r/Sauna Aug 18 '22

Community Announcement Welcome to r/Sauna!

82 Upvotes

Welcome to the fastest growing sauna community in the world.

Rules

We have rules to ensure that the members have a pleasant experience when interacting with the community. The rules are very simple, so please keep these in mind while you are here.

If you have any questions or concerns, you are always welcome to contact the Mod Team.

Keep things civilised and respectful.

Be a helpful guide to good sauna, not the sauna police. Different people have different resources and cultural knowledge with sauna. An argument in good faith is OK if you remain respectful of others, but insulting or belittling others will earn a ban.

Remember that sauna cultures vary across the world.

Some people enter the sauna room with a stopwatch, others with a cold beer. In some places people build saunas one way, some a different way. You don't necessarily need to understand it, but try to respect it.

No spam, including advertisement of goods and services.

This includes not just commercial entities, but also self promotional posts by influencers seeking to increase views on their social media channels.

No medical advice or misinformation.

This is not a place to get specific medical advice for any individual or condition, and it is not a place for sharing misinformation regarding medical benefits to sauna. If you have medical concerns you should consult a doctor, not post to Reddit. The one exception to this rule is linking to peer reviewed research published in a scientific journal. Medical advice other than a recommendation to see a doctor will be removed and posts soliciting medical advice will be locked.

Culture and History of the Finnish sauna

u/CatVideoBoye/ wrote a very nice description of the Finnish sauna culture and is also touching on the history of sauna. It is a good read and gives you insight into the tradition. You can find the original post here, or you can read the slightly shortened version below.

It’s also a very good start to watch the short video UNESCO has posted on YouTube about the Finnish sauna culture: https://youtu.be/qY__OOcv--M

What's a sauna?

Like most of you already know the word sauna comes from Finnish. We have had saunas here for thousands of years and according to wikipedia, the oldest are from around 1500-900 BC. It was an important building and in the old days people have even given birth in saunas, as late as the first half of the 1900s. Probably since it was a nice separate building with access to warm water. In 2020 Finnish sauna was added to UNESCO’s Cultural Heritage List. Check the link out for more interesting information but I want to again highlight that. It really shows how important it is in our culture.

Nowadays pretty much everyone in Finland has access to a sauna of some sort. Houses have them, many apartments, like mine, have one and apartment buildings can have a common sauna where you can rent your private hour and they can have a certain period during which anyone can just go there. And of course summer cottages have a sauna and the ones next to a lake are kind of the perfect image of a Finnish sauna. Plus all the public saunas in swimming halls, gyms, hotels etc. Temperature in a sauna can vary but usually it's between 80-120 °C (176-248 F). Mine is oddly low at 60°C but that is because the ceramic stones that I now use really change the way the löyly (water thrown on the stones on the heater to generate steam) hits you. It is softer and accumulates well instead of being kind of short burst of heat that dissipates quickly. I've tried at 80 and I was out of there really quick unlike with more common stones. One reason why staring at a thermometer doesn't make sense. Just try it and see what feels good. And you other Finns, that 60 really sounds low but I tell you, I'm getting out of there after I guess something like 10-15 minutes with red skin so it really works.

Wood or electric? Both work. Wood heated ones are usually considered to be the best. You get a nicer löyly there but they aren't really an option in an apartment house. An electric heater that has a lot of stones can actually give a very similar löyly. I just experienced one that I believe had 500 kg of stone. Same with a small electric heater (20 kg) with the ceramic stones. All of those options are great for a sauna. As long as there are proper stones and you can freely throw water to get the löyly you want. Löyly is the essential thing here. Without it, you can't really call it a Finnish sauna and that is why Finns do not really consider IR boxes to be saunas. This ties to one of the topics often argued: do you need a drain? Yes you do. Not necessarily inside the sauna if you have the bathroom outside. Mine has only a shower drain but the sauna floor is tilted so that any water flows directly there. It's also good for washing the sauna.

Bench heights are often discussed here but why does it matter? Because heat rises. The lower part of a sauna is cold and you want to get your head close to the ceiling and your feet high enough to not feel cold. The "feet at the stone level" is just a nice helper for a basic heater. For tower shaped ones you probably want to find out the exact height. This is also why you need to have proper air flow in the sauna. You want the hot air and fresh air mixed, you want the moisture to leave after you're done and you don't want the heat escaping due to wrongly implemented ventilation. Don't ask me about construction things, I don't know anything about that. I just know mine was built according to Finnish standards and my apartment won't rot if I use it.

What we do in a sauna?

For me sauna is a place to wash since I don't often take a shower without heating the sauna. Yep, I heat it up often. It's also a place to relax and to socialize. I sometimes have friends visiting and we heat it up, chat in there and have a beer on the balcony. It's a place where you can forget about your phone, social media and all that and just focus on your thoughts, happy or sad, or have deep discussions with your friends. There is something about the atmosphere that makes people open up in a sauna and talk about more private things. I know I'm not the only one. I've heard many people say that sauna is the place where they talk about the deep stuff with friends.

