You ask how or why electric mobile? There are a number of reasons why going mobile makes sense, especially if you rent. You need no permits or special permissions. You just park it in your yard and use it. You can take it with you on vacations or just for a Saturday down by the lake, you can even enter it in a parade. But why electric? Electric is no longer the inefficient dark horse of the energy world that it once was. It can be generated cleanly by wind or solar and is cheaper, cleaner, and easier to use than gas or oil. Although any purist will tell you a wood-burning sauna is the real deal, in some places wood is not so easy-—firewood may be hard to come by and to difficult store, and your neighbors may too close for comfort or offended by the occasional whiff of smoke. Since I’ve eliminated gas burners from my repertoire (for reasons I won’t go into here) an electric mobile sauna is the next best thing. All you need is a place to plug it in.
When clients ask me to create a sauna they often push me to do things I might have never considered doing. I’ve been requested to make saunas in spaces I thought were too tiny, on trailers, deep in the woods next to a pond, or to convert a cheap shed or laundry room. The most recent project to leave the shop is an electric mobile sauna. The owner has a Tesla electric car so an electric sauna just seemed to make sense. She also wanted the benches to flip up so it could be a mobile hot-yoga studio. The colors were more of an emotional choice: I painted it Sea Reflections blue like the ocean, where she likes to swim all year, with a Bonfire Red door to beckon her into the warmth of its interior, and Vanilla Ice Cream trim because, well, who doesn’t like ice cream, especially after a sauna?
The how, is simple: an 8 KW heater with a standard RV type hook up and a fifty-foot very-heavy extension cord that connects to standard car charging port (or special outdoor outlet). This will also work in many campgrounds with RV hook-ups. In a pinch, it can also be run off an 8500-watt generator.
This sauna also has a solar powered low-voltage lighting system, just so there can always be light and because low voltage systems are safer and more versatile than 120 volt lighting. I’ve been using these in some mobile wood burners and freestanding units. The neat little solar panel is a conversation starter; people are suddenly aware that the unit is more than a fancy tool shed trailer. When I tell them it’s an electric sauna, the little 25 watt solar panel gets a second glance.
What I envision next (but probably won’t consider doing unless a client pushes me) is a fully solar electric sauna. It would have to use Tesla’s 270-pound Powerwall home battery, which has an 8kw output capacity. I imagine the entire sauna roof would a have to be a solar panel but I haven’t done the engineering on this. This would not be cheap, but if there is someone out there who wants to be the first…. give me a call…
