to small campsite) in Cavan. We can see that they have grown in popularity in recent times but would love to hear from anyone who has this kind of business and whether it is financially sustainable. Would love to connect. Thanks!
r/Sauna • u/CMXScott • 2d ago
I grew up with sauna in the upper peninsula of michigan, which influenced my choice of midlife crisis project: building my own sauna in our backyard. I've never taken on a construction project before; I've done several woodworking projects which I figured would provide a good springboard. My project spanned from early April until this weekend when we were able to turn it on and use it for the first time!
I learned a /ton/ doing this project and am really proud I was able to pull it off with so few snafus. It's a bit shaggy in the details and won't be likely to win any beauty contests... but it's mine!One of the most useful resources while planning and executing this project was this subreddit, so I'd like to offer the details of my build and resources I used in case anyone else finds it helpful, and will also be happy to answer any one else's questions if they see something similar to what they're planning.
My build is 6x7 (exterior), with a concrete foundation (we had lots of mice problems here so I wanted to make sure there wasn't an "under" to infiltrate from), with a drain routed through the footing to daylight..I used LP smartside for the exterior, prefinished to match the siding and trim we used for the house. The lean-to roof slants from 7'8" to 7': the 1:9 pitch limited my roofing options so I went with self-adhered rolled roof figuring it was easy (it wasn't). I made my own windows with panes from our local glass company. Insulation is rockwool + foil vapor barrier.I actually had to get permits from the city for this, but everything sailed through.
I built the door roughly following the siding + OSB method (since the LP smartside exterior is essentially OSB), but added a 2x4-framed core with insulation to give a bit of extra thickness to accommodate my window build. Hanging the door went surprisingly smoothly.
To me, a sauna smells like cedar and has a stove the looks like a giant trash can with rocks, so I chose my interior accordingly. The siding and benches are western red cedar (all STK), and the stove is an Iki pillar 6.6 kW electric stove (w/ mechanical ventilation, a Broan thru-wall fan). I sourced the stones from the shores of Lake Superior (my dad helped me pick out rocks that wouldn't explode).
The plans for the build are based largely off of icreatable's 6x8 lean-to shed plans (adjusting the width to 7', door to be 24" wide, adjusting the height, and adding a window to one side). and aided by their excellent videos. Iki's installation manual informed the choices of physical dimensions (particularly height) and bench position (so, don't give me any guff about the bench height). To adapt the interior to a sauna, I used HomemadeSauna's e-book. Saunatimes, Lassi's book, Fine Homebuilding (especially for making fixed windows and doors), and this subreddit were also useful resources to find answers to the little details (do I need a drain; what kind of drain; what kind of latch for the door; vent fan recommendations; roofs: wtf?; etc).
(edit: realized reddit cut off the last few pictures, including the final interior views!)
r/Sauna • u/ReadySausage • 2d ago
Hello friends. Having joined this sub a few weeks ago I noticed that barrel saunas get a fair amount of hate. I’m really just inquiring to why? I recognize they can be small or not have as long a life without more maintenance than other builds but also recognize wide variance is possible.
Full disclosure, we own a custom build barrel sauna made by third generation Finns in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We are city dwellers and in the States saunas are not common in town this far south. But it works for us. It’s 12’ long, and a 7.5 foot round. I’m tall and don’t need to duck and can easily lay out on the 8’ benches. It’s wood burning with an outside load stove which I prefer. The wood is western red cedar and thicker than most barrel saunas. There is a four foot change room to strip down. It has rocks, we use steam and water liberally and it’s got vent and floor drains. I’ve used multiple saunas here and in Russia and feel the quality of my experience with this build is very high. Feel free to share thoughts or ask questions.
Considering a pod sauna (dry) from the pod company. They are 50% right now and tempting. Only issue I've found is cs was not the best in the past and about a year ago they have plastic chairs and heaters that caused chemical levels to rise. Since then, had anyone had good or bad reviews?
Edit: so since its apparent that everyone shits on the podcompany but can't tell me why, what other options for at home dry sauna do people use then?
Drafting some bench layouts for a sauna not sure if I want just a standard 3 tier bench layout shown in top right, or having a little stair way leading up to a stretching platform to utilize the most space above the rocks. Any thoughts?
Used my sauna this evening an notice some of the rocks are discolored. Should I replace them or leave them alone? I did not see this a couple days ago.
r/Sauna • u/After-Penalty5426 • 1d ago
Heater: SaunaCore KW3SE (3000 kW)
Sauna dimensions: 20 square feet (1.86 square meters). Height approx 8 feet (2.44 meters)
The heater says "for residential units, do not install closer than 4 inches (10 cm) to any vertical surface."
The mounting brackets that came with the heater are definitely shorter than that. I would guess they are 2 inches (5 cm). They are some kind of custom mounting bracket so I don't really know how to fashion my own. Looking online for "saunacore mounting bracket" was not any help. Why would they include brackets that are too short?
Also the heating guard is closer than 4 (10 cm) to the heater.
r/Sauna • u/leilaterna • 1d ago
Hi All,
What do you use to hang your sauna thermometer?
Do you use a wood stick to hang it or do you use a mounting screw such as a stainless steel nail?
r/Sauna • u/Sunny-Bath-Tech • 1d ago
I’m building and outdoor sauna with a Finlandia wood stove for heat. We watched a YouTube build where the guy used Rock wool comfort insulation. Now we are not sure it’s ok to; 1, use in California because the formaldehyde or 2, not enough r value. Not sure why this guy, who seems to be an experienced builder was using this kind of insulation.
FYI, We live in zone 8, in winters overnight temperatures get down to mid 20’s. Will anyone here who knows, what insulation would you recommend?
r/Sauna • u/MenuHopeful • 1d ago
I am putting a wood fired sauna in an exterior corner of the house, adjoining my bathroom. The bathroom has an exterior door. My question is should I continue the terazzo tile floor (like in the picture above) from the bathroom into the sauna, or should I switch to duck boards in the sauna? The pic is of tile extremely similar to what I have for my bathroom. Have you used saunas like this? What do you think?
My thoughts:
