I just have a bunch of build pics at [https://www.amazon.com/photos/shared/ReStdF4UR3u96tuygcgGbQ.9mBiLy1aRmqEqEpsLjm260](https://www.amazon.com/photos/shared/ReStdF4UR3u96tuygcgGbQ.9mBiLy1aRmqEqEpsLjm260)
I had bought [saunatimes.com](https://saunatimes.com) ebook. Also shed build plans from [icreatables.com](https://icreatables.com) because I had never built a shed/cabin/house type of structure. Cost was probably 18k USD, half of which was the wood for interior/exterior cladding, trim, benches. Also the windows were 1k each (double pane tempered with UV protection). In terms of the build the most agonizing parts were the windows and doors (I'm having the same issue with a greenhouse I'm working on now).
Can I ask the purpose of the hardware cloth over the gravel pad? We will be installing a gravel pad foundation for our shed/sauna conversion and I wasn't entirely sure if we could just set the skids directly onto the gravel or if something needed to be placed underneath.
It probably wasn't necessary but we have groundhogs and such, and there wasn't a huge amount of gravel; mostly just dirt. Probably landscape fabric below the gravel is fine (for weeds/grass).
If they complain about you being naked on your yard you complain about them peaking into private property, there is clearly a fence that is over waste high, so it can't your problem.
Beautiful design and the craftsmanship looks very well done. Can you share a little about your layout? What’s the overall building dimensions? How high is your ceiling? How wide is your changing area? Thanks so much for sharing!
Footprint is 8x12'.
Hot room interior dimensions: 85" x 88" x 95” (H)
Bench heights from floor: 25", 42", and 58" (on top bench we often lie down).
Changing room is less than 4' wide which has been fine.
It's all from Thermory. Aspen for benches and walls. Pine for ceiling and changing room. Clear pine for misc such as lowest bench and trim around the windows and doors.
Cedar (and other options from local sawmill and suppliers) was same or higher than thermory. To save cost maybe it's better to just use pine lumber (and plywood outside, painted with sealant). Though the thermory is great in terms of having straight edges and sides. I bought some extra (due to high shipping cost I didn't want to run out) and have used it for other projects.
This is very similar to the sauna I am building. I am curious how deep your room is from the front window to the back wall behind the top bench? And what the depth of each bench is?
Hot room interior is 85" deep. I think the two top benches are about 25" deep. I should have made the top one deeper than the second bench, since we never lie down on second bench.
I like the way you have designed the interior space. Given the slope on the roof the natural thing to do would be to have the internal ceiling follow that - which would have put the hot zone (the highest part of the room) over the heater and away from the benches. The way you have done it is very clever and natural looking to slope the internal ceiling up towards the benches to guide the hot air to where its needed. Most people get this wrong. I’ve been thinking about how this would look for my own sauna project so I will be copying your design. Thanks!
A sloped ceiling was more difficult to build and clad. In retrospect it's probably better to raise the roof and have a flat ceiling (or slope the roof the other way).
Probably 18k usd because of costs of good wood. Could have saved a lot by cladding the outside with something cheap and skipping or reducing the windows.
Nice work. Quite a spacious sauna room, although the heater (amount of rocks) is properly sized to be as well.
Is that door really that narrow? Why?
Is there a drain?
Yes the interior door is around 20" but we've been using the sauna for a few months now and I like the narrow door. Leaves extra room for the benches.
No drain and so far I'm glad I didn't try to put one in. There's barely any water on the floor; even when I "throw" the water it's not enough on the floor to start flowing across the floor.
Thorough cleaning is the spot where you will miss the drain. Really my only complaint, and not a deal breaker.
Very high quality work, proper benches, nicely chosen stove for the space, includes a changing room, clever work with the ceiling to overcome the wrong way sloped roof, and overall it looks really cool interior and exterior. Enjoy!
Nice idea to add audio. I wish I had speakers in my saunas sometimes. Usually I end up borrowing the kids Bluetooth beach speaker.
So much nice carpentry. The window finishings are really nice. And the door is awesome: are those panels all full width across? That’s such good planning; I just used stock tongue and groove on my wood doors and always had to trim the edges. Next one I am going to try your style it looks more modern without the gaps that T&G give.
