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.
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.
Candle windows hark back to my time at Podunk, where the light in the sauna came from a bare bulb in a porcelain fixture outside a little square window into the dressing room. A sauna is too hot for a standard light fixture, so this arrangement made sense. Later, after I started building saunas, I learned that this was a more modern incarnation of the original candle window, which was literally a window into the dressing room with a shelf for a candle to sit on. These windows are common in Finland in freestanding saunas away from the house. The candle window allows a special, spiritual, summoning light into grace the sauna. Especially on those dark winter nights.
In the sauna tradition, we slow down. The flickering candle-light, seen from the bench in the sauna, lures you to relaxation and reflection. Life and relativity. Could there be a more tranquil way to release the stresses of the day?
Although it is this quality of the light that is so important, the candle window is totally pragmatic in a very Finnish way. A candle in the sauna room would melt even if not lit, so this setup was an obvious solution to the problem of lighting the dark interior of the hot room. Despite its pragmatic origins, I find it is also a chance for a little expressive design: it can be round or square, arched or colored. It can have an organic flare to it. Now, with cheap, battery-operated, multi-colored LED lights and even fake candles that look real, the light can be more than a simple bulb on a pull-chain porcelain fixture and be safe. Even if the sauna has built-in electric lighting, the candle window can be a signature element, one that distinguishes a personalized custom sauna from a generic kit.
It’s in the details.
Finnish pragmatic design inspiration comes from using what is available at hand and letting that material influence your design. There are many places to incorporate little details and personal touches: stick hardware towel pegs, stone-faced walls with stones from your backyard, thresholds of locally cut locust, round windows, etc. Think of decorative elements you can hang above the mantle. In my sauna building plans (which can be purchased and download), there is more about windows: framing information and tips on using windows safely in mobile saunas.
Wood-burning sauna with candle window to dressing room.
Here is a collection of the candle window designs and builds I’ve used over the years in and around the Finger Lakes and throughout New York State.
The New England coast is beautiful and varied, from the dramatic rocky shores of Maine to the sandy beaches of Cape Cod to the rocky moraine of Long Island’s north shore. The one thing New England’s coastal waters are not is warm. I remember swimming in Maine when I was in art school in Portland: I would get all hot and sweaty by running or biking to the beach and jump in and swim a brisk few hundred yards, to the astonishment of onlookers who dared not go past their knees. For most people the swimming season in Maine consists of two weeks in August.
It is no wonder that my last several mobile saunas have found homes near the coast—what a perfect way to extend the swimming season! Cold water and saunas traditionally go together. Ideally the sauna is situated so one can plunge into a lake, pond, stream, or ocean after each round. With a sauna on wheels, you can pull up to your favorite dipping spot and indulge yourself anytime of year. There is nothing like the thrill of jumping through a hole in the ice or plunging next to a waterfall in the whiteness of winter.
The mobile unit is fairly clandestine—once the stove reaches temperature, the chimney smoke is invisible; no one will suspect you are nearly naked inside, basking until you burst out and head for the water. I haven’t had the pleasure of sauna-ing next to the ocean, but one of these days, I’ll have to travel back to Higgin’s Beach in Maine, sauna in tow, and give onlookers a thrill as I defy the icy winter water with a post-sauna dip.
The other evening I came home from work, stressed out about the coronavirus, as many of us are, and decided to light the sauna to ease my anxiety. As it was a nice day, I decided to use the time it took heat the sauna to rake up some leaves that got matted into the lawn under a November snowfall. The breeze, which was out of the south, helped push the leaves into the hedgerow, but it also apparently helped fan the fire on my mobile wood-fired unit. By the time I put my rake down and stripped for a relaxing sauna, the thermometer was pinned at 235° F! Not one to shy away from heat, I jumped on in anyhow.
Always inquisitive, I use such opportunities to add to my knowledge about the sauna. I wondered how hot different surfaces really were with the heat so high. With only a towel on, I ran to the shop and grabbed my digital temperature gun. I use this gadget to test my saunas to make sure they are hot but also safe. The ceiling and walls were close to 300° near the stove, the walls were 230-250° above the bench, the benches were 200° and the lower benches were about 175°. The rocks were 450°—perfect for a good löyly—and the stove body glowed visibly red in the afternoon light, so about 1000° (the brightness of the glow corresponds to specific temperatures). The floor was predictably the coolest surface at 125°.
