Deconstructing Podunk
To save it the old Sauna at Podunk, it had to be taken down. The squirrels had invaded and filled the dressing room with a cache of black walnuts. The building was slowly sinking into the earth, and the safety of the chimney—a heavy cast cement affair, supported in the ceiling by a rusty homemade contraption—was questionable. The gaping mouth of the woodstove, its door rusted open, was set in a permanent expression of whoa!
If the sauna was ever to make löyly again, work would have to be done. So a month ago, after careful consideration and much debate, Scarlet and I joined members of the Heila family for a day of deconstruction.
As you may recall from earlier posts about Podunk (Sauna Time, Sauna Ritual, Homecoming, Back to Podunk), this is the ninety year old sauna where many of us locals were initiated into the joys of sauna during the heyday of the 70s when the Podunk Ski Center was a mecca for Nordic Skiing and all things Finnish. The structure’s simple rustic character, which addressed the basic functionality of the sauna with what I call Finnish pragmatism, is the inspiration behind much of my sauna building. The demolition would give me the chance to dissect it and uncover some secrets of its original design.
We always thought it was the perfect sauna: Hot but airy, it made good löyly and was roomy enough for an intimate crowd of eight.
What I did not know was how the materials related to its function: how it heated up so well, how it held a good Löyly and never felt stuffy, and why it never burned down. Aesthetics aside, these are essential components to a well functioning sauna. We often debated whether it had any insulation at all, so I was especially curious about that.
We gathered on a drizzly morning with a chill in the air. Ironically, it was a perfect day for sauna. Our plan was to document the existing structure and take it down methodically, saving what we could and carting the rest away. Eventually, the structure will be rebuilt on the same site, the design as close to the original as possible. We proceeded quickly, each of us attacking a specific area. Beloved details, like the doors and little shelves in the dressing room, were labeled, wrapped, and safely stored. The repurposed barn siding was carefully removed plank by plank, and the whole front facade was Sawzalled off and preserved. As the layers were peeled back, we discovered not only that there had been several incarnations to the structure but we revealed answers to some of the questions I had been pondering. There were several surprises.
As the walls were removed from the outside in, we uncovered many layers and each wall was different. On the east wall, under the vertical reclaimed barn boards (installed in the ’70s?) was a layer of Inselbric, the ubiquitous and horribly ugly asphalt siding that was used starting in the ’30’s until aluminum siding became popular. The product was easy to use and durable and is still found on many economy (or as my Dad would call it: “Early American Poverty”) style homes dating between 1930 and 1960. This was over a layer of horizontal 1×6 pine boards, loosely spaced, which went around most of the building. The big surprise was under these boards: flattened cardboard boxes, several layers deep, between rough-sawn, vertical framing members about two feet on center.
The cardboard was in good shape and the labels were easily read: cereal case boxes from Wheaties, Corn Flakes, and others. This was the insulation we all had wondered about!
A web search of the logo style led to verification of the sauna’s 1935 date of construction. Vertical boards were interspersed with the cardboard with no apparent purpose. Was this to add thermal mass to the walls? The interior surface was initially all Beaverboard (an early fiber board) that had been covered with a thin veneer of plaster (real plaster, not joint compound) which was painted. This was akin to the plaster and tile block sauna of Van Buskirk Gulf I’ve written about in a previous blog post. The skimcoated Beaverboard provided a vapor resistant barrier that held the Löyly steam for the right amount of time. Later, in the 1970s, this barrier was covered with 1×6, tongue-and-groove, knotty pine. Given the current popular obsession with cedar interior sauna walls, I wonder if a more authentic sauna might be simply plaster with wooden benches and back rests? The plaster and paint layers (probably lead paint) were vapor semi-impermeable and thus capable of holding some of the moisture. Surely all the outer layers in the walls were breathable; that is, the allowed vapor to easily escape and not collect as condensation. This is a very important consideration in any kind of construction. But one corner post had signs of severe rot. Did the plaster layer crack here and allow moisture to saturate the wood? That must have opened the door for a colony of carpenter ants that moved in.
I also noticed that other than the entire building sinking into the earth, the walls were structurally sound. So much so that when Tom hooked up the tractor to pull the north wall off, the whole remaining building (already missing its east and south wall) simply hopped along the foundation slab behind the tractor, taking the chimney with it and sending everyone into fits of laughter. All those random layers of heavy boards were keeping things together. It’s not a recommended practice, but sometimes just heaping layers of wood into a structure creates enough redundancy to make it solid. I prefer the more efficient approach of building more with less.
The ceiling repeated the wall construction: plastered Beaverboard covered with pine. The tiny attic space was filled with a layer of cellulose—peppered with rodent droppings, and walnuts—empty boxes of rat poison, and a few old bottles here and there (which probably once contained hooch). One attractive bottle was verified as being from 1938 by its unique design. Probably teenagers hiding their stash after a sauna, but quite possibly, offerings to the sauna Gods to protect the structure from burning down.
As for fire safety, it was barely existent. It was a miracle that the sauna didn’t burn down. There was charred wood throughout the attic, especially around the iron chimney supports.
Again, there were a lot of heavy boards laid across the ceiling joists, which seemed to have no structural significance, perhaps only adding thermal mass or insulation. The roof rafters were so heavy, and the roof so strong, that after it was lying on the ground like a low pup tent, Tom had to drive the tractor over it to break it apart. The metal, standing seam roof, with its many coats of black tar, was in surprisingly good shape, but leakage was occurring where the heavy, cast cement chimney penetrated it. The stove below, welded by me in the 1990s, was so rusted it was deemed scrap.
The cement floor had sloped to a drain but was cracked and broken. The original cement pour seemed hodgepodge and lacked any rebar. Woodchucks had tunneled voids underneath it. The drain had allowed bathing—something the early Finnish farmers needed as the house probably lacked plumbing. The floor will be replaced with an edge-thickened slab as the foundation—with a solid gravel base over undisturbed earth reinforcement with steel.
I consider bathing an essential part of the sauna experience. It is a function of the sauna that informs my designs.
Perhaps one component why the sauna felt so good was all the brick work around the face of the stove—the stove was fired from the dressing room—a traditional design I frequently use. (External Feed Sauna >) This added about a thousand pounds of thermal mass to the hot room. Thermal mass holds heat and radiates it back into the room, very desirable. But it also means it will take longer to heat up. I typically use a lightweight fire wall (between hot room and dressing room) so the sauna will heat quickly and to lessen the load on the building structure. Perhaps I should rethink that and revert to the solid masonry I started building with in the ‘90s. Ironically, the brick work at Podunk was added in the ’70s. The old Finns in our region commonly relied on asbestos board for fire protection.
By the end of the day, we had a pile of barn boards and other parts stacked and labeled in the old ski lodge, and a dumpster overflowed with the rest. Although most of the sauna was discarded, the lessons learned will live on in the saunas I continue to build. Next year, we will rebuild Podunk with modern efficiency but in the same basic footprint as the original. Hopefully, the entire facade will be replaced and the lilac tree where the sauna bell hung replanted. We’ll probably skip the lead paint and asbestos board and use a modern, UL listed chimney support in lieu of the original homemade rig. Fire safety will be based on science, not luck (or sauna Gods). The walls will be lined with cedar over foil (with an air gap!), and the functionality will be the same, and hopefully, better.
Family and friends will gather there to sweat and bathe and run naked to the creek for generations to come.
