I Built a Sauna

I recently built a sauna at home.  Or rather I designed a sauna and paid someone else to build it for me, but it’s just easier to say I built it, because what I did not do is just buy a sauna (not that there’s anything wrong with that!).  

Maybe you’re thinking about “building” a sauna too, or maybe you’re still deciding on build vs buy, or maybe (and this one is a bit weird) you have zero interest in getting a sauna but for some reason just like reading blog posts about building saunas.  Well, if any of those things are true, keep reading.

Before we get into it, I feel obligated to preface this post by saying I am by no means a sauna expert, although I definitely know more now than I did before setting off on this journey.  What I’m really trying to say here is that there’s a halfway decent chance I don’t know what I’m talking about, so definitely don’t take anything I’m going to be saying as gospel.

With that out of the way, I am going to try get slightly into the details for those of you who are thinking about either building your own sauna, or trying to decide if going with a kit makes more sense for you, I’m also going to try to walk through my thought process – why I made certain decisions, and maybe most importantly, what I think about those decisions now with a bit of hindsight to work with.

So why’d you want a sauna in the first place?

If I’m honest (and I am) I wasn’t always a big fan of saunas.  I’ve used them occasionally over the years and sometimes didn’t feel so great afterwards.  Turns out that’s not uncommon, and usually has something to do with poorly built saunas, oftentimes involving breathing in too much CO2 due to poor ventilations, or maybe I just didn’t take pre-sauna hydration seriously enough.  Either way, saunas were not very high on my list of things to experience.

So what changed?  

Not too long ago I received some personalized medical advice that one of the more meaningful things I could add to my health regimen to protect against age-related cognitive issues (I’m 51 by the way) is to start regularly using a sauna.  I dutifully filed this away in a corner of my still working brain under the heading of “stuff to do later”.  

But then I kept hearing more and more and from various sources about the benefits of regular sauna use (yes, saunas are very much having a moment), with perhaps the most compelling data point being a study that revealed individuals who regularly use a sauna can experience a 40% decrease in all cause mortality, plus a number of other cardio vascular benefits.  

I thought to myself, wow, if that’s even mostly true that is absolutely something I should be doing, and not later but now.  

If all that wasn’t enough, all my online research showed me countless photos of happy smiling people who seemed to be having the time of their lives sweating in a sauna – I wanted to be one of those people too!

Why not just use the gym sauna?

Great question!  I actually did start using the gym sauna, but quickly came to the conclusion that using it, while mostly workable, just wasn’t ideal for several reasons:

• I tend to batch my workouts into two long workouts per week, and after I was done with those I usually just wanted to go home, or it was already right around closing time so I couldn’t use the gym sauna even if I wanted to.
• When going to the gym just to use the sauna, the timing constraints still weren’t the most convenient.
• I suspected that the gym sauna didn’t have the best ventilation, which may have been causing some of my “I don’t feel great after the sauna” experience.
• I’m kind of a hygiene freak and wasn’t sure how clean the gym sauna was being kept – seeing the occasional person walk straight into the sauna from the weight room, sneakers, workout shorts, t-shirt and all just helped reinforce those concerns. 

In the end, if I didn’t have the space or the means to have my own sauna at home, I would have been happy to use the gym sauna more often, but ultimately decided that I would use a sauna much more often at home and have a more pleasant experience while doing so.  

As a bonus (which is actually a big deal), I also thought that it would be a great bonding experience with my family and friends – especially since my teenage boys wouldn’t be bringing their phones in with them.

Down the rabbit hole I went.

Before this process, I didn’t know much about sauna construction. So like any modern human, I turned to the internet.

There is a lot of sauna information/debate out there:

• Infrared vs. traditional
• Indoor vs. outdoor
• Kit vs. custom
• Barrel vs. cube vs. cabin
• Endless construction variations

Eventually, I started dumping everything into Google NotebookLM so I could chat with and question all these sources whenever I wanted to.

