mn woodcutter
ArboristSite Guru
Anyone have a wood fired sauna? I've been wanting to build one and was looking for tips.
Anything I can. Can I use a standard garden shed and line it with cedar? What's the best kind of stove? I've seen some stoves load from the outside? Do you need a floor drain? Do you use a certain type of stone for the steam?Yes. What do you need to know?
Yes. Insulate, poly, then cedar paneling. I used seconds from a local mill. A lot cheaper and I was able to pick through the stack and find enough sections of clear wood to do my whole sauna. Was about $300 for roughly a half pickup load of seconds that were 1"x5"x8'
I've got an old Spartan stove from Eveleth MN (google spartan stoves) but Kuuma (as member @lampmfg ) makes a very good one too. The model I have is still being produced. You can get standard stove or with integral hot water tank in case you don't have running water. (Side note, the sauna will be hot long before the water is). You can set the stove up to feed from outside just be careful with spacing to burnable material. People will normally use a combination of metal and masonry around the stove where it connects.
DO NOT make it too big. Keep ceiling lower because heat rises. No sense heating up extra area.
Benches again should be cedar or I've heard of folks using aspen or basswood also. Low density and no pitch wood is a must.
Yes you want a drain.
Lake Superior shore stones. Other stones may explode from water being poured on at high temps.
Well a lot of the south shore (WI, MI) is sand so naturally the north shore of MN.Which stones are bigger/better? Wisconsin, Minnesota, or Yupper stones? Or are all pretty small?
@Johnny Yooper that is a great job with vertical logs. I'd say thats all but a lost art these days.
!Here's the wood sauna at our hunting cabin with new cedar t+g. These were seconds but you never could tell.
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Here's the stove after I wire brushed and repainted. See the different sized rocks? The different colors are just for aesthetics. Also I put Thompson water seal on the walls to prevent water spots, you can see a slightly different tone from new in picture #1
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Here's the guard I built around the electric stove at our family cabin. I built one just like it for the wood sauna with a removable slat to feed the fire.
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Thanks. That shake wall is in the sauna at our family cabin and was done by my grandpa when they put the sauna in back in the 70's. He was an excellent carpenter.!
Very Nice! I like the cedar(?) shake wall. I have 10 gal. of multi colored Lake Superior rocks from a friend who found them cleaning out his garage (which served as a sauna by the previous owners)......I'm gonna use them for a future sauna in the basement at home.
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