Having grown up around the waters of Cayuga Lake, whose long finger touched the shores of my childhood stomping grounds, it is no wonder that our dreams often turned to things nautical. Since we first started taking saunas at Podunk in our early teens, the fantasy topic of floating saunas always came up. We loved swimming in the lake, but its waters are only warm enough to swim from the beginning of July to about mid- September. What a better way to extend that season than with a sauna? What a better way to sauna than not just near the water, but on the water (oh, but we did enjoy the naked runs to the creek!)
I’ve had an ongoing affair with boats: I have a love of canoes that goes back to my discovery of the Adirondack waterways which form an almost continuous route from civilization into the deep wilderness, and back; the caveat being that short carries were required.
I started making one years ago: a strip canoe affair. Not strip, as in naked, but “strip” as in thin bands of cedar, all joined and sandwiched between two epoxy and fiberglass layers. I never finished that boat; its progress was aborted midstream after I broke my collar bone in three during a trail running race. The unfinished shell still looms over my shop as a reminder, high up in a loft space. So, suffice it to say, that when a client approached me about building a much bigger boat, I had my hesitations about my luck with boats.
Mark initially wanted a beachfront sauna. Then zoning and other issues steered us to thinking of a floating sauna. My childhood fantasy! Granted it is not a new idea; in fact, there are several in Norway and other places. But on Cayuga Lake? This was to be a first. It made sense, in a fantastical way. He had ample dockage, and limited beach; he was willing to invest in the idea and take the risk, and he was a nice guy with just enough chutzpah to make it happen.
Client Mark and Family on Maiden Voyage of Sauna Boat, Cayuga Lake, New York.
The Design phase took over a year. It was a real challenge because this is not just carpentry but nautical engineering; precision was required, and my hand-drawn methodology needed some sharper pencils. Some 30 pages of drawings later and we were ready to build. We had a great fabricator for the frame, ladder-stair, and railing (Service Machine Tool in Elmira, NY) and some other great help along the way, but the whole thing—all 26 feet of it— was assembled in the shop. It was a challenge as the beast took over—floor to ceiling—and there was a lot of self doubt along the way to trip over.
I am not a boat builder so there was as much learning as doing, but we pulled it off—including the challenging work of four round cedar windows trimmed with real ship-salvage portholes.
There were a lot of other finicky details (I have come to understand that boat building is all finicky details). The biggest challenge was loading and transporting it on an oversize low-boy flatbed truck. At one point we had the 10,000-pound hulk levitating on three forklifts as the low-boy flatbed backed under it. The guys at Lansing Harbor Marina gave us confidence, especially after it passed its initial float test. After a few months of tweaking we took the maiden voyage, complete with a champagne toast.
The unique thing with our sauna is that it is a fully navigational boat with twin Electric motors and the sauna is fired with a gas fired heater and has 12-volt electric lights powered by a solar system. Ideally it will be used on a calm day when you can drift out to the middle of the lake, sauna, jump into the clear waters, cool off on the roof deck, and repeat until the fantasy has been satiated. Maybe even under the stars, or Northern Lights.
Thanks to everyone who helped make this possible, Especially Scarlet, who believed in the dream, and Mark and Karie, who supported it.
The old Sauna at Podunk had two rooms: a small dressing room and the larger hot room. The Old Nippa stove sat between them embedded in a masonry wall. Sitting on the benches we stared at the business end of the stove with its pile of rocks and the stove was tended from the dressing room.
This arrangement always made sense to me and is how I have been building my saunas for 30 years. I learned to weld in art school and set up my own studio soon after. Ozzie would send people my way for their stove repairs. After seeing how other stoves failed, I designed and started making my own stoves using much heavier plate on the top, where the heat would soften the thinner steel and typically lead to collapse under the weight of the rocks. I also kept to the external feed (thru-wall) and designed my stoves to be fired exclusively that way. As kids, we loved to pretend we could speak Finnish by stretching vowels and consonants together and making up Finnish sounding nicknames for each other. I called my stove the Lämpimämpi by combining Lemp and Memp. Finns will chuckle at this because it translates to: “warmer”.
