The Sauna is Finished!

Here are some pictures of our finished sauna. We're really happy with how it turned out and SO grateful for the ability to take a sauna whenever we want to! I think the french door really makes it. We found this one at Home Depot for $120. It wasn't pre-hung and we had to cut it down to fit.

The timer has a nice delay feature of up to nine hours. That means we can set it before we go out snowboarding and come home to a warm sauna. Nice...





We built the sauna into a corner using two existing walls, so only two walls, this one and the front, are exposed. Note the vent near the wall. To create good cross ventilation, the other vent is positioned on the front outside wall directly below the heater. We also left 1/4" gap under the door. The sauna stays hot, but never seems stuffy. Not pictured are some wooden pegs that we added to the side to hold our towels and robes.





A view from the inside. Above the heater is a therometer and a safty sensor to trip the heater if the sauna gets too hot. I'm not sure what "too hot" means. We usually crank the heater to the max and throw on lots of water (the steam makes it feel even hotter). The sauna seems to top out somewhere between 210-230 degrees F. Apparently, most people (in our neck of the woods, anyway) take a sauna at about 190 degrees F. What can I say? Some of us like it HOT :) The black circular thing on the other wall is a stereo speaker. There is another positioned across from it on the opposite wall.

The top bench is bolted on to the back wall and sits on side supports. The bottom bench rests on side supports, but we left it free so we could remove it to make cleaning easier. The original floor consisted of white linoleum tiles over concrete. We decided to leave it that way and see what would happen. As it turns out, the floor stays perfectly cool even when the sauna is over 200 degrees F, so peeling tile shouldn't be a problem.

Our Shiny Happy Sauna

We (actually, largely my husband Chris) have made more progress in recent days on the sauna. While I was out shopping for wedding guest attire, he insulated it and attached a paper-backed foil vapor barrier to the inside walls and ceiling. I think the whole thing looks a bit like it has been wallpapered with aluminum foil. It's also surprisingly toasty in there already despite not having the heater hooked up. This kind of vapor barrier isn't easy to find. We had to order ours from a sauna manufacturer online. It works great for saunas becuase not only does the foil stand up to the heat and moisture, it reflects the heat back into the saun just like an oven would.

Chris also hung a shelf in our laundry room (adjacent to one of the sauna walls) to support a stereo receiver and wired the sauna for sound. This is going to make listening to some relaxing music from our iPODs (or catching up on NPR/MPR) pretty slick.

Shelf for Stereo Reciever

We have also added some strapping to the walls and started on installing the cedar tongue and groove on the ceiling. The strapping is necessary, because we're installing the cedar boards vertically so we need something to nail them in to.

Strapping on the outside walls

Installing the T & G is a painstaking process. Every board has to be individually measured and cut to account for the sloping of our floors. It's a fun process though, because each board you put up generates more motivation to keep going and get the job finished.


(sigh) It won't be long now!

We're Wired!

Now that our arctic cold snap has snapped (seriously, -20F to -30F plus wind chills for DAYS ON END!) we're starting to make some more progress on the sauna. The wiring is almost all roughed in. We actually ordered some marine (waterproof) stereo speakers that haven't arrived yet. We bought a cheap stereo receiver that we plan to house on a shelf just inside our laundry room (on the other side of one sauna wall). We considered just getting a dock for our Ipods, but NPR/MPR junkies that we are, decided it would be awefully nice to have a radio, too. After much monkey businesses, our heater has FINALLY arrived (directly from Finland, via Saunatec in Cokato, MN via A Touch of Finland in Marquette, MI.


So shiny!

BUT....thanks to an oversight on our part, we had to have a second circuit breaker panel added-the other was full! So basically we paid for an electrician ALL DAY LONG. (Ahem) Granted, we would have had to put a second box in anyway, but needless to say we hadn't exactly factored the extra cost into our overall budget. Eeek! I can hardly wait for that bill.

<
The sauna has it's own breaker box :)

The electrician also suggested using this rubber tubing over the wiring to reduce/exclude the possibility of corrosion down the road. Great idea!


We also picked up the rest of our materials (insulation, cedar tongue-and-groove, and misc.) so we'll be ready to forage ahead as soon as the inspector gives up the A-okay.


Yes, the basement (and office) are a complete disaster, but boy does it ever smell good down here!

Frame Assembly

The sauna is finally starting to look like something! We attached the walls together tonight (and it actually stood upright afterwards!) and plan to drop in the ceiling tomorrow.

The french door (Home Depot) was my idea (claustrophobic tendencies) and still has to be cut down a bit to fit Hopefully the glass panels in it will hold up to the heat (they are not insulated, so I worry). If not, I guess we're out $120 and whatever it will cost for a replacement door, which is still a far cheaper than the $400-$1200 doors we've priced at sauna dealers. We took the dog for a wintery walk on the beach today (Lake Superior) and found some great pieces of driftwood to use for the door handles.

We're dealing with some height and space restrictions in this corner, which is forcing us to deviate quite a bit from the basic sketches we started with. What started as a 5 x 6 sauna is now a 4.5 x 5 sauna. We sort of forgot to factor in the width of the framing when doing our original calculations (oops, I should have known better Dad). This size will still work just fine, but now the heater we ordered is too big for the space. The heater we selected was designed to heat between 210 and 300 c ft. Now were only dealing with about 145 c ft. A heater too large for a sauna will heat up all of the air in the room before the rocks in the heater have the change to fully heat up. Ultimately, the heat inside the sauna will then feel less natural. No worries, though. The heater we placed an order for hasn't been ordered from the manufacturer yet so still have time to switch to a smaller size.

Building has Commenced!

We Have Walls! (well...3 anyway)

Yahoo! We've got three walls done. It doesn't sound like much, but it feels like good progress to us. After all, up until yesterday we didn't even have any lumber.
The framing is probably going to be the longest part of the process, especially the fourth wall and ceiling. The basement floor in the corner where the sauna will be located slopes in several directions toward a floor drain, so each 2 x 4 has to be cut to a different length to create level walls. Thankfully, a friend loaned us his drop saw, which has made the cutting process as speedy as possible. Nailing together the frame was another story-lots o' knots in the pine.

We ordered a heater today, and a roll of foil-backed vapor barrier, which we couldn't find locally. Both should arrive next week. In the meantime we'll try to finish up the framing, and rough in the wiring. Not too bad for a couple of novices.

This book has really helped us out a lot. Pretty much everything you need to know (or could think to ask) about sauna building is in here. Great find! We found our copy at the library.

Our Future Sauna
(a.k.a. E's new residence and heat source until the end of this cleanse!)



Okay. Try to use your imagination. This is going to be the site of our future sauna. It will measure 5'x 6'x 7' tall and fit 2-3 people pretty comfy. The cat threw herself in for scale.

Saunas have been used for eons to help detoxify and rejuvenate the body. They are wildly popular in this part of the country (Minnesota), partially because it gets a wee bit nippy around here in the winter, and well...it's also a tradition (You betcha! A lot of Finnish folks settled here). Chris and I are finally getting around the building one in a corner of our basement (good timing, eh?), so for folks interested in sauna building, I thought I'd post our project here and update it as we go along.