When building a sauna the first and possibly most important consideration is the location. With a wood-burning sauna, which is free from the tether of an electrical connection, it can be away from the house—not just for safety but also to create a separation from the electrical buzz of modern life. Simple and inexpensive solar options make it easy to provide needed lighting. It should have some of the comfort of home but be integrated into nature; near a body of water is always a good choice.
My latest sauna 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 where small waterfall flows into a perfect bathtub sized hole. Descending it may be slightly perilous but that only adds to the adrenaline to rushing from the steaming of the sauna and plunging in the ever-cold water.
As I build I tweak my design to allow nature into the sauna. Framed and without sheathing I could see the perfect view up the ravine from the upper bench, suggesting the optimum location for a small candle window. The large window allows a view of the wooded hill and brings in ample afternoon light and the view down into the creek through the framing allowed me to imagine the possibility of a small square creek view porthole below knee level that would let in the ambient sound of the rushing creek. Exiting the sauna one faces the woods, not the house; a crude stair-path leads the eye up into the forest while the other leads to the creek.
The sauna is visible from the road and the house, but neither is evident from the sanctuary within. All you hear is the babble of the creek and all you feel 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 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 allows me to enjoy the process of building lends means I can build a better sauna—one that is infused with the spirit of the place and connected to nature.
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 design and builds over the years in and around the Finger Lakes and New York State.
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!
I just completed a large 9’x12′ sauna at Silverlaken Glampground near Letchworth State Park. The glampground is an ideal setting for quiet retreats or group gatherings: a main lodge in a historic cottage, private cabins and luxury tents next to sparkling Silver Lake just miles from one of the most popular state parks in New York. The sauna is the perfect centerpiece for small or large gatherings. A group sauna is different from a small intimate home sauna; it creates a unique social situation where you can commune with strangers and make new friends all while stripped bare of the trappings of social status, class, or superficiality. It can be a perfect setting for friends to solemnly celebrate life’s important moments: a reunion, a wedding, a men’s retreat, or whatever occasion that will be enhanced by closeness and shared exhilaration. The sauna easily holds a dozen or more bathers and is a stone’s throw from the lake.
As I always do, I tested the sauna before leaving a finished project. The new owner was elated as I brought it up to temperature and explained the intricacies of sauna; after a round, we jumped in the brisk lake. It was the perfect way to end an exhausting effort and make my long haul home a relaxing one.
If you are in Western New York and looking for a unique place to stay and want a sauna experience, I recommend you check outSilverlaken!
The kiuas, or heater, is the heart of the sauna. In a wood-burner, it is commonly referred to as the sauna stove, but a wood stove it is not! There is a lot of misconception around the kiuas and how it is different from a wood stove that you might use in your house.
First, some history. The modern house stove is really a heating device designed to add comfort to your home while conforming to certain safety and smoke emission rules. Typically they are not used as primary heating appliances, unless you live in a cabin off-grid somewhere. Back in the 70s, during the energy crisis, woodstoves became popular as a way to save money. They were pretty much unregulated and varied in design from a kit that consisted of a door and a flue collar you could slap onto a used fifty-gallon drum, to a more complex Vermont Castings wood stove. Earlier stoves had little control over combustion; these evolved into airtight units that could keep a fire smoldering all night, if not for an entire season. I had one of these highly efficient stoves and didn’t let the fire go out all winter except to clean it. Cleaning the chimneys on these units is an imperative: when wood—especially if it has not been cured for two years—is burned slowly by reducing the combustion air to near nil, creosote forms. This is the result of the wood’s resinous gasses condensing on the inside of the cool chimney walls. As a result of the slow burning, these stoves emit a lot of smoke. After many houses were lost to chimney fires, safety regulations were put into place, and stoves are now required to use catalytic converters to reduce emissions, much like on your car. These regulated stoves require a religious adherence to the use of dry wood, lest your catalytic converter clog up, which they tend to do. Such stoves evolved into today’s models that use a carefully designed system of baffles and airflow to make fires burn efficiently. Now, all wood-burning home heating devices installed in the US must comply with UL (Underwriters Laboratory) safety standards and increasingly stringent EPA standards for particulate emissions. The stoves work well and are very cozy but, by design, they heat up slowly and are not meant to burn all night long not to mention all season long. Because they are intricate designs with interconnected parts, they are all cast iron. The exception is some stoves made in the pre-catalytic converter era, which were welded steel.
So, that is a wood stove. You may find a used one and think you can build a sauna around it, but the truth is, with the rare exception of one of those 70s all welded steel stoves (not the barrel ones!), you can’t. You can build a small hot room with a wood stove, but it will never be a real sauna. Here is why: A sauna stove, or kiuas, is designed to do one thing—heat sauna rocks. It is the hot rocks that heat the sauna and produce bursts of löyly steam, the essence of sauna. Early saunas did not have metal stoves. They did not even have the technology to make a metal stove, all they had was wood, earth, and rocks. The kiuas was essentially a hollowed out pile of rocks that lacked a chimney. A fire was lit within, the room filled with smoke, and after the rocks got hot, the fire was extinguished and the room cleared of smoke via vents and thereafter the rocks heated the room. The closer you can get to that smokey ideal—Savusauna experience—the better.