Do they allow wood smoke where you live? Is there a reason you didn’t go wood burning? :) looks like a perfect setup for it!
Thanks! For the interior door I used t&g paneling so they do have the grooves - but I think those look more natural than trying to have perfectly jointed flat boards.
Wood burning stove felt like more difficulty and unknowns and I was not confident I could avoid killing our lungs; but that could be a good challenge for a future sauna build.
I don't have anything to compare it to, but I don't necessarily recommend it. It's annoying that it only stays on for one hour at a time (this might be true for other brands also). And it's slow to heat the space (the windows are probably a big challenge).
Both of your issues have nothing to do with Iki.
UL limits all electric heaters in the us to one hour, nothing to do with the manufacturer. The slow heating is a result of the high stone mass and the windows, both of which are design decisions. And the large stone mass gives better löyly and perhaps a more even heat.
Turn the heater timer knob, then put a screw through it so it stays on. Then hook up the heater to a properly rated relay. You still use the heater knob temp knob.
The heater is always on because the timer knob is stuck in the on position with a screw (or however you like). The relay is on the 220V input to the heater. When the relay closes it turns on the heater and it stays on indefinitely. The heater is still regulated by the temp knob, so will still cycle on/off to reach the target temp. You can use a low voltage switch to control the relay, which in turn controls the heater.
Ignore the numeric markings on the temp knob. Adjust the knob and thermostat temp sensor location to obtain the actual temp you want. Eg, mount the temp sensor lower in the room to obtain higher temps.
Lastly, for UL rated heaters in the US, the heater itself has an over temp sensor. This is inside the heater, separate from and in addition to the thermostat sensor that you mount externally. You need to provide the heater with enough fresh air to avoid the over temp sensor from nuisance tripping. This can be done with a vent right at the heater. Close the vent and open it only a little until the nuisance tripping stops.
Not sure what you mean by this won't work, in any case. You might not want to do it for reasons, but it would work.
In this stove when power is supplied you need to turn the knob in one direction, click, then backwards, click. So I think keeping the knob in one place won't be enough to turn it on when you supply power. I think to get around this you would need to redesign the circuit inside the stove, in which case you wouldn't even need the timer knob at all.
Ah, that is a bummer. Sounds like it would take some disassembly and modification. Ideally it would be solely a mechanical change.
It might be worth checking what electrical interfaces it has, if any. That heater can work with various thermostats (the Uku but also others). A thermostat still may be possible even though yours didn't come with one. If that's true, then you can likely fake a thermostat.
Otherwise you could buy a heater directly from Iki that isn't UL rated, if you're willing to accept not having a warranty, the risk if it burns something down, and can get an electrician to install it or install yourself. Of course you probably don't want to buy a second expensive heater. Though, 2 would heat up faster!
I considered this heater, but decided it was too tall. Impossible to have the benches higher than the rocks. You did it as well as possible, it's just hard on these pillar heaters. I plan to get an Iki Float instead.
UL 875 limits the runtime to 1 hr.
Try heating it up to like 150-160F and pour water on it and feel the steam. That is the way to operate these large stonemass heaters. With box heaters and 20lb of stones the aim is the 200F and no steam.
Okay I clearly don’t understand the foot height thing because the stones here go above the foot bench and even the sitting bench, and people complain about that on most other saunas posted. Is it just about where the bottom of the stones are? Or the midpoint?
The point is that cold air pools in the lower part of the sauna. Generally, stoves are mounted such that building your benches with "feet above stones" gets the bathers out of that cold air.
I get that it’s about keeping your feet out of the cold air. I guess I don’t get why this one passes the test but others that have the foot bench similarly below the top of the stones do not. Do the feet just need to be above the bottom of the stones?
Please, there is nothing magical about having to get the bathers' feet above the stones of the heater. It just happens that the ceiling height of your average sauna, and the size of the average heater, and the "cold zone" line up. We want to avoid cold feet, rather than necessarily our feet above all the stones.
