How to Make Your Own Sauna
To preserve heat a sauna should be as dense as possible, especially the bathing area. The ceiling should be low, the windows small and double paned, and the entrance low and slender. For a speedy exit in case of a crisis have the door open away from the entrance.
Saunas are always made of wood. Frame construction is the most inexpensive, but log assembly is more conventional and superior because of the capability of logs to hold on to and reradiate heat. For a frame sauna start with a poured cement slab foundation or use concrete piers and fasten the sills onto them. Sills are large foundation lumber. Beveled siding tongue and groove boarding or plywood can be used on the outside with wood shingles on the covering. The wood should not be decorated or glossed; instead, soak exterior woodwork with additive or long-lasting lumber, such as redwood. Install a minimum of 4 inches of foil-faced insulation in the covering and walls. The foil should face the sauna’s core. Since exposed metal can burn the skin, all equipment and handles should be wooden, and the nails should be countersunk. Round of bench edges with sandpaper, and use movable slatted floor covering to protect feed from a cold floor.
A woo-burning stove is traditional but and oil coal gas or electric heater can be used as an option. The heating stones around the stove should be thick enough to store a large amount of heat and should not crack when heated; cobblestone-sized pieces of granite or lumps of peridotite, a dark igneous rock are habitually used.
The high are temperatures in a sauna are endurable because the atmosphere is rather dry and because the bathers can take the heat in states, first on the base benches where temperatures are lower, then on the higher benches. For breathing ease, water should be ladled onto the stones occasionally to add a tad of moisture to the air. After 15-20 minutes the bather cools off in an ice-cold lake, new snow or a cold shower.
Interior walls of the sauna should have an ordinary timber surface. Oil, varnish paint nor wax should be applied to them. The wood chosen for the benches and interior paneling should be tough and have high resistance to splitting and splintering in order to withstand the wide ranges in hotness to which it will be subjected. Eastern white pine or sugar pine is frequently used for the inside paneling, since both have a pleasing resinous aroma that adds to the sauna experience. For the benches, however, a no resinous wood should be preferred because the contact with the resin is irritation to the skin; white cedar or western red cedar is first-class choices.
Saunas often have secondary rooms in addition to the central sauna room. The additional space has additional uses, such as providing a place to hang up towels and clothing or substituted as a guest room for overnight guests. Benches in the sauna can be any dimension or shape imagination suggests but should always be built to offer at least two separate bathing levels, and if possible three, on which the bathers can recline, full length. Bench seats must be slatted to get better heat circulation and intended to allow access to the floor below them so that cleaning will be simple. If the benches are movable, cleaning becomes simpler yet.