I called my stove the Lämpimämpi by combining Lemp and Memp. Finns will chuckle at this because it translates to: “warmer”.
There are so many reasons for the external feed (thru-wall):
• The fire-tending, and ash debris are kept out of the hot room and you don’t have to tramp in and out with your boots on to tend the fire.
• Venting a small space can be complicated; a sauna stove requires significant combustion air which can create drafts or, worse, rob oxygen from the hot room. The external feed draws air from the dressing room or outside.
• Any stove front requires 36 inches of clearance to combustibles in front of it. This can’t be mitigated by heat shields. This severely limits the layout of the hot room. However, it is easy to get 3 feet in front of the stove in the dressing room.
• Any stove also requires a noncombustible hearth (stone) 18” in front of the stove. Hot ash and coals falling out the stove are a major source of fires. In a crowded and dark sauna room these hot coals can easily be overlooked, fall under duck boards, etc.
•A flickering flame to look at may be romantic but it is the soft heat off the rocks you want, not the searing radiant heat you get from sitting in front of a blazing fire. Typically, the fire may be almost out by the time the sauna is ready. The rocks should be the focal point. Also, following the 36-inch rule above, you can’t have the stove front facing the bathers, unless the sauna is excessively big.
• If you are providing a sauna experience for others, you can discreetly tend the fire without interrupting the bathers or invading their privacy.
•The external feed stove heats the dressing room just enough so that you can hang out and watch the fire while the sauna heats up.
Installing the external feed may seem daunting but it is not that difficult. A firewall with the requisite size opening will be required. This can be solid masonry, which will add thermal mass (and take longer to heat the sauna) or a hollow insulated firewall with steel studs and cement board, and tile or stone facing, or stucco over metal lathe (which I typically use). A metal sleeve will be provided with the stove to dress up this opening and provide further heat shielding. My Lämpimämpi stove has an integrated heat shield / rock basket that works with the wall opening so that fresh air coming in is heated directly by the stove and directed over the rocks, which is an advantage over simply having the rocks sit on top inside a steel box. As with any installation, all listed clearances need to be adhered to, but with this method, the stove will take up less space in the hot room and make for a cleaner presentation. For your next sauna, consider this traditional way of building it.
The latest sauna that we built is an indoor electric affair in a new addition that also holds a hot tub and pool, an enviable personal home spa combination. It has an ample window and large 10 kw Harvia Cilindro heater that should make the top bench a real hot spot. A feature of this sauna that I love is the view from that bench. Not just any view, but one that takes me back to my childhood.
The property is located on the eastern shoulder of Cayuga Lake, at a point where the land starts to dip dramatically downward to the long snaking shore. The slope is so steep here, that you don’t see the lake, only the opposite side, a little more than two miles away. Someone unfamiliar with our landscape might not even be aware that the longest of the Finger Lakes fills the glacial trough below. While the scene feels close, it is, in fact, a long journey away.
Most pronounced is Rice Hill: the old ski and sledding hill that, at one time had a rope tow run off of an old tractor motor. At the top of the hill is a warming hut and two shallow ice rinks, where many a hockey game was played. When we were too broke or didn’t have the ambition or means to go to the closest downhill ski area, we would go to Rice Hill and practice our ess turns. I also recall many tobogganing adventures; it was the kind of hill where serious injuries where the mark of a good run.
Just to the north was a ten-acre parcel my parents bought in the 1960’s with the dream of building a house. My dad designed it with all the meticulous detail he employed on his larger architectural projects. It was a three story modernist affair, with a flat roof, and cantilevered balconies that would have commanded a view across the lake to precisely where this sauna is.
In the early 70’s, things turned south for my Dad; there was a recession, he lost his job, increased his drinking, and the dream of the modernist masterpiece overlooking the lake was deflated like a balloon the cat played with. All we were left with was the model of the house my dad crafted out of mat board, with twigs as stand-ins for trees. Later, before my parents had to sell the property as a part a bankruptcy plan, I actually lived there in my tent after I finished Grad school and waited for my dreams to come to life.
I bring all of this up become of the associations of sauna with memory. So many of my clients, who are typically, like myself, aging baby boomers, tell me that they want a sauna because of the wonderful childhood memories they have of taking saunas. Perhaps their family has Finnish roots and they experienced summers in Finland, or they had a camp somewhere with a sauna. Like my experiences at Podunk, these childhood memories start to loom larger with age. Memory acts as a filter; the important things are retained and the trivial is set aside.
Landscape acts as a placeholder for memory. Living where I grew up, I constantly encounter places that stir memory. Working with my past literally out the window on this job, I was constantly reminded of my connection to this magical place in the heart of the Finger Lakes. Sauna is like a keystone in all of this.
Like so many saunas that I build, I dream for a moment; what if it was mine? But then, I hand over the sauna to the new owners so they can ponder their own dreams. In this case, the owner will be looking at the near view of the land he grew up on.
In order to save it, the old Sauna at Podunk had to be taken down. The squirrels had taken over and filled the dressing room with a cache of nuts. 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 stove door was rusted open in a permanent state of whoa. If this 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, (Sauna Time, Sauna Ritual,Homecoming, Back to Podunk) this is the 90 year-old sauna where many of us locals were initiated in the joys of sauna during the heyday of the 70’s when the Podunk Ski Center was a mecca for Nordic Skiing and all things Finnish. Its 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 the 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 8.
What I did not know was how the materials related to its function: how well it heat up, how it held a good Löyly and never felt stuffy, and why it never burned down. Aesthetics aside, these are essential components to a good functioning sauna. We often debated whether it had any insulation at all, so I was especially curious about that.
It was a drizzly morning with a chill to the air; ironically, 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, as close to the existing as possible, on the same site. We proceeded quickly, each of us attacking an area. Beloved details like the doors and little shelves in the dressing room were labeled, wrapped and carefully stored. The barn board siding was carefully removed board by board, 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 uncovered the 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 1970’s?) was a layer of Inselbric, the ubiquitous and horribly ugly asphalt siding that was used starting in the 1930’s. It 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, until aluminum siding became popular. This was over a layer of horizontal 1×6 pine boards, loosely spaced, which went around most of the building. Under this was the big surprise: 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 wondered about!
A web search of the logo style led to verification of the 1935 date of construction. Interspersed with the cardboard were vertical boards with no apparent purpose. Was this to add thermal mass to the walls? The interior surface was initially all Beaverboard, an early fiber board, which was 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 wrote about in a previous blog. This would have provided a vapor resistant barrier that would have held the Löyly steam for the right amount of time. Later, in the 1970’s, this was covered with 1×6 tongue and groove knotty pine. With our current obsession over cedar (or other wood) interior walls wonder if a more authentic sauna might be simply plaster with wooden benches and back rests? The plaster and paint layers (probably lead) 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, allowing vapor to easily escape and not collect as condensation, which is a very important consideration in any kind of construction. But I did notice one corner post had signs of severe rot. Did the plaster layer crack here and allow moisture to saturate the wood, setting the stage for a colony of carpenter ants to move 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) simple hopped along the foundation slab behind the tractor, taking the chimney with it and sending me into a fit 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 was like the walls, with plastered Beaverboard covered by pine. The tiny attic space was filled with a layer of cellulose interspersed with rodent droppings, walnuts, empty boxes of rat poison and a few old bottles, which probably once contained hooch. One 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 it from burning down.
As for fire safety, it was a miracle that the sauna never did burn down. There was a lot of charred wood throughout the attic, especially around the iron chimney supports.
Again, there were a lot of heavy boards, 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 refractory cement chimney penetrated it. The stove below, welded by me in the 1990’s, was so rusted it was deemed to be scrap.
The cement floor had sloped to a drain but was cracked and broken. The original cement pour seemed hodgepodge and lacked any re-bar. Woodchucks had tunneled voids underneath it. The drain allowed for bathing— something the early Finnish farmers needed as the house probably lacked plumbing; bathing, to me, is an essential part of the sauna experience; that function of the sauna informs my designs. The floor will be replaced with an edge- thickened slab as the foundation; with a solid gravel base over undisturbed earth and with steel reinforcement.
The one component that perhaps was a factor in why the sauna felt so good was all the brick work around the stove, which was fired through the dressing room wall—a traditional design I frequently use. This added about a thousand pounds of thermal mass around the stove. Thermal mass holds the heat and radiates it back into the room but also means it will take longer to heat up. I typically use a lightweight fire wall so the sauna will heat quickly and to lessen the load on the building structure, but perhaps I should re-think that and revert to the solid masonry I started building with in the ‘90s. Ironically, the brick work at Podunk was added in the 70’s. The old Finns around here 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 home-made rig that was there. Fire safety will be based on science, not luck. Cedar over foil (with an air gap!) will line the walls 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.
If you look “Podunk” up in the dictionary, it will tell you that it is a hypothetical or insignificant town. The folks who live there think otherwise. Podunk is actually a place name on the map a short ski south of Trumansburg, New York, where I grew up. Despite having only a smattering of residents, they will all tell you that is very real and very significant.
In the 1960’s Ozzie Heila settled there with this family on an old farmstead established by an even older Finn who first built his sauna (above) before the house in the 1930’s. It is also where I learned of all the important things in life. In the 1970’s I spent countless winter hours there at the ski center that Ozzie established, becoming a become a damn good Nordic skier and developing a life-long passion for the sport.
In the summers I explored the creek with his son, my good friend Daniel, and learned the value of immersing one’s self in nature. Daniel’s mother, Ethel, was my art teacher in middle school; she helped me become the artist I am today and we still have wonderful conversations about color theory and art composition. And at the heart of the complex of dated farm buildings was the sauna; there I learned to channel my need to experience extremes into something healthy and life affirming. We loved going from the hot to the cold.
Jumping in the creek in the dead of winter after a searing round in the sauna, we felt more alive than ever. That feeling has never died; each cold plunge I take during sauna takes me back to that creek.
Today, Daniel and his family were back in the area and we went to Podunk to visit the old homestead once again. This time we took our Finnish Blue mobile sauna and parked it next to the ramshackle old sauna, which is now defunct and awaiting a rebirth. Many things have changed but some things are the same. The trees have grown huge or even died, the old purple Lilac, with the rusty sauna bell hanging from its branches, is gone and the brush has been cleared away from the old sauna, revealing the sagging bones of the century-old structure. But the building itself is as recognizable as the last day I took a sauna there about 25 years ago. The inside is a sadder story—it turns out that squirrels like the sauna too and they have made it theirs. As if in a expression of horror at the mess, the Lämpimämpi stove I welded up for Ozzie in the 90’s sits with it’s mouth rusted wide open.
The path through the field to the creek is the same but with a detour to the left towards a new dipping hole: a bathtub in the midst of the rushing current with a strategically placed rock to help keep your butt moored. The run down to the creek had the same awkwardness … trying to run all out before you cooled off but trying to maintain stable footing the same. And the sensation! The whoops and hollers of 12-year-old boys came out of us as we braved the icy April stream.
Real or not, Podunk is the same as it will always be. What are memories but unreal fragments in our minds, ready to be stirred up by whirling waters of a cold stream, or by the hot steam of a sauna? The old next to the new will always appear old, until we make it new again and live our lives in the now, to the fullest, with no regrets, and dreams, not of memories, but of tomorrows.
New sauna and parked it next to the old sauna near the creek.
When we think of Sauna, we generally think of a wood-lined room heated by an electric or wood-fired kiuas (even though my last post was on the discovery of an old smooth plastered sauna.) The wood is integral to the experience—for the aesthetics of its look, its pleasant smell, and ability to take the humidity and temperature extremes. But all wood is not alike, and the question of what kind of wood to use always arises. The answer to that question, like everything else these days, is changing.
Typically in the US, especially in the generic gym and hotel saunas, and home kit saunas, Western Red Cedar is used. As its name implies, it is from the western US and Canada. All lumber is graded and each board is stamped as it runs through the mill. The grade indicates species, appearance, mill, and strength of the wood. The letters A-D are modified by Select, Clear and STK (select tight knots). For cedar saunas, it will be either a clear select grade or STK, the latter being almost half the price of the former. Cedar is also produced mainly for exterior siding applications and comes with a textured surface on one side that, unlike the sawing pattern of rough sawn lumber, is applied in the mill after sawing. This rough surface is considered the “good” side to which the grade applies. A big frustration with cedar is that I want the smooth side facing out and, since the board is graded to the other side, there is no guarantee that the smooth side has the appearance that the grade indicates.
Western Red Cedar, graded clear select with many variations of color
Color in cedar varies a lot: one side can be red and the other have annoying stripes of white wood. Clear select grade A boards will be better, but they come at a premium price, currently about $12-15 a board foot (12’x1 ft x1” thick, nominal dimensions). For years I have typically used Western Red STK for the walls and maybe Clear Select grade on the benches. This wood comes from either Idaho or British Columbia (BC). STK is likely from managed (regenerated) forest plantations and Clear Select is from larger old growth trees in BC. There is a guilt factor here I consider, so I veer towards STK whenever possible. (I also use Northern White Cedar frequently in freestanding saunas and our mobile saunas but that is the topic of another post.)
Cedar has been touted for its stability in the heat—which is true, and because of its low density, it doesn’t get hot to the touch—an important feature in a hot room with bare flesh touching the walls and benches.
Wood is a global commodity affected by the stock markets, inflation, building trends, shipping woes, fire seasons and the whims of political leaders who set tariffs as a way to taunt each other. You can make a career (and people do) out of studying the ebb and flow of lumber supply and prices. Add to this mix the pandemic and you have a roller coaster of unpredictability. The information I gleaned from building ten or twenty years ago I can no longer rely on. Suppliers have come and gone, quality has gone down and prices go mostly up.
The Pandemic created a real change in the labor force as well. There was never a shortage of raw lumber-logs but as workers and truck drivers got sick or just quit, mills shut down and logs piled up. The calculus used to predict building trends was skewed by everyone staying home and building decks with their pandemic relief money and we all saw prices soar while availability of lumber, especially cedar, shrank. In the meantime, the cedar I could get has been showing up with major defects, some from the mill, some from very poor handing: fork lift stabs are so common I have to over-order for very job. I assume this is the result of experienced older workers leaving the work force and being replaced by a cohort too inexperience to understand that the 6-board bundle they just mangled cost me more than what they make in two days. Some days I feel like all I make is very expensive kindling.
Cedar, graded side up (rough) with shipping damage
The truth is, in Finland, the source of my sauna inspiration, they don’t even have Western Red Cedar. They have soft wood species similar to what we have—spruce, pine, fir (SPF) but, in general, the quality and nature of wood varies by region. Wood from northern climates grows slower and has a denser grain.
As in Scandinavia, trees in uniformly dense forests have straighter grain as the trees race to reach up for the sun. Compare a “lone wolf” white oak, with its sprawling branches, to a deep forest oak.
Norway Spruce is the wood choice for many Finns, as are Alder and Aspen, which are soft hardwoods. The latter grow bigger there than our typical Aspen and Alder which rarely found at local mills. Cedar has been touted for its stability in the heat—because of its low density, it doesn’t get hot to the touch. But now Scandinavians have started using a thermal process of using heat and steam to modify wood and make it more stable and rot resistant (or so the web pages claim). I suspect there is also a Scandinavian work ethic at play: working in the trades there does not carry the same stigma of being a high school dropout, as it does here, and attention to detail and quality are paramount. Call it the IKEA effect.
Thermory and Lunawood are two brands available now in the US. The shipping crisis (highlighted by a boat getting stuck sidewise in the Suez Canal) has calmed down so now the economy of having quality wood freighted in containers from the Baltic’s to you (via a US distributor) probably makes more sense than wasting your time perusing the aisles of a big box store (or several) to glean out a few good cedar boards from a pile of fork lift-stabbed firewood. I also measure the time I spend trying to hide defects as I install the wood. While I still want to get all of my materials as locally sourced as possible, we are now in a global economy and looking abroad is certainly starting to make more sense to me. —Rob
Beautiful samples of thermally modified wood using heat and steam