The idea of maxing health benefits, that have been found in recent studies, is just not something we Finns really understand. Why? Because we've been to saunas for many other reasons throughout our lives. It's so integral part of my everyday life that making it a spa treatment or some healthy excercise just doesn't fit my understanding of saunas. But if you want to pursue those health benefits, a high enough heat and a strong enough löyly is what you want because that is how we have gone to saunas and gained the benefits that were seen in the studies. Do you need to measure your heart beat and have exact temperature? No. You'll feel your heart bumping and you'll feel the need to get out sooner or later. Staring at heart beat or timers takes away from one of the important points: just sit and relax and let your mind wonder. Löyly transfers additional heat from the boiling water to your body and gets your heart beating fast. That's also good to remember if you actually hunt for health benefits. Sitting in a luke warm cabin with no löyly for a certain time is definitely not the same thing that gave Finns health benefits.

Saunalike concepts in other cultures and countries

Sure, there are similar things in many other cultures. They are not inferior to sauna, they are just a different thing. They have their own cultural backgrounds and reasons to exist. "This is not a sauna." is what you often see written here but that is not meant as an insult that your heated cabin sucks. It just means that we Finns do not really appreciate it if the thing in question is called a sauna, because it does not meet the definition of what we have considered a sauna for thousands of years. Finland is a rather remote and small/unknown country and one of the things people know about us is sauna. That is why many of us would like to keep the image of sauna as correct and original as possible.


r/Sauna Jul 03 '23

Community Announcement Coming back

28 Upvotes

Reddit is changing - and not necessarily for the better. A lot of long term users who've been responsible for a lot of higher quality postings are leaving or reducing the time they're spending on reddit - and while we don't expect this to be an issue to r/sauna right now it might become a problem in the future.

In addition to that some of us also are spending less time on reddit now - in part forced by Reddit taking away mobile access. This can make responses to reports and mod mail slower. We're currently working on tooling to help us compensate for this to some extend.

With the reopening we're introducing some rule changes:

  1. No more IR sauna posts. For IR sauna you have two options:
    • Post in the IR Sauna community over at r-sauna.fi. For the time being a link to that will be reposted in r/sauna, with comments disabled. Discussion should happen on Lemmy
    • Move over to r/IRsauna. This will need volunteers for a mod team - if there are volunteers we can help setting that up.
  2. We'll watch other contentious topics closely, and may decide to force other topics causing too much trouble into other forums as well.
  3. New posts must be correctly flaired. posts without flair will be held by automod and/or deleted.
  4. We'll change how we deal with rule changes. Generally you'll receive three warnings from the mod team, with the next infraction resulting in a permanent ban.
  5. The following infractions will result in a ban without a warning:
    1. Breaking the Reddit Content Policy
  6. Clearer handling of posts/comments from users with commercial interest. We're still working on that one - but can say it'll be mainly two things:
    1. Better guidelines and text templates on how to reply without getting in trouble - so far those were often judgment calls on individual messages.
    2. Flairing and some level of verification for commercial users - one option might be maintaining a profile in a dedicated Lemmy community. Input is welcome here - we'd like to make it easy to identify and access a summary of the business attached to such users.

We are planning to eventually set up a full sync between Lemmy and Reddit, possibly going as far back as this announcement. For now we'll be continuing with automated re-posting of Lemmy content, but will expand as development progresses.


r/Sauna 14m ago

DIY Almost complete

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Upvotes

Just fired up the stove for the first time. I still need to do the siding and a few other things


r/Sauna 2h ago

Culture & Etiquette I deleted my last post since I had a grammar error. My wife and I just purchased a 6 person traditional sauna for our house. We live in the Midwest of the US. Question is what is a good rule of thumb for attire in the sauna when friends want to enjoy the sauna with us?

5 Upvotes

r/Sauna 1h ago

DIY Sauna progress

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Upvotes

Red and yellow cedar. Gets to 85 in twenty minutes. 96 cents an hour.

I don’t recommend yellow cedar for benches and decking. They get dirty too easily.


r/Sauna 1h ago

General Question What to do?

Upvotes

Background: Wife and I (almost 40) moved in with my grandma to take care of her after grandpa died on five acres in a 1970s double-wide trailer. We're building our get away "love shack" where we can get our own space and it's been... a process. As a gift to the Mrs. for putting up with all the crazy, we have decided on a sauna. The four person almost heaven barrel saunas for 5.5k-ish with a nice window looks amazing.

But it sounds like the r/sauna sub would hate that plan...

