When building a sauna the first and possibly most important consideration is the location.
A wood-burning sauna, free from the tether of an electrical connection, can be built a ways from the house—not just for safety but also to create a separation from the digital buzz of modern life. Simple and inexpensive solar options make it easy to provide needed lighting. The sauna should have some of the comforts of home but be integrated into nature; near a body of water is always a good choice.
My latest sauna build does all of that and more. The site is fairly close to the house but lies outside the garden gates. It all but hangs on the edge of a small gorge that contains a lively creek in its serpentine confines. Like the basswood and cherry trees that cling to the sides of the gorge, firmly rooted in the ground, the sauna is anchored to the 300 million year old shale bedrock with concrete and steel. The owners built a steep stair down to a small waterfall that flows into a perfect, bathtub sized hole.
Descending the steps may be slightly perilous, but that only adds to the adrenaline rush after leaving the steaming sauna and plunging into the ever-cold water.
As I build, I tweak my design to allow nature into the sauna. With the structure framed but without sheathing, it allowed a perfect view up the ravine from the upper bench, suggesting the optimum location for a small candle window. The larger window allows a view of the wooded hill and brings in ample afternoon light. The view down into the creek through the framing had me imagining a small square creek view porthole, below knee level, that would let in the ambient sound of the rushing creek. Exiting the sauna, bathers face the woods, not the house. The eye follows a crude stair-path up into the forest then down the other stairway to the creek.
The sauna is visible from the road and the house, but neither is evident from the sanctuary within. All that is heard is the babble of the creek, and all that is felt is the relaxing heat of the sauna.
Finishing a few rounds in the sauna with a dunk in the massaging water is pure bliss.
The site is not only perfect for the sauna, but it was a joy to work there, listening to and watching the water flow. Daily, I took dips in the creek to beat the steamy summer heat. Having a site that enables me to enjoy the process of building means I can build a better sauna—one that is infused with the spirit of the place and connected to nature.
Increasingly, I hear from clients who want a sauna as a way to enhance their hot yoga (Bikram) practice. It’s a perfect pairing: What better way to follow up (or warm up for) a hot yoga session than with an even hotter sauna!
Recently, a couple asked me to convert an old, dingy, freestanding cinder block garage into a sauna/hot yoga studio. First, I made sure the cinderblock wall was stable and did some minimal repairs. Then I isolated the block wall from the warm, humid space by adhering expanded polystyrene (XPS) foam board to the walls. This was critical as to prevent moist air from hitting the cold cinder blocks and condensing. Next, I framed in the space, insulated the walls with mineral wool batts, and finished the yoga space with drywall and the sauna with cedar (with the requisite radiant sauna foil layer and air gap). New windows replaced the old; dramatic deep window recesses were a result of the thick walls. Bamboo flooring over floating sleepers over foam board created just the right bounce for the yoga space, while the sauna was fitted with traditional duck boards. LED lighting added just the right ambiance. The heart of this sauna is the Harvia Cilindro heater with it’s two hundred pound rock capacity.
Amazingly, the old building was plumb and square—the original masons did a good job. Fighting an out-of-square space is the bane of all renovators.
A sanctuary just a step away from home.
This project was a complete transformation for this building (see below), turning it from a creaky, old, under-utilized garage into a revitalized space for self-transformation. Make an inventory of the neglected spaces on your property awaiting transformation and give me a call!
You’ve probably heard that I’ve spent a lot of time in and around the saunas. But another hot spot I’ve spent a lot of time around is kilns. Specifically, foundry kilns and ceramic kilns. Unsurprisingly, there is a strong relationship between the two, as they both involve getting things hot. In the lost wax casting process, investment or ceramic shell molds are heated to roughly 1500° F. The extreme heat burns off the wax original, and thus, the lost wax of lost wax casting. This can take hours or even days depending on the mold type and size. A ceramic kiln can get much hotter, up to 3000° F. That is hot enough to melt steel and many other metals.
I learned how to do bronze casting in art school. It is an ancient process, and my classmates and I did it pretty much the same way that it was done thousands of years ago. We learned to determine how hot things were by using our senses. All objects emit radiation when heated but at about 1100-1300° radiation becomes visible. Peering into a hot kiln (safety glasses strongly suggested) is like looking at another world, perhaps on some gaseous alien planet. The blast of heat through the spy-hole is like a ray gun. Solid objects become transparent. Heat and light become one; the heated molds don’t reflect light but emit light. We rarely used pyrometers (hi-temp thermometers), and when we did, it was only to affirm what our senses were telling us. We recorded the smells of things burning off. When the smells were gone, the molds were clean and ready to accept the molten bronze.
When a kiln is loaded, there is always discussion about the hot spots—certain delicate molds need to avoid the highest heat while larger molds might need it more. There is always conjecture about how the heat circulates; a whole aspect of kiln building is dedicated to controlling the flow of heat within the kiln. Some of this conjecture is borne out in the results of a firing—whether things fire correctly or not. Ceramicists use cones: small tapering forms that bend at specific temperatures. After a firing, these devices will give a true telling of how the firing went. But despite the science, there is still a lot of mystery and art to the process, so much so that a firing of a large kiln can take on a ritualistic feeling. Staying up late to tend the kiln (as is done with wood fired and other non automated kilns), drinking beer, and heating up pizza on its surface add to the aura.
Thinking of all of this casting lore makes me think of sauna. Both processes have been done pretty much the same way for millennia, involving community and an aura of ritual. Both focus on fire and heat, and even as well studied and commonly practiced as they both are, there is still a bit of mystery involved in each process.
A kiln is like a sauna on steroids. The heat is so amplified that its flow and effects are unmistakable. Observing a kiln is a lesson in thermodynamics. In the sauna building culture, there is a lot of banter about how to best heat, insulate, and vent a sauna. Yet, all of it is conjecture, based on theory, until one sits in a sauna and feels the heat radiating off the rocks and the wave of löyly hitting the sensitive tips of your ears.
When I design a sauna, I draw from my years of kiln experience. I think of the heat as a visceral substance, almost visible, as in a kiln. I relish using my senses to discern quality rather than depending on technology. Even if the sauna is electric with a digital control panel, I rely on feeling, not the number on the display. I imagine the flow of heat like the way it flows in a kiln. My foundry experience has informed my understanding of sauna in ways that are hard to describe, but suffice it to say that I have always been drawn to fire and to the mysteries that it holds.
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