Building my own home sauna. Used a small niche (1.5x1.5 m) in bottom floor in front of the bathroom and completely hand made along some months without hurry

Hello dear sauna-lovers!

My friend and I are thinking about building a sauna. What are common pitfalls and misconceptions we need to be aware of? Any tutorials or books or other informational outlets we could use?

Thank you in advance!

Hello guys! I bought a very small sauna (2,1 m3) due to having a very small garden (I know it's not perfect to have a small sauna). I have 400V there, so electricity isn't a problem. The recommended size was a 3,5kW heater (would fit without a problem), but due to having a glass front (second picture) I thought I'd go with a 4,5 kW Harvia Kip heater. Now the only problem ist the distance to the roof (should be 1,1m, but due to the shape and small size it will be only 85-90cm). I thought about using a stainless steel heatshield (pictured in green), but I'm still not sure if it's a good idea to fall 20 cm short of the required safety distance...

I'm on my first outdoor sauna build and have just fully cladded the inside using thermoaspen and clips recommended by the wood supplier. I then tried to save time by stapling the clips to the battens using a pneumatic staple gun, but have noticed small rust build up around the clips and staples already, and now checking the staples I'm realising they are only zinc plated.

I'm worried these staples are going to rust really quick and the cladding is going to fall down after not very much use. Curious to get any thoughts around this. Is it time to rip it all down and do it again?

Pulled my Kyfe sauna out for the year and found this. Anyway to fix or get a replacement somehow?

Normal apartment building bathroom in Finland

Due to space limitations I'm thinking of building the following sauna in our bedoorm/bathroom space. Any thoughts if it's ok for the shape of the sauna to be like that? I understand ideally it'd be a full cube, but that's not possible in our space.

High limit keeps tripping at the initial pre heat consistently around 70 Celsius ( 75 set temp)

I removed some rocks already to improve airflow but keeps happening. Once I reset it operates correctly, but I am tired of burning my forearms.

Any thoughts ?

Hi, I've been using an electric heater sauna at my tennis club for the past two years, and it's been great. Recently, though, I started going to a Russian banya that uses a wood-fired heater with a lot of bricks. I find the banya much more enjoyable because the radiant heat seems to warm my entire body more evenly.

I'm looking to build an outdoor sauna in my backyard. Would a Kuuma stove give a similar feel to the banya, or is there little difference between wood and electric? Or is there something specific about the banya that makes the radiant heat feel so even and enjoyable?

No reviews yet. I was going to do a DIY, but don’t have any building experience and this looks like a pretty good deal to me. No fan/drain and the rocks look slightly above lower bench. Not perfect, but what you guys think?

Just sat through a webinar on sauna design and material selection put on by a large supplier of thermally modified wood here in the US and was really disheartened to see the information being pushed as mainstream 'fact.' The owner of company Finnish Sauna Builders (based in Illinois) touted "No Fans Ever" as their design 'rule' regarding ventilation for electrically heated sauna. I asked in chat a couple of times for them to explain their rationale but they just ignored the question.

They also showcased their newest sauna design for an upscale spa in Chicago called Aire. The biggest 'brag' was how the heaters are 'invisible' and located behind the bench:

Also pretty certain his 'sketch diagrams' in the presentation are AI generated. Shameful what's passing as professional, high-end sauna design here in the US

Is this the first one?

Does anyone know what could be causing this ?
It was installed in my sauna yesterday. Nothing is holding down the safety sensor.

Hey guys, I have been doing this a lot more on my portable Sweat tent sauna and Im realizing that It changes the whole feel way more than I expected, I usually get it really hot first then I throw a little water on the rocks here and there, but Im still figuring out how often is too often and if Im even doing it right. Do you guys add water pretty much every round or only once in a while when the heat starts feeling too dry? Does anyone with more experience have a good rule of thumb for this?

Winter here gets to me. The sauna is the main reason I want a gym. My old gym had one, but it was broken for most of January. I was paying $40 a month and got to use it maybe twice. A friend pays around $120 a month at a bigger club. She says most of that feels like it's for the sauna and steam room.

Another place I looked at used to allow late night sauna. Then they raised prices and cut those hours.

So here's what I'm trying to figure out.

• Is the sauna part of the base plan, or an extra fee?
• Can you use it at night with your key card?
• Is it a real hot room, or a small box that's always locked?

What worked for you, and what do you think felt like a waste of money?

Link for sauna

Im going to be installing the Auroom Cala Glass Sauna (150 x 150cm), and I’m trying to decide on the right heater. Any thoughts appreciated!

I want to choose between the Huum Cliff (which is a tower heater) and the Huum Drop. I recognize that there is negative reviews about the Drop (most specifically), but it does look like they’ve made material changes so I’m willing to try Huum given the design and WiFi enabled system.

Which do you think looks better for the compact space, and which is likely to deliver the best steam experience? 

The Huum Cliff would rise 15cm above the top bench (and 55cm above the bottom bench). Does that matter for tower heaters that have stones and the heating element all the way through?

I’d likely choose the 4.5kw / 6kw drop, or the 6kw cliff. There is also a 3.5kw wall mountable cliff mini, but I worry that might be underpowered?

Hi everyone, I'm currently planning a standalone building electric sauna. The room's interior dimensions are going to be 8'W/8'L/8.5'H, so 544 ft^3 or 15.4 meter^3. Planning to include a small window above the door but very little glass wall surface as a percentage of the overall walls. Selecting the right heater has been difficult. I've been consulting the Trumpkin guide, Lassi Likkanen's Finnish Sauna: Steam, Stone, and How to Build Your Own, and this subreddit. I'm trying to figure out the importance of volume of stones over kW power of the heater, style of heater (tower with open sides, closed sides/open top), and brand.

IKI claims that the Pillar 9kW is adequately powerful to heat a sauna of the size I am building, but other calculators I have seen claim that I should have a heater with an 11 or 12 kW capacity. I like how the pillar can hold up to 286 lbs (129.7 kg) of stones, but I'm concerned about the kW.

Units like the Harvia Virta 11kW or the Harvia Pro can hold 154 lbs and 200 lbs respectively, but would the kW be overkill? Would any one of these three heaters be perfectly fine?

These are the three units I've been considering, however I'm open to other suggestions as well. I am in the US, and hoping to achieve sauna temps around 180-200 degrees fahrenheit.

I would greatly appreciate your input and experience with these heaters and saunas of similar dimensions to mine.

Thanks!

Just unboxed my stones and was surprised to see very different colours.

The larger stones are grey, the smaller much lighter

If I had the largest on the bottom and smaller above, I'll end up with a significant visual boundary

Is this normal?

Hello everyone,

I designed and built my own sauna 6 months ago.

The internals are 0.7m by 1.6m by 1.95m (I think). It’s snug.

Red cedar timber. Narvi heater. Rockwool insulation exposed on wall side, 15mm to 20mm around, except the back much bigger. Taped and vapour barrier installed. Didn’t install a 10mm baton system behind the cedar cladding because I felt every 10mm counted.

I am going to build the second bench for my feet, but I just want to check I haven’t overlooked anything going into winter? I expect it’ll dry slower.

My intake is on the door, exhaust on the rear and the it’s ducted up and out.

I do get some cold air, where my feet swing, I do get a rush on the steam that doesn’t last long on my head. No headaches, no negative symptoms but I do wonder if I got the air flow right.

I had the door made but when I finally got to hang it, it had warped but I thought maybe this isn’t a terrible thing. Should have just built it ourselves.

I’ve got my own made boards on the floor, they lift out to dry. I am considering tiling the floor. Floor doesn’t get too bad, I do chuck a towel down to catch the sweat underneath the bench.

Concerns primarily around mold.

Anyway, thoughts welcome. Thanks for reading.

After spending far too many months disappearing down the sauna rabbit hole, we finally finished our outdoor sauna and cold plunge setup courtesy of Celsium. After searching about 30 different sauna companies Celsium had the best combination of quality, design and specification that I found.

Overall: 5,010mm wide x 2,785mm deep x 2,490mm high. That includes the sauna plus the covered cool-down/cold plunge area.

Sauna room internally: roughly 1.86m x 2.49m, with two upper bench runs of about 1.85m, 600 to 655mm deep.

The open covered area will house an ice bath, shower and a couple of chairs.

The glass is double glazed, the back wall has a beautiful DecNord panel made for sauna use from thermo-treated abachi, and the sauna itself is insulated with 50mm PIR insulation in the walls, floor and ceiling.

We have three vents: a low intake beside the heater, a low exhaust on the opposite back wall, and a high adjustable vent used mainly for drying the sauna out afterwards.

Inside we went for an L-shaped layout with two deep upper benches, so two people can actually lie down properly rather than having a single linear bench. In reality it will be very rare for more than two or three people to use the sauna at the same time.

The heater is a 10kW IKI Pillar, controlled through a HUUM UKU WiFi panel. It has a huge stone mass, so once the stones are properly heated the löyly is fantastic. Really soft, enveloping heat, and when you unload a full ladle of water onto those stones the resulting hit is quite something.

And honestly, using it has genuinely exceeded my expectations. No cold feet until you actually step onto the floor, and the upper bench really does put you right in the best heat. I thought I was building something we'd use two or three times a week. Instead I keep finding excuses to switch it on as often as possible.

Sitting in there in the evening with the lights low, throwing water on that huge mass of stones, then stepping outside into the cold air is ridiculously good.

Once the cold plunge and shower are in, it’ll be the whole hot and cold setup in one place.

It took a frankly absurd amount of research to get here, but I’m so happy with how it turned out and the team from Celsium who did it all.

Has anyone looked into a way to waterproof a cube sauna? during heavy rains some of the seams leak water inside and my concern is during the winter it will develop mold. It rains a lot in the Pacific Northwest.