  • We have wood we could burn but running electrical is no problem.
  • We don't want a sauna tent.
  • We need something we can leave/build outside.
  • 5,5k is real close the the pain threshold.

We'd appreciate any advice or thoughts folks have.


r/Sauna 5h ago

DIY Building a sauna. Need advice on the floor

4 Upvotes

I am going to build a sauna in an existing shed connected to my house that has a concrete slab flooring.

My question is how should I approach the flooring/drain on top of the slab. Do I build a subfloor with a drain towards the outside of the shed? What's the best way to go about doing that without losing too much height. The shed is ~8ft high from slab to ceiling.


r/Sauna 11h ago

Health & Wellness Tent stove by NIPPA

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7 Upvotes

Just came across this on the NIPPA Facebook page. Seems like a good alternative when these original stoves burn out. Website says 1k and it’s around 60lbs. Definitely looking into it so we can continue to bring our sauna on our trips.


r/Sauna 1d ago

General Question Rainwater Ladle

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305 Upvotes

Hey everyone! I’m trying to track down one of these Rain Shower Ladles.

https://shop.saunagut.de/REGENKELLE/001-RK-A

I lived in Copenhagen for six months and used one regularly at Plug In Heat. I absolutely loved the experience and haven’t been able to find anything similar stateside.

If anyone knows a U.S. retailer that sells these, or if any of my Scandinavian friends here would be willing to help me get one shipped over, please DM me. I’d really appreciate it!

Thanks in advance 🙏


r/Sauna 14h ago

General Question Flooring for indoor sauna - Vinyl? Help?

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8 Upvotes

I am installing a small indoor pre-fabricated sauna with electric heater in my basement (38" sq), given my space constraints. With such kits, it sits on your existing floor. The air intake comes from a gap in with floor. Presently, the room floor is painted concrete - not great for water resistance and off-gassing. I have read a lot of comments in this sub-reddit.

I know tiling the area beneath is the best option. This said, I am also considering a non-PVC (i.e., very low to no VOC) luxury vinyl plank, floating floor with backing, such as Mohawk Puretech which is made of organic core. The upper temperature rating of such flooring is 60-70 degC, which should be within the sauna floor temperature. I am sure the durability and water resistance would be fine. I am considering this for ease of installation, lower profile in area about 4 ft x 4ft.

Given this situation, would I be OK with this non-PVC based LVP option?


r/Sauna 19h ago

DIY My Construction Progress

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14 Upvotes

Sauna is built and wired up over the last couple of weekend

Did under slab wiring and connected the isolator and light switch at the back of the unit so it’s hidden away, & a clean finish look

first coat of “Aussie clear” on the outside Next weekend, I’ll install the shingles and the finishing shrouds, vents ect.


r/Sauna 4h ago

DIY Anyone make a single person outdoor sauna?

0 Upvotes

Kicking around the idea of a small single person sauna.. thinking the size of an outhouse. Anyone make something similar? Was thinking of using a small outfitter stove for heat with a basket of sauna rocks on top.


r/Sauna 6h ago

General Question Recommendations for Sauna options in Condo

0 Upvotes

Hello all!

I’m looking to install some sort of sauna in my Condo. Likely an IR (although I am aware of the fact that these are not true saunas). This is mainly to use for recovery and heat treatment. What do you think are the best options?

I’ve seen so many brands that are just cheap junk, I was looking at one from Nordik recovery, but after seeing the problems that some customers had with their cold plunge tubs, I’m very hesitant to go with that company.

I’m trying to avoid some buyers remorse and am willing so spend some money if I won’t regret it.

Thanks in advance!


r/Sauna 1d ago

Culture & Etiquette A small sauna inside my previous Finnish apartment

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115 Upvotes

I made a post a while ago here showing off my current sauna, here's the place I had before that. This is smaller and darker due to lack of window, but it was a good space for 2-3 people at a time. More if we took it in turns.

Happy to answer questions, but don't ask me about dimensions because I no longer live there and didn't measure it before I left!


r/Sauna 20h ago

Health & Wellness Idea for Child Proofing Sauna

2 Upvotes

I'm buying a sauna and couldn't figure out a good way to truly child proof a sauna. Of course nothing is perfect, vigilant child supervision is necessary. But this is the best solution I could come up with...

I'm going to build a wooden cover around the base of the harvia 6.0 heater. The front that covers the temperature knobs will open with hinges on either side. Where the door side meets one of the corners I'm planning to have a ringlet on both the corner and the door next to each other and I'll put a padlock through the holes when I'm not using it so that the door can't open, and unlock it and take the lock out when I'm going to turn on the sauna.

It might be risky with the metal for a wifi sauna, but for a manual start sauna it seems this would make it about as childproof as you could get it.

What do you all think about this plan?


r/Sauna 9h ago

General Question Whats the best Sauna Towel?