A sauna stove is not a wood stove; it fires hot and fast, it burns sticks not logs. Its job is to heat rocks. If fired correctly, you will never have to clean the chimney. The appropriate hot fire will combust all of the sticky wood gas and reduce creosote buildup. It is welded steel—can stand up to having water poured over it while red-hot. Cast iron cracks or explodes when subjected to this. It can take the weight of a hundred or more pounds of rocks sitting on top of it when cherry-red. Ferrous metal takes on specific colors when heated. At 1400° F, it is cherry red. At that temperature, an 1/8 inch plate of steel is as malleable as taffy on a hot summer day at the beach. I’ve repaired many sauna stoves with tops that looked like an egg carton from the stones pressing down on the hot metal. So I started making stoves (my Lämpimämpi sauna stove) with 1/2 inch thick plate at the top. I fire my stove so hot that I see dark, cherry-red glow underneath the stones. I swear that sometimes I can read a book by the glow coming off my sauna stove. If you fired your home-heating wood stove like that, you would be crazy. I like to test the limits of my stoves to know they are safe.
When you light a sauna stove, you want to fire it, that is, bring it up to temperature quickly. Use paper and dry kindling and then stuff it full of sticks, not logs (wood scraps from building saunas work great). Because sauna stoves are for intermittent use, they are exempt from the EPA particulate rules. But, the truth is once it gets going after about ten minutes, it should burn so hot that there is no smoke at all. Other than the shimmering light from the escaping heat, I can’t tell if my sauna is heating up by looking at the chimney. House wood stoves are tame devices, meant to be safe. Sauna heaters are another beast. That is why I will never install a wood-burning kiuas in a sauna in the home or attached to a house. Wood-burning saunas do burn down now and then.
If you are building your own wood-burning sauna, you may have a building inspector involved or have to get a wood-burning appliance inspection for your home insurance, and that may require a UL listing. The only heater with a UL label is the Lamppa Kuuma stove. Most others are made for the European or Canadian market, which use different standards. So, before you click on “buy” you should have a conversation with any inspectors involved. They may love the idea of a sauna, or they may think you are crazy to sit in a small hot room and throw water on a red-hot wood stove. In that case, you’ll have to convince the inspector that it’s something that’s been done millions of times without incident. In any case, you will need to make a safe installation of your kiuas. There are clearances and heat shields and floor hearths, none of which can be cheated on, unless you don’t mind owning one of the saunas that burn down. There is also combustion air to consider, which is why I like to fire mine from the outside. The sauna stove sucks up fuel and oxygen, so it’s better to not be sucking the air out of the tiny room you and your friends will be in. This is not such a problem with house wood stoves; although, it is an issue with newer air-tight construction and tiny homes.
So, before you purchase that old wood stove you find on Craigslist, do your research. Think hard about investing in a real sauna stove. The kiuas is not a wood stove. The kiuas is the heart of the sauna.
My stove pipe will get cherry red! After ten minutes, a hot fire should burn clean and smokeless.All stoves will smoke initially.Nothing bigger than your arm!This armload of ash will fire the sauna.Fill the stove and let it burn hot before closing the ash drawer.
When the client for my latest mobile sauna project contacted me, he told me he needed something that would look and feel like a sauna from back home in Finland. He wanted it to be wood-fired and to get really hot. He wanted the clean lines and rustic charm of Finnish design and even requested a traditional pine tar finish like what the Vikings used on their boats. As small as it going to be, it was to have the standard two rooms: the sauna room and a dressing room. He also wanted to use the latest solar technology to light it with a soft glow.
But working for an American company where he might get moved from time to time, he wanted it to be untethered to his house and portable, so he could always bring it with him like a cherished possession.
I enjoy challenges. In fact, I thrive on them. One of the advantages of having my own company is that I get to decide how much to put into each project and which projects to really focus on. On some projects, like this one, I get to expand my repertoire. The goal, as always, was to bring my client’s dreams into reality. The result did just that: a mobile sauna on a 81″x120″ trailer, under three-thousand pounds, with a dressing room, solar-powered lighting, custom wood stove, northern white cedar interior, and pine tar exterior finish. I created a little oasis—a reminder of Finland—that my client can park in his back yard. A dream come true.
Saunas are like that. When you have your own, it is a dream come true, a special place to escape into, to relax and unwind. Though tied to old traditions, for many, sauna is a new experience and can be life-changing. As designer and builder, I get to be the midwife for people’s dreams and help them usher in a new way of living or rekindle a past love. As we turn the page to a new year and think about resolutions, what dreams do you want to come true?
Mobile sauna by Rob Licht Custom Saunas.Solar powered lights on mobile sauna by Rob Licht Custom Saunas.