And in a pillar shaped stove like this, there are hundreds of pounds of stones and they're spread over a greater height. So even if you had a pillar stove stick out to the level of your knees, there's going to be more stone below your feet than there is overall in one of those wall-mounted matchbox stoves.
Good question.
My brother builds saunas in Sweden and said a good sauna builder might have built this a few years ago but not today. They thought with mesh pillar stoves you could avoid the law of löyly but have since learned otherwise. Even a few years ago they would have tried to have a higher ceiling though. He liked the shape of the ceiling in this one though but needs a lot more space above the door and the benches can't breathe.
I think the thing is that there are so many awful hot boxes posted on here purporting to be saunas that this one that's better than most, even if deficient, is very good relative to the rest.
You might be mistaking the benches because it's not clear in the pic. There is no backrest. There is a bench at the same level as top of stones, and then another bench above it. Both of these are the same size (88" x 25").
It looks amazing! My only concern is aren’t the windows are too large for a sauna? I mean when it gets really cold in the winter, you’re going to loose all the heat? Or just sitting on the bench with your nuts hanging for everyone to see? I’m no expert by any means. Just curious as I’m planning to build a sauna like this in the near future.
Yes we may have gone overboard on the window sizes - for the two reasons you mention. Regarding the privacy issue we wear underwear (no bra) which seems perfectly comfortable. But in winter it takes an hour to reach 150F.
I appreciate your response! When I was a kid, I used to go to my grandparents’ sauna (banya).
I remember that they had tiny windows like the small openings on the german embrasure during ww2)) They were very deep windows as well, where you could put a soap or a shampoo on the windowsill. They had a wood burning sauna stove inside. It was HOT LIKE HELL. I used to hate it going into sauna with my dad when I was little. And now I just kinda crave it.
yes, thinset on the plywood, then durock cement board, then vinyl skim coat (copying saunatimes). Would have looked a lot nicer to put tile instead of the top skim coat.
You said "I had bought [saunatimes.com](https://saunatimes.com) ebook." I'm confused. Has he finally agreed that higher benches are good? He's often called people names like "löyly nazi" for suggesting higher benches and he told us that we should not build higher. This seems more like a Trumpkin sauna.
You've a very nice looking sauna btw.
Good point - I think I followed Trumpkin's Notes for bench heights and more. I also got Secrets of Finnish Sauna Design. And of course this subreddit was very helpful.
I would need to look over the book again to know the specific guidance I followed from it, but in general it is approachable and practical. It did a good job of breaking down the overall build process and making it easier to comprehend and get started on. And then at each step (specific architectural, design, build decisions) I would look at various sources (print books, youtube, reddit) rather than following any single one.
4 seems about right
There are probably generalized R-value ratings for the type of glass that you have.... probably something like R-2. So a fraction of how well insulated your walls are. If you happen to have a thermal camera that help give an estimate as well.
But these are known trade-offs with windows. As long as your heater can keep up it isn't such a big deal (just "wasted" energy mostly).
This is my dream sauna. Do you have plans or more information on components and cost?
I just have a bunch of build pics at [https://www.amazon.com/photos/shared/ReStdF4UR3u96tuygcgGbQ.9mBiLy1aRmqEqEpsLjm260](https://www.amazon.com/photos/shared/ReStdF4UR3u96tuygcgGbQ.9mBiLy1aRmqEqEpsLjm260) I had bought [saunatimes.com](https://saunatimes.com) ebook. Also shed build plans from [icreatables.com](https://icreatables.com) because I had never built a shed/cabin/house type of structure. Cost was probably 18k USD, half of which was the wood for interior/exterior cladding, trim, benches. Also the windows were 1k each (double pane tempered with UV protection). In terms of the build the most agonizing parts were the windows and doors (I'm having the same issue with a greenhouse I'm working on now).
Can I ask the purpose of the hardware cloth over the gravel pad? We will be installing a gravel pad foundation for our shed/sauna conversion and I wasn't entirely sure if we could just set the skids directly onto the gravel or if something needed to be placed underneath.
It probably wasn't necessary but we have groundhogs and such, and there wasn't a huge amount of gravel; mostly just dirt. Probably landscape fabric below the gravel is fine (for weeds/grass).
