OT: Of Finns and Saunas: a compendium.

[Romang67]

It's Bastu.

 

[Halberdier]

I'm looking to build a 4- 6 person wood fired sauna to enjoy up at the cottage north of Winnipeg. Can anyone help steer me in the proper direction re: building plans, wood fired sauna stove etc... Any advice /suggestions would be much appreciated. I'm in the early stages of research/planning and want to avoid any pitfalls.

Saunas are actually pretty simple to build, but I guess most of those ready made solutions like barrel saunas should do it.

Common pitfalls that may apply to ready made saunas as well:

- Stove is too high / feets are too low. Your feet should be above stone level on stove. Everything under that level will be pretty cold, comparatively.

- Related to above: on single-room saunas without separate shower room you should probably have pretty high stove and also really high benches so that you can wash yourself without being too sweaty / hot. Most (really) old saunas are single-room ones.

- Bad / restricted airflow. The more fresh air the better. You can get best "löyly" on those tent saunas or old cottage saunas with a lot of fresh air coming from under walls.

- Too much room over your heads / roof on too high. There is no need to have a lots of room above your heads, as the steam will go there and you have to throw lots of water to get warm.

There should be plenty of books about the subject, also some Finnish made that are in English. For example following looks promising, but I really don't get that joke with $500 or more prising on Amazon:

 

[Halberdier]

It's Bastu.

Where is my unlike button

Bastu is Swedish for sauna. Or "sauna", as Swedish bastus tend to be.

 

[blues10]

Saunas are actually pretty simple to build, but I guess most of those ready made solutions like barrel saunas should do it.

Common pitfalls that may apply to ready made saunas as well:

- Stove is too high / feets are too low. Your feet should be above stone level on stove. Everything under that level will be pretty cold, comparatively.

- Related to above: on single-room saunas without separate shower room you should probably have pretty high stove and also really high benches so that you can wash yourself without being too sweaty / hot. Most (really) old saunas are single-room ones.

- Bad / restricted airflow. The more fresh air the better. You can get best "löyly" on those tent saunas or old cottage saunas with a lot of fresh air coming from under walls.

- Too much room over your heads / roof on too high. There is no need to have a lots of room above your heads, as the steam will go there and you have to throw lots of water to get warm.

There should be plenty of books about the subject, also some Finnish made that are in English. For example following looks promising, but I really don't get that joke with $500 or more prising on Amazon:

Thanks for the help. I am going to start exploring the tent saunas or cottage style and see if I can find some books with ideas and plans. I like the barrel saunas but the price is pretty steep for the prefab. Perhaps I'll come across plans to build a barrel sauna without prefab. I am pretty comfortable building it myself without going pre fab. It will be a single room sauna. I have built an outdoor shower already but it will only function from April - October due to freezing issues.

 

[MrHeiskanen]

I'm looking to build a 4- 6 person wood fired sauna to enjoy up at the cottage north of Winnipeg. Can anyone help steer me in the proper direction re: building plans, wood fired sauna stove etc... Any advice /suggestions would be much appreciated. I'm in the early stages of research/planning and want to avoid any pitfalls.

Visit some of the cottages in Pointe du Bois. Basically every Cottage has a separate sauna building as most of the families are Finnish/Scandinavian background.

 

[nobody imp0rtant]

Where are closest Hot Springs to Winnipeg?

We are blessed in Vancouver with several within a few hours.

I don't know if it's the closest, but this is a pretty nice place to visit.
Temple Gardens Hotel & Spa Hotel Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada

Fair warning, it does require venturing into Saskatchewan. If you wear your Bombers swim trunks, someone will probably try and start a fight with you.

 

[Halberdier]

Thanks for the help. I am going to start exploring the tent saunas or cottage style and see if I can find some books with ideas and plans. I like the barrel saunas but the price is pretty steep for the prefab. Perhaps I'll come across plans to build a barrel sauna without prefab. I am pretty comfortable building it myself without going pre fab. It will be a single room sauna. I have built an outdoor shower already but it will only function from April - October due to freezing issues.

I'm not sure if you can get Savotta's products in Canada, but this particular tent sauna could be nice for experimenting and it costs like nothing:

Savotta Hikimaja - Savotta Store

They have hilarious video ad for that, and surprisingly that guy happens to be their quality manager:



With tent saunas you typically have to stay pretty low as a tradeoff, but the stove is usually low profile as well, which makes it work quite nicely.

 

[Calendal]

Mixed public saunas in Finland generally require you cover yourself but swimsuit is not a strict requirement (towel is fine).

Visited mixed sauna in Poland (or a collection of 7 different ones). Covering there was strictly optional (it was k18) and many people chose not to cover themselves.

I don’t mind German sauna style, you get to wear a cool hat (well, we have sauna hats in Finland also, but most people don’t use one).

Some mixed saunas in Finland do have ”swimsuits optional” events or days.

 

[Lempo]

Thanks for the help. I am going to start exploring the tent saunas or cottage style and see if I can find some books with ideas and plans. I like the barrel saunas but the price is pretty steep for the prefab. Perhaps I'll come across plans to build a barrel sauna without prefab. I am pretty comfortable building it myself without going pre fab. It will be a single room sauna. I have built an outdoor shower already but it will only function from April - October due to freezing issues.

Build a proper legit man-size one if you build one, not any of that novelty barrel stuff.