At first, like most people, I assumed I’d go with a kit that matched our requirements. It seemed simple: find one, order it, have someone assemble it.

My requirements:

• Two people should be able to lay down
• Fit up to six people sitting
• Fit on our patio

I eventually landed on the SaunaLife CL7G Cube (~$15K all-in with heater and shipping), which I thought was expensive (ha!).

Then I kept researching… and everything changed. 

Enter Trumpkins Notes on Building a Sauna

If you spend enough time in sauna forums, you’ll eventually have someone point you to Trumpkin’s Notes on Building a Sauna.  For some reason, I kind of started treating these as sauna gospel.  Take this how you like, but some of Trumpkin’s key points are (although there’s more than just this):

• Proper ventilation is critical
• Bathers’ toes should be above the heater stones (heat stratification matters a lot)
• Many U.S. kits are “novelty saunas” (their words, not mine—but it stuck)

At this point I didn’t completely abandon kits but the ones that met these standards were too small, too expensive, or had long delivery lead times.

So I pivoted to full custom.

Here are most of the points in infographic form:

Some (faulty) assumptions

At this point I can’t even remember how I came up with these assumptions, but I think it was mostly “feelings”.  I thought I could get away with building something at a similar cost as the mid-tier kits and get it all done in about 3 weeks (it’s just a box that gets hot, right?).  I also thought I could figure out all the design and construction principles on my own.  I was wrong about the first two assumptions, but strangely enough, with all the resources available on the internet, I was pretty much right about the third one.

All said and done, it took about 2 months and cost about $48K, plus another 2.5K for the outdoor shower (I’ll break all the expenses down later).

Spoiler alert, even though it cost waaay more than I had originally thought, it came out great and matched my vision exactly. 

Further down the rabbit hole

So now that I had decided to design and build my own sauna I began learning about the construction considerations, using Trumpkins notes as my guiding light.  I loaded those into Notebook LM too,, and began watching various Youtube videos that seemed to align to the Trumpkin principles.  Those videos also got loaded into my Notebook LM.  At first it was all a little overwhelming, but sitting with it all for some time, things started to make sense and it all gradually became less and less overwhelming.  Another thing that helped was joining The Sauna Society Forum, where I could ask my own questions and learn from others. 

Design Decisions and Tradeoffs

Quick shout out to diycenter.app which is a super cool web app that I used to design my sauna.  There’s a free and paid version, I made due with the free version.  This app has a bunch of customizable sauna components which you can assemble into a CAD-like design. This app was a huge help!  The paid version included the ability to create materials lists, which maybe I should have done. 

Sauna type (infrared vs traditional):  While obviously an important decision to make up front, I didn’t spend much time on this.  The research seems to show that both types of saunas offer major health benefits, but data also shows that traditional saunas have the edge on cardio vascular and longevity improvements, which is what I was most interested in.  The traditional sauna also just spoke to me, so I quickly decided to go in that direction.  I’m sure that many others have gone with infrared and had zero regrets with that decision too.  

Sauna size:  Considering the sauna was going on my patio, the largest I could comfortably go with was roughly 8x8x8 (interior dimensions), and based on my design that would still meet my requirements of two people being able to lay down while also fitting six people when not laying down.  The eight foot ceiling would allow me to get ‘toes above stones’ (or at least very close to it).

We’ve now been using the sauna for about a month and our current record is six bathers on the top benches, which was tight but very doable.  Overall, I’m happy with the size, not that we really could have gone bigger, but I’m definitely glad we didn’t go smaller.  With two people it feels downright palatial, and who doesn’t want a palatial feeling sauna!