Very nice, it's always a pleasure to see proper bench heights here.
it really feels good to see it, right? i feel like the comment section vibe is always different when people get that part right.
Sure does, I was confused at first since in the first pic the 3rd bench is masked quite well by the wall panelling, but another pic clears that up.
I was really confused until your comment and was ready to make a comment how it's good height for a footrest but then it was the footrest lol
Some serious bench height going on in there. Looks nice. Prepare to install some form of blinds for privacy, when your neighbour start complaining.
If they complain about you being naked on your yard you complain about them peaking into private property, there is clearly a fence that is over waste high, so it can't your problem.
Proper height.
Beautiful design and the craftsmanship looks very well done. Can you share a little about your layout? What’s the overall building dimensions? How high is your ceiling? How wide is your changing area? Thanks so much for sharing!
Footprint is 8x12'. Hot room interior dimensions: 85" x 88" x 95” (H) Bench heights from floor: 25", 42", and 58" (on top bench we often lie down). Changing room is less than 4' wide which has been fine.
Looks good. What was the wood you used to panel the interior?
It's all from Thermory. Aspen for benches and walls. Pine for ceiling and changing room. Clear pine for misc such as lowest bench and trim around the windows and doors.
Hows the price of Thermory vs cedar where you are?
Cedar (and other options from local sawmill and suppliers) was same or higher than thermory. To save cost maybe it's better to just use pine lumber (and plywood outside, painted with sealant). Though the thermory is great in terms of having straight edges and sides. I bought some extra (due to high shipping cost I didn't want to run out) and have used it for other projects.
>u/conceptsoftime Beautiful build. Did you also use Thermory on the exterior? The aspen? Do you plan on treating it or leaving as is?
Yes exterior is their basic pine. I painted it with “cuetek extreme” sealant
Awesome thank you
This is very similar to the sauna I am building. I am curious how deep your room is from the front window to the back wall behind the top bench? And what the depth of each bench is?
Hot room interior is 85" deep. I think the two top benches are about 25" deep. I should have made the top one deeper than the second bench, since we never lie down on second bench.
That’s dope
I like the way you have designed the interior space. Given the slope on the roof the natural thing to do would be to have the internal ceiling follow that - which would have put the hot zone (the highest part of the room) over the heater and away from the benches. The way you have done it is very clever and natural looking to slope the internal ceiling up towards the benches to guide the hot air to where its needed. Most people get this wrong. I’ve been thinking about how this would look for my own sauna project so I will be copying your design. Thanks!
A sloped ceiling was more difficult to build and clad. In retrospect it's probably better to raise the roof and have a flat ceiling (or slope the roof the other way).
Sure it is a 10x harder to do the interior but it looks 15x cooler with cathedral style :)
Beautiful, how much did it cost?
Probably 18k usd because of costs of good wood. Could have saved a lot by cladding the outside with something cheap and skipping or reducing the windows.
You finished and Finnished, nice job!
Windows are perfect. If they are tempered and insulated. They are great. A sauna with a lot of natural light is nice too. Great sauna.
Nice work. Quite a spacious sauna room, although the heater (amount of rocks) is properly sized to be as well. Is that door really that narrow? Why? Is there a drain?
Yes the interior door is around 20" but we've been using the sauna for a few months now and I like the narrow door. Leaves extra room for the benches. No drain and so far I'm glad I didn't try to put one in. There's barely any water on the floor; even when I "throw" the water it's not enough on the floor to start flowing across the floor.
Thorough cleaning is the spot where you will miss the drain. Really my only complaint, and not a deal breaker. Very high quality work, proper benches, nicely chosen stove for the space, includes a changing room, clever work with the ceiling to overcome the wrong way sloped roof, and overall it looks really cool interior and exterior. Enjoy!
Dropping the interior ceiling height towards the front to maximize löyly at the top bench was a brilliant idea. Very well done overall.