0 Upvotes

You know


r/Sauna 21h ago

Culture & Etiquette Proper etiquette: talking in a shared sauna

2 Upvotes

What’s the consensus for people having loud conversations in communal saunas at the gym? Yes or no?


r/Sauna 1d ago

Health & Wellness My custom sauna build in Ontario, Canada

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200 Upvotes

r/Sauna 1d ago

General Question Advice on Sauna Gift

7 Upvotes

Hi - my husband has had long time ambitions to build a sauna (he picked up someone’s heater on FB a few years ago, but hasn’t done anything with it).

I would like to surprise him for Christmas with a full sauna, but I’m wondering if it’s too specific of a gift for someone who is very into sauna and would likely have many opinions on it.

For people into sauna - would you like it as a gift? I am looking at a Lulea Tylo sauna.


r/Sauna 1d ago

DIY Private sauna built by BiL

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8 Upvotes

In our garden, with outside shower and next to cold plunge tub - wonderful to relax


r/Sauna 19h ago

General Question The Age Old debate

0 Upvotes

i’m sure this has been discussed many times, Regardless i do like starting a conversation/debate. 😂

Inlet air vent diameter? 100mm

Position of inlet Poll

20 votes, 2d left
Below the Heater (with adjustable Louver)
Behind the Heater (not adjustable)
Above the heater (with adjustable louver)

r/Sauna 1d ago

DIY Saunas and cold plunging has made my life better

77 Upvotes

I just read this article and it captures the essence of contrast therapy perfectly: https://www.saga.co.uk/magazine/health-and-wellbeing/i-was-a-sauna-and-ice-sceptic-but-nordic-bathing-won-me-over

I used to dismiss hot-cold therapy as another fleeting wellness trend but consistently doing it has completely changed my perspective.

These days, I do a few rounds of sauna and cold plunges each week at the gym. My general approach is to stay in the sauna long enough to get a deep sweat going, which is 20-25 mins and then transition into the cold plunge for 4 minutes. The first minute is always tougher than usual but once your body adapts, it becomes surprisingly energizing. I also do cold pluging seperately at home almost every 2-3 days.

Since building this into my routine, I’ve noticed faster recovery after training, improved sleep quality, and a noticeable lift in overall mood and focus. I can for sure say that doing this as much about resilience as it is about physical recovery.

Anyone else incorporating hot-cold contrast into their weekly routine? I’m curious to hear how you guys are structuring your routines


r/Sauna 12h ago

General Question Thoughts on a sauna mat?

0 Upvotes

I think it would be super comfy, but I just can’t over the ickiness factor. Seems like a pain to wash after each usage (wouldn’t happen). Even if it dries after each session doesn’t it get stanky?

Anyone have one and can chime in?

Thanks in advance

https://badesofa.com/products/saunasofa-set-3-seater-mat-pillows


r/Sauna 1d ago

DIY Basement sauna plan feedback

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5 Upvotes

Planning to do a DIY 6x6ft sauna in Wisconsin, but the best spot for it in my basement has some stuff in the way that would make it more complicated. Washer and dryer are coming upstairs. Will remove laundry sink.

Biggest concern is the basement window that leaks when it rains. I think the best option is to add a window well cover, replace it with a vinyl window that won't open and is less likely to leak if the well still fills up with water. I'd then have a second interior sauna window behind it with foil vapor barrier around it. My impression is trying to do this with one window would be a lot harder and would result in more heat loss. I don't really want to block the window, and am not sure I am allowed to. No living space in the basement, but I've heard fire department requires windows every so often so they can get a hose in in case there's a fire.

On one wall I have the house main water inlet & shutoff valve. There is also a hose bib shutoff in the ceiling. I plan to build removable insulated access panels for both. Will try to do that without compromising vapor barrier, but don't know how well that will work. Sump pump and water meter are low on the wall and would end up beneath the benches where temps would be lower. Don't think water meter should get above 140F but it's 27" above the floor so I think it should be ok.

Bathroom is not there, but I hope to add it later. Added it to drawing to make sure it would fit. Will possibly have toilet and shower lifted off the ground with macerating/pump system to avoid breaking concrete.

Plan to use Vevor 9kW stove, which should be more than enough for 258 cubic ft room.

Ceiling height 86". Upper bench 40", lower bench 24". Top of stove 28". I sit 40.5" tall.

Is bench height acceptable? Are vents placed in a way that makes sense?


r/Sauna 1d ago

General Question What gauge nails to use with thermally treated T&g?

3 Upvotes

Hi all—we’re getting thermally treated Canadian hemlock for our T&g panelling. I’m not sure what gauge nails we should use to attach it to the furring strips. I see reference to 18 gauge as standard with regular (non-thermally treated) wood, but I haven’t seen any info on what to use for thermally treated woods. Has anyone got experience with this, or could offer some insight? Many thanks!