For freezing issues, there is of course the option that you put the shower inside the sauna (if planning to keep it well above zero when it's cold), in the classic "cottage" model sauna/bathroom fashion. 3x3 metres, door in the corner, stove (and cauldron) on the wall with door, the benches on the wall opposite to the door, shower on the side wall next to the door about the middle way of it.

It's somewhat hot to shower at least above the stove top/footbench level, but perfectly doable; you just can't stay there sweating afterwards but have to go outside for toweling (or towel-posing and imbibing as it may be).

 

[Daximus]

We apparently have a traditional Finnish sauna in our resort in Jamaica. Not sure what "traditional" means but I think I might have to hit it up see what this Sauna stuff is all about.

 

[blues10]

Build a proper legit man-size one if you build one, not any of that novelty barrel stuff.

For freezing issues, there is of course the option that you put the shower inside the sauna (if planning to keep it well above zero when it's cold), in the classic "cottage" model sauna/bathroom fashion. 3x3 metres, door in the corner, stove (and cauldron) on the wall with door, the benches on the wall opposite to the door, shower on the side wall next to the door about the middle way of it.

It's somewhat hot to shower at least above the stove top/footbench level, but perfectly doable; you just can't stay there sweating afterwards but have to go outside for toweling (or towel-posing and imbibing as it may be).

So that’s about 10x10. I may size it down a little but that would be doable. I just built a 10x10 wooden shed without too much difficulty. The bylaws allow for an outbuilding of that size with no permit.

This will be built outside at my year round vacation residence and I will not be running electricity into it. Lots of permits to pull for that.

I’ll start heating it up when I arrive on Friday night and have it all ready to go for Saturdays.

Plan on using battery powered LED lighting or look into some solar.

I have seen people insulating the saunas and using foil as vapour barrier. Is this common? It is routinely in the -20c here at night in the winter. Would the floor be insulated too?

Thanks for the suggestions. Not sure if there will be time for construction before winter but I sure hope to be ready to go in the spring.

 

[JetsFan815]

I'm looking to build a 4- 6 person wood fired sauna to enjoy up at the cottage north of Winnipeg. Can anyone help steer me in the proper direction re: building plans, wood fired sauna stove etc... Any advice /suggestions would be much appreciated. I'm in the early stages of research/planning and want to avoid any pitfalls.

Thanks, lots of choice on the cedar saunas site. I'm hoping to keep the budget smaller if I can do most of the building myself versus prefab. Prefab does look nice and straight forward without any problems.

Thanks for the help. I am going to start exploring the tent saunas or cottage style and see if I can find some books with ideas and plans. I like the barrel saunas but the price is pretty steep for the prefab. Perhaps I'll come across plans to build a barrel sauna without prefab. I am pretty comfortable building it myself without going pre fab. It will be a single room sauna. I have built an outdoor shower already but it will only function from April - October due to freezing issues.

Did we just find out Chevy's HFJets account?

 

[MMANumminen]

I like the swedish style barrel bastus. The round shape keeps the heat quite balanced. It's really good option for small saunas. Tent saunas are only for camping

 

[HannuJ]

Thanks, lots of choice on the cedar saunas site. I'm hoping to keep the budget smaller if I can do most of the building myself versus prefab. Prefab does look nice and straight forward without any problems.

pre-fab is fine. you can buy the boiler and read up on how to build one. the secret is to NOT make it air tight.

 

[RageQuit77]

If there even can exist any kind instance or torch holding "high authority" about and in Finnish Sauna Culture and it's history, it's The Finnish Sauna Society.

Their page is well worth to check: Etusivu - Suomen Saunaseura ry

That ceremonial "sauna meister cong performer" stuff is something not even remotely relevant to anything what constitutes Finnish Sauna and sauna bathing habits. Yak!

However, an average Finn have some difficulties to look and take Sauna-topics objectively, that deep rooted essential core it is in Finnish culture: it's kind of holy sacrosanct for us. Someone could justifiably say that there are no Finnish Culture without Sauna.

 

[IamherefortheFinn]

I have seen people insulating the saunas and using foil as vapour barrier. Is this common?

I dont know what it's used for but there is foil behind the panels in my Sauna. And if i remember it correctly, i have seen foil in bunch of other sauna's too. It's not something that you notice though because you can only see it between some cracks

FWIW i would be pretty careful when building a sauna myself. In June and July 80 % of all fires in Finland are started in sauna's. Most of those are stupid mistakes, but there are a bunch of fires that are caused by incorrect installations and other building mistakes too.

 

[NotCommitted]

I try to tell myself to take it as a sort of campy fun thing, but seriously, I feel exploited. They market it on Finnish culture and then go have 5 week "training" in Germany to have some "ancient Finnish ritual" with a German name?? WTF. If they really wanted to understand Finnish sauna, other than exploit the name for marketing their what-ever, they probably should've come to Finland...

 

[Lempo]

I try to tell myself to take it as a sort of campy fun thing, but seriously, I feel exploited. They market it on Finnish culture and then go have 5 week "training" in Germany to have some "ancient Finnish ritual" with a German name?? WTF. If they really wanted to understand Finnish sauna, other than exploit the name for marketing their what-ever, they probably should've come to Finland...

Only German name I approve re: sauna is the schadenfreude that we experienced when a buddy told us that his mom made him claw off with his nails the beer bottle labels that we accidentally had managed to glue on the benches in their sauna while having a early-party sauna at their place when we were about 18.

But you probably can't immerse a person quite so deeply into the culture in a 5-week training.