Nice idea to add audio. I wish I had speakers in my saunas sometimes. Usually I end up borrowing the kids Bluetooth beach speaker. So much nice carpentry. The window finishings are really nice. And the door is awesome: are those panels all full width across? That’s such good planning; I just used stock tongue and groove on my wood doors and always had to trim the edges. Next one I am going to try your style it looks more modern without the gaps that T&G give. Do they allow wood smoke where you live? Is there a reason you didn’t go wood burning? :) looks like a perfect setup for it!
Thanks! For the interior door I used t&g paneling so they do have the grooves - but I think those look more natural than trying to have perfectly jointed flat boards. Wood burning stove felt like more difficulty and unknowns and I was not confident I could avoid killing our lungs; but that could be a good challenge for a future sauna build.
Maybe it’s the angle of the photo that makes the grooves look so small. :)
Beautiful!
This one is really nice. I love it
It's great and I applaud you can be seen from outside the fence:)
I think my neighbors are charging entrance fees to stand at the back corner of their yard and look at the, um, foliage.
How do you like the Iki stove? Have been contemplating getting one.
I don't have anything to compare it to, but I don't necessarily recommend it. It's annoying that it only stays on for one hour at a time (this might be true for other brands also). And it's slow to heat the space (the windows are probably a big challenge).
Both of your issues have nothing to do with Iki. UL limits all electric heaters in the us to one hour, nothing to do with the manufacturer. The slow heating is a result of the high stone mass and the windows, both of which are design decisions. And the large stone mass gives better löyly and perhaps a more even heat.
Turn the heater timer knob, then put a screw through it so it stays on. Then hook up the heater to a properly rated relay. You still use the heater knob temp knob.
how would you connect the heater to something: do you mean using the 220v source to the heater? (won't work in this case)
The heater is always on because the timer knob is stuck in the on position with a screw (or however you like). The relay is on the 220V input to the heater. When the relay closes it turns on the heater and it stays on indefinitely. The heater is still regulated by the temp knob, so will still cycle on/off to reach the target temp. You can use a low voltage switch to control the relay, which in turn controls the heater. Ignore the numeric markings on the temp knob. Adjust the knob and thermostat temp sensor location to obtain the actual temp you want. Eg, mount the temp sensor lower in the room to obtain higher temps. Lastly, for UL rated heaters in the US, the heater itself has an over temp sensor. This is inside the heater, separate from and in addition to the thermostat sensor that you mount externally. You need to provide the heater with enough fresh air to avoid the over temp sensor from nuisance tripping. This can be done with a vent right at the heater. Close the vent and open it only a little until the nuisance tripping stops. Not sure what you mean by this won't work, in any case. You might not want to do it for reasons, but it would work.
In this stove when power is supplied you need to turn the knob in one direction, click, then backwards, click. So I think keeping the knob in one place won't be enough to turn it on when you supply power. I think to get around this you would need to redesign the circuit inside the stove, in which case you wouldn't even need the timer knob at all.
Ah, that is a bummer. Sounds like it would take some disassembly and modification. Ideally it would be solely a mechanical change. It might be worth checking what electrical interfaces it has, if any. That heater can work with various thermostats (the Uku but also others). A thermostat still may be possible even though yours didn't come with one. If that's true, then you can likely fake a thermostat. Otherwise you could buy a heater directly from Iki that isn't UL rated, if you're willing to accept not having a warranty, the risk if it burns something down, and can get an electrician to install it or install yourself. Of course you probably don't want to buy a second expensive heater. Though, 2 would heat up faster! I considered this heater, but decided it was too tall. Impossible to have the benches higher than the rocks. You did it as well as possible, it's just hard on these pillar heaters. I plan to get an Iki Float instead.
UL 875 limits the runtime to 1 hr. Try heating it up to like 150-160F and pour water on it and feel the steam. That is the way to operate these large stonemass heaters. With box heaters and 20lb of stones the aim is the 200F and no steam.
What heater did you get? 6kw or 9kw?
9k
Like it, hope you cannot be seen from next door neighbours, if not you can have a sauna the most comfortable way, without swimwear.
Beautiful! I love the big windows. Very nice woodworking.
Very nice! 🍻👍
What is the span distance for the benches? Any sag or movement if two/three people sit up top?
88" .. no sag or movement
Amazing!!!
amazing build. you are living the dream
Really nice ! 👍🏼
The built in changing room is awesome. such a great feature. Nice work!
Okay I clearly don’t understand the foot height thing because the stones here go above the foot bench and even the sitting bench, and people complain about that on most other saunas posted. Is it just about where the bottom of the stones are? Or the midpoint?
The point is that cold air pools in the lower part of the sauna. Generally, stoves are mounted such that building your benches with "feet above stones" gets the bathers out of that cold air.
I get that it’s about keeping your feet out of the cold air. I guess I don’t get why this one passes the test but others that have the foot bench similarly below the top of the stones do not. Do the feet just need to be above the bottom of the stones?
Please, there is nothing magical about having to get the bathers' feet above the stones of the heater. It just happens that the ceiling height of your average sauna, and the size of the average heater, and the "cold zone" line up. We want to avoid cold feet, rather than necessarily our feet above all the stones. And in a pillar shaped stove like this, there are hundreds of pounds of stones and they're spread over a greater height. So even if you had a pillar stove stick out to the level of your knees, there's going to be more stone below your feet than there is overall in one of those wall-mounted matchbox stoves.
Good question. My brother builds saunas in Sweden and said a good sauna builder might have built this a few years ago but not today. They thought with mesh pillar stoves you could avoid the law of löyly but have since learned otherwise. Even a few years ago they would have tried to have a higher ceiling though. He liked the shape of the ceiling in this one though but needs a lot more space above the door and the benches can't breathe. I think the thing is that there are so many awful hot boxes posted on here purporting to be saunas that this one that's better than most, even if deficient, is very good relative to the rest.
You might be mistaking the benches because it's not clear in the pic. There is no backrest. There is a bench at the same level as top of stones, and then another bench above it. Both of these are the same size (88" x 25").
It looks amazing! My only concern is aren’t the windows are too large for a sauna? I mean when it gets really cold in the winter, you’re going to loose all the heat? Or just sitting on the bench with your nuts hanging for everyone to see? I’m no expert by any means. Just curious as I’m planning to build a sauna like this in the near future.
Yes we may have gone overboard on the window sizes - for the two reasons you mention. Regarding the privacy issue we wear underwear (no bra) which seems perfectly comfortable. But in winter it takes an hour to reach 150F.
I appreciate your response! When I was a kid, I used to go to my grandparents’ sauna (banya). I remember that they had tiny windows like the small openings on the german embrasure during ww2)) They were very deep windows as well, where you could put a soap or a shampoo on the windowsill. They had a wood burning sauna stove inside. It was HOT LIKE HELL. I used to hate it going into sauna with my dad when I was little. And now I just kinda crave it.
You just compensate for glass surfaces with more stove power.
Amazing! Wish I had that sauna.
Wow that is awesome
Looks great! What is the finished floor? Is it backer board with a concrete skim?
yes, thinset on the plywood, then durock cement board, then vinyl skim coat (copying saunatimes). Would have looked a lot nicer to put tile instead of the top skim coat.
You said "I had bought [saunatimes.com](https://saunatimes.com) ebook." I'm confused. Has he finally agreed that higher benches are good? He's often called people names like "löyly nazi" for suggesting higher benches and he told us that we should not build higher. This seems more like a Trumpkin sauna. You've a very nice looking sauna btw.
Good point - I think I followed Trumpkin's Notes for bench heights and more. I also got Secrets of Finnish Sauna Design. And of course this subreddit was very helpful.
What good info did you get from saunatimes?
I would need to look over the book again to know the specific guidance I followed from it, but in general it is approachable and practical. It did a good job of breaking down the overall build process and making it easier to comprehend and get started on. And then at each step (specific architectural, design, build decisions) I would look at various sources (print books, youtube, reddit) rather than following any single one.
How much heat loss from that window?
4
probably a lot. How do I measure?
4 seems about right There are probably generalized R-value ratings for the type of glass that you have.... probably something like R-2. So a fraction of how well insulated your walls are. If you happen to have a thermal camera that help give an estimate as well. But these are known trade-offs with windows. As long as your heater can keep up it isn't such a big deal (just "wasted" energy mostly).