Wall construction and insulation:  We live in a temperate climate but I still decided to over engineer the sauna, especially in terms of wall construction.  We ended up going with a mostly insulated sauna (only the floor is uninsulated) with virtually all the possible wall layers (from the outside in):

• Hardy board (sides) and cedar planks (front)
• Tyvek house wrap
• Plywood
• 2×4 framing
• Rockwool insulation (R15)
• Paper backed aluminum foil moisture barrier
• Furring strips to provide the air gap (doubled to allow for vertical interior planks)
• Japanese cedar planks for interior cladding

This all turned out to be fairly involved, expensive and time consuming.  If someone is looking to cut costs, I’d advise looking into potentially using tongue and groove timber to go with a single wall uninsulated type sauna, but that’s not really something I investigated or priced out.

Window and door:  Some of my research led me to believe that glass doors weren’t ideal due to heat loss, but they are typically cheaper than wood doors, plus I also thought we were over-insulating for our climate so thought we’d be fine with an all glass door.  We even added a 1.5’ x 3’ tempered glass window (⅜” thick).  I’m very glad we went with the door and window, it makes the sauna feel much more open, and anyone with the least bit of claustrophobia shouldn’t have any issues at all with this sauna.  Just make sure to include glass surfaces in your heater calculations, the more glass, the bigger the heater needed.

Wood selection:  This topic seemed to be more difficult than it should have been, until it wasn’t.  For various reasons, Trumpkins notes did not speak highly of cedar, which is fairly standard in American saunas.  There was mention of neurotoxins (that’s why insects are repelled by cedar) and it not being a traditional sauna wood in Finland and similar sauna hotbed regions.  Alternate woods typically mentioned are:  Hemlock, Nordic Spruce, Alder, and Aspen.

I started calling around local lumber sources asking about these cedar alternatives.  Those discussions usually included a somewhat confusing conversation going over my requirements, them not being sure what would work well in a sauna, and eventually me getting back hard to understand yet exorbitant pricing.  After deciphering the pricing, it seemed like I was looking at something around $6K just for the interior cladding, that didn’t even include bench material or the cedar I wanted to use on the outside front of the sauna.

After some frustrations with the local lumber sources (which really were just sourcing material from various parts of the country anyway) I made a post on the Sauna Society Form asking if anyone had any luck sourcing sauna wood in my area.  Someone quickly pointed me to a small family owned lumber company selling wood a few hours away who advertised on Craigslist.  They had a small but good selection of cedar (which I was still a little weary of) but the prices were 3x cheaper than what I could get locally, even with the steep delivery fee.  

We ended up going with that lumber yard and ordering 1×6 Japanese kiln dried cedar planks ($1.55 per linear foot) for the inside and the 1×8 rustic cedar ($1.15 per linear foot)  for the exterior front wall.  The 1×6 was a little wider than I originally wanted to go with, as I read that the wider the inside planks are, the more susceptible they are to cupping.  But at these prices I thought it was worth the risk, plus those planks did look great in the photos.  

All said and done, the wood looks great on and in the sauna and I’m happy that we went in the direction we went in, especially considering the savings.  With that said,  I am noticing a little cupping with some of the planks which isn’t ideal, but everything is nailed down well (or in the case of the benches, screwed down well) so even with the cupping, the boards aren’t separating.  Hopefully that will continue to be the case.  

Due to how reasonably priced the cedar was, I made sure to get extra to use for the benches and back rests as well. The total order for the 1×6 Japanese cedar planks was 144 8’ boards, the length worked very well considering our 8’ ceiling height. 

For ease of maintenance and to match the rest of the house, I ended up going with smooth Hardie planks for the three non-front walls of the sauna.  Those walls are exposed more to the elements.  Although with the cheap price of the 1×8 rustic cedar planks, I did briefly toy with using those for 100% of the sauna exterior. 

Bench Design:  

After playing around with different bench layouts on diycenter.app, I ended up going with an L layout.  That seemed to best maximize the space inside the sauna.  It was surprising how quickly space was taken up in a 8x8x8 area after starting to add the benches.  It was to the point where I quickly figured out we couldn’t even have a 3rd row (step).  In lue of that, ended up building a small movable step stool to help people climb up to the