Most people glorify the act of building, the transformation of a humble pile of building materials into a noble sauna or house or shed. I like to think that, too. I believe that my profession is a noble one, with an emphasis on craftsmanship and attention to detail that can only be honed by decades of working with fine materials. But the truth is, on any given day, on any given project—especially for on-site work where I take my tools and materials, my truck and trailer, my lunch and my laptop and various other accoutrements—I am often just a professional schlepper. And I bet any other contractor reading this just now nodded their head.
I love building saunas that are removed from the house, perhaps beyond the garden gates or down by the lake or out in the woods next to a pond. I like to work immersed in nature, take lunch by the water, and contemplate the finer things in life while I toil at my craft.
But when I bid jobs like these, I have learned to think of the schlep: The sum total distance from truck to the site. I think of thousands of steps back and forth to carry lumber, to retrieve the pencil or glasses from the cab, of the stairs I have to climb, or the potential for slipping and falling with a hundred pound load on my shoulder. I have literally carried an entire 8’x12′ sauna on my shoulders, load by load. Some days I count the steps and do the math—how many miles I wonder? Other times I count the load—a ton of concrete mix, how much work was that?
I don’t mind the schlep. The key is to embrace it. If I know from the scale of the schlep from start and plan for it—clear a path, remove obstacles, make ramps—then I can proceed slowly but with the steadiness of a Yoga master moving through a progression of poses. Each repeated carry is perfected in the same way a bobsled driver learns to lean through each curve.
With two or more people, it is a choreographed movement. Go left here, stoop here, K-turn at the end, and dosey-do before we enter the door. Perfecting the movement makes it almost enjoyable.
At sixty, I have to protect my body. I know my strengths and limits, and my strength is knowing how to carry and move heavy objects. Always keep one hand free—you never know when you’ll have to counter an off balance step. Always be relaxed and take smaller loads—there is no race. It is amazing what you can achieve in an hour of honest schlepping. Ironically, when I have a spell of days or weeks when my back is out and the chiropractor is needed, it’s always the stupid stuff that caused it: desk work (I stand at my desk now), shoveling snow, or that heroic effort to rake all the leaves in one Sunday. These tasks are unintentional actions. Work with intention, and you will become stronger. Work smarter, and you will avoid injury. I really like those sixty pound concrete bags… and I’m eyeing those forty pounders. At nineteen, everything came in hundreds.
Rob—der schlep.
I’ve had jobs where the schlep caught me off guard, like the sauna cabin in the woods where I was promised an ATV to haul everything. After the first week, three feet of snow put the brakes on that. Everything had to be hauled in on a sled with me in snowshoes. Good thing I loved those Jack London stories as a kid.
But then, I’ve been pleasantly surprised, too, like at a recent job on the lake where the haul was several hundred feet down steep stairs or a windy path. Eventually, the owners produced a golf cart. It became my mini truck and my morning joy, as I breezed down the hill silently. There is a beauty to electric vehicles—the joy of still hearing nature as you whizz through it.
I’ve thought of offering classes on schlepping or even rigging (a specialized form of schlep that involves more weight, more dance, more cooperation). We would move things each day. And then maybe move them back again. Everyone has it wrong about Sisyphus. If the enjoyment of the act of moving becomes the goal, rather than the completion of the act, then the schlepper can be seen as a master perfecting their craft. Like a cat that keeps hitting the toy away only to chase it again, a worker who carries load after load and enjoys the process will reach the goal of pleasure in their work.
And only when a worker enjoys his or her work is true craftsmanship possible.
Recently, I posted a picture of our sauna fire burning hot and mentioned Sam McGee. For those who don’t know, Sam McGee was the sad character from Tennessee who could not take the cold of the Yukon in the poem The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert Service. His last wish was to be cremated, a task his friend dutifully tried to complete. The ending had the narrator peeking into the make-do crematorium in the boiler of the derelict ship stuck in the ice on Lake Lebarge. There was his late friend Sam McGee, as warm as could be, calling out for him to shut the door.
Whenever it is extremely cold out, as it has been recently, I think of this poem and the warming power of a hot fire. I love it when the mercury dips below zero. There is something invigorating about having your snot freeze when you breath hard or having sweat icicles dangling off of your brow. I love cross-country skiing in the dark, in the cold, when two hats and two pairs of gloves are needed. One false move, and the night might end like in the story “To Build a Fire” by Jack London. Another favorite read from Middle school when I dreamt of all the great explorers who ventured into frozen lands.
Walking through the snow towards a hot sauna fire.
I remember my senior year of high school, the year Cayuga Lake last froze over. That was a cold winter. We did a lot of cross-country ski races that season. With our skimpy race suits and lowtop boots, we had no protection other than the fire in our hearts to keep us from freezing to death. During the Canadian Ski Marathon that year it was minus 40° at the 8 a.m. start. Celsius and Fahrenheit. If you blinked too long, your eyes would literally freeze shut. Grandma volunteers would slap our cheeks at checkpoints to make sure we didn’t have frostbite (and we still wore our skimpy suits). By the end of that year, my parents had moved to the heart of the lower Adirondacks. The Black River valley, where our house was located, was often the coldest spot in the lower forty-eight. It was minus 25° F for days on end. Thunder boomed from the river each night as the ice expanded. The ice was several feet thick; I have no idea how the fish survived. I loved to be out in that hostile world: skating, skiing, or snowshoeing. It was the cold of a Jack London story. Your spit would freeze in mid air and hit the ground with a crackle.
During that cold winter in high school, I had a hot sauna to crawl into after our ski races. But not in the years after. When I moved back to the Finger Lakes after college, I went back to that sauna at Podunk, weekly, until I could build my own. I have kept up the ritual ever since. On these freezing nights it is never too cold for a sauna; in fact, I relish those times when one can experience the 200° (or more) difference, going from the hot room to the night air. Your feet freeze to the ground and your hair sports punk icicles.
There’s no need to wait until you are cremated to be truly warm. Poor Sam McGee, if only he had a sauna!.
Lately, I have been thinking about the application of the foil I use in my saunas as a radiant vapor barrier. Perhaps this is because it is almost Christmas, and I was thinking of how my family decorated the tree each year. The final touch would be to drape foil tinsel over everything; our mother would have to constantly damp down our enthusiasm by reminding us to place it carefully on each branch, not to throw it.
This suspicious sauna foil is aluminum-coated plastic—upper working temperature of only 131-248° F (55-120° C). This product compares to the ubiquitous foil “bubblewrap” people and is not to be used inside your sauna walls.
There are tricks to using radiant vapor barrier foil, but the first and most important step is to buy the right stuff. Like the tinsel we put on the tree, the foil may actually be aluminum-coated plastic—which you don’t want to use. That plastic is likely polyethylene, which, if you look it up on the material specification sheet that every product has, has an upper working temperature of 131-248° F (55-120° C), meaning it will likely melt at typical sauna temps. Sauna Foil, available from any of the familiar sauna suppliers, is aluminum foil on a kraft paper backing. I used to find it with fiberglass reinforcing thread, which is helpful because the stuff tears easily. Four foot rolls, rather than three foot are helpful so you can do a wall in two passes, but I have trouble finding that width.
I recently tried a new supplier selling four foot rolls of sauna foil, but upon opening, it had a suspicious plastic look to it. That night, I put it in the sauna and within seconds it began to distort and curl up like the polyethylene I suspected it was made of. (see illustration above)
The second trick is to design the wall correctly. I read and see a lot of misinformation that touts using no air gap with foil. This is wrong. The air gap is essential. The foil works by reflecting radiant heat. All black bodies1 give off and absorb radiant heat that travels in a straight line from one hotter object to another cooler one; the hotter the body, the more heat it emits. The sauna rocks radiate a soft heat to you, the walls, and the benches, and that is why you want the sauna to be laid out so that everyone has a view of the rocks. The fire, if seen through a clear glass door, also radiates heat but at a higher intensity—too high for a comfortable sauna (but great for ambiance). With an air gap of at least a half inch, when the heat hits foil, it is reflected back into the room or the backside of the cedar. Because the foil is also a perfect conductor, if it touches the back side of the cedar (as will happen with no air gap), it pulls heat away from the cedar and transfers it to the wall space behind the foil air gap.
Air gap. A sauna building best practice.
I’ve understood this thermodynamic principle for a long time. I took a class called Solar Design and the Energy Efficient Home in my first semester of college. We learned all about insulation, heat transfer, and basic building skills. The first day of lab, wherein we built a timber frame house, I was handed a Makita 12” circular saw. My building career started right then and there.
With the web of misinformation out there, I had to think of a way to illustrate this basic principle of thermodynamics. So, one slow day in the shop, I rigged up an experiment and photographed it (see illustration below). I set up a section of cedar wall about 18″ from my infrared shop heater and fastened two pieces of foil to the back, one with a 3/4″ air gap, and one with no gap. After an hour the cedar was 250° F on the front—like it often is in my sauna. The back of the cedar was 121° F, which is impressive by itself. The back of the foil with no gap was 115° F, meaning it was acting as a perfect conductor, and the back of the foil with an air gap was 71° F: room temp. The air gap was clearly making a difference, 45° in this case.
The thermodynamic experiment begins.
The foil is a perfect vapor barrier, rated at zero perms—meaning no vapor moves through it. But unless you layer it properly, with insulation behind it, the moisture will condense on it or the first cold surface it hits. Even in a perfect build, there might be cold spots in the insulation (typically about the size of a mouse hole), so there likely will be some condensation, but this is not a problem if there is air movement. The air gap behind the cedar allows air to circulate around the cedar, removing any moisture, and ensuring that the wood heats and dries evenly and remains stable. Heating one side of a board and wetting or cooling the other is how you make curved boat staves.
There are other tricks to using the foil: unrolling it and rerolling it foil-in, using temporary magnets when working a commercial job with metal studs. But the key is to use care. Use plenty of hi-temp foil tape and patch tears as you go and work with a partner if possible.
I suppose you could build a sauna by putting a heater in a refrigerator box, but that would last about a day and be incredibly wasteful. Cedar touching foil won’t ruin your sauna and neither will plastic melting in the walls where you don’t see it. But if you are going to take the time and bear the expense of building a sauna, you might as well do it and so it will last generations. I guess my mother was right: applying foil carefully and not just throwing it up is the way to work.
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