According to the Center for Disease Control, viruses cannot tolerate heat above about 167° F.1 Therefore, everything in a hot sauna from the lower bench up is guaranteed to be virus-free! No fears or worries as I bask in the heat.
That being said, despite what we all wish, the sauna will not kill a virus that has already infected you, nor will it likely destroy a virus ejected in a sneeze. The sauna will not cure you or protect you if your sauna mates are sick; in these desperate times, it’s probably best to avoid group saunas with strangers. But, taking a regular sauna will lower your stress level, boost your immunity2, and help you sleep better—all in a virus-free sanctuary.
Notes: 1 Reference “Using Heat to Kill Sars / Cov2” [Article>] 2 Reference: “…Finnish sauna sessions on the immune response…” [Article>]
Sauna is an interesting word. It is both a noun that describes the little structures I spend my days making and the action of how one uses that building. Mostly, I focus on the details of building and let the details of how one uses the sauna fall to the individual taste of my clients. I don’t adhere to a dogmatic approach; everyone has experiences and memories to draw from. Different countries have subtle variations: wetter, drier, hotter, timed sessions, birch vihtas, etc. My memories stem from my time at Podunk, in the old Finnish sauna. I remember the five-gallon joint-compound buckets used to gather water from the creek and few much-loved, battered aluminum wash basins as well as plastic wash tubs, wooden back brushes, loofa scrubbers, and other unique bathing implements. There was always some sort of ladle for pouring water on the rocks (which we always called a kipper in some misappropriation of Finnish-ness). And there were various soaps and shampoos—some common, some not so, like the dark-brown Finnish pine tar soap, which, despite its comparison to the sticky pine tar we brushed on our skis, actually felt pretty good.
Podunk.
Once the sauna got good and hot, we stripped down as unceremoniously as possible and went in. The first round was always be pretty talkative and end with a healthy ladle-full or two of water on the hot rocks until we had to bolt out the door and head to the creek. If someone were annoyingly loud, sometimes a good löyly would be timed to quiet things down. In the second and third rounds, if someone had bothered to make birch vihta from the tree outside the Podunk sauna, we might take great pleasure in thrashing each other (gently) with the leafy switch. The old Finns would make vihta in the spring out of fresh, soft birch leaves and keep them in the freezer. Now, you can actually buy them from Finland, dried and vacuum packed for a reasonable sum. After softening them in water for twenty minutes, they smell just like a fresh birch tree.
The last round in the sauna was the time to wash: after getting hot again, we took turns on the little washing bench, scrubbing ourselves (or each other) with the loofa or stiff sauna brushes and some sauna soap. Finally, a rinse with warm water washed off all the dead skin and residue of a week’s hard work, and we would leave the sauna all fresh and natural smelling. None of us ever had to wear deodorant or poufy colognes.
Pouring water on the rocks.How to have a sauna bath.Simple beauty of an ice lantern.
Sometimes I sauna with friends, sometimes alone. Always, it is the same: get hot until sweat just pours out of me, cool off, repeat; scrub my skin, maybe switch my back with the vihta, wash up, rinse down the sauna. It’s a ritual of sorts, but not like how a ritual in the church is dictated to you. As in church, there are ritual objects that create focus and help direct the actions, but instead of incense and gold, they are plastic and wood. And unlike church, there is no sin in doing it anyway you want to. The brushes, basins, ladle, soap, and vihta are there to help maintain the flow of the sauna experience. To the uninitiated, it may seem strange, but after a few times in a sauna, it all makes sense. It is just a bathhouse, after all.
Lately, I have found that the top of my noggin does not have so much insulation from the heat of a good löyly, so I have taken to wearing a felt sauna hat, which is sort of like a Shriner’s Fez, which is to say that it makes you feel just a little goofy. But then again, I wouldn’t want to be accused of taking the sauna ritual too seriously!
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