Traveling with one of our mobile saunas to the lake and delivering to new owners.
We have been building mobile saunas for the past 10 years! and because of their growing popularity and versatility, they now make up most of our business. Each unit is still handcrafted with many layers of details. The owners each get a unique product tailored to their specifications. It’s also an easy way to avoid zoning and permitting restrictions while avoiding the hassles of a site-built project. Investing in your dream sauna makes more sense if you know you can take it with you!
We hear from our customers all the time that their friends, family, and neighbors are as excited as they are to have a sauna!
mobile sauna, wood-fired sauna on a trailer
For many people, owning a sauna feels like a bare necessity during the winter months!
This recent sauna build is just steps from the owner’s historic New England homestead. Our saunas are designed to blend in with the home and environment. The classic details of this historic house are elegant rustic with dramatic rock outcroppings and a fire pit, making for a perfect gathering spot.Our wood-fired mobile saunas travel well and can be parked in beautiful placesScarlet by the lake ready for a cold plunge
Having a sauna at home is a life upgrade that is low-maintenance.
Our 5×8 ft Mobile Sauna parked in town with 100 gallon cold plunge tank.Interior of our larger mobile sauna. Our saunas can get as hot as you like with a large pile of rocks. We aim for 100°C / 212°F We build many mobile saunas in our shop in Ithaca, NY. Working in our 3000 square foot shop is more efficient than building on-site.Two sizes of mobile Saunas on display at our shop in Ithaca, NY
We offer building plans for DIY sauna builders or your local builder for one-time usage only. Thanks to our valued sauna plan customers, and the growing popularity of DIY sauna building, we have taken the opportunity to launch our new & improved mobile sauna building plans! Our sauna plans are 50+ pages and include detailed notes, drawings, photos, and material lists for a wood-fired 5’x8’/6.5’x10′. If you are thinking about purchasing our plans or building a sauna, we offer you an opportunity to build your own sauna using construction plans. Rob Licht has developed the best practices of sauna building with 30+ years of experience.
Wood-Fired Mobile Sauna by Rob Licht Custom Saunas.
Although Glamping is a term that was coined in the early 2000’s, the concept of an adventure in nature bolstered by all of the modern conveniences one could muster, or have mustered for them, has been around for well over a century and a half. In 1869, writer William H.H. Murray of Boston, extolled on the virtues of experiencing the Adirondack backwoods in his book Adventures in the Wilderness. This inspired an avalanche of urban neophytes to flock to the woods in search of adventure and commune with nature. These were known as “Murray’s fools”.
People traveled great distances and endured great hardships such as days of travel over log roads (which were literally made of logs placed side by side) to get to the heart of the Adirondacks. Once they arrived, they sought out the services of guides who did everything for them—transporting them in their guide boats, making camp, catching and cooking their meals. In essence, these early Glampers brought with them from the city every expectation of service they would get at the finest hotel.
“The mountains call you, and the vales: The woods, the streams, and each ambrosial breeze that fans the ever-undulating sky.”
—Armstrong, Art of Preserving Health
Glamping experience enhanced with a sauna (banya) in tow.
While part of me chuckles at the concept of Glamping with it’s pretense of tender-footedness, part of me is drawn to concept of rustic luxury. Although I am as far from a camping neophyte as one can be, with years of deep woods experience and many a night sleeping on hard ground, the concept of luxury camping does have certain appeal to me now. I’ll sleep in a tent on a platform—with lights and heat and maybe a commode. But better yet, with a sauna.
The idea of communing with nature combined with sauna is perfection—and something, I bet, even the luckiest of Murray’s fools never had.
View of the mobile sauna looking out through the dressing room to the campsite. Pile of rocks sit on the Lämpimämpi stove.
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 in past their knees. For most people the swimming season in Maine consist 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 the 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 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 as thrill as I defy the icy winter water with a post-sauna dip.
My latest mobile sauna project started when a customer contacted me wanting a mobile sauna she could use for hot yoga. It’s my standard five by eight foot trailer sauna but without the benches. The arched roof allows for plenty of room for stretching out and the floor is soft cedar. The heat comes from a Scandia propane-fired heater. It’s a cute little unit that weighs under 2000 pounds. Tow it to the next yoga retreat and show off your downward facing dog
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 was 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 un-tethered to his house, to be 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: a mobile sauna on a 81 by 120 inch trailer, under 3000 pounds, with two rooms, solar powered lighting, custom wood stove, northern white cedar interior, and pine tar exterior finish, did just that. I created a little oasis— a reminder of Finland—to 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. It is tied to old traditions but for many, it 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 SaunasSolar powered lights on mobile sauna by Rob Licht Custom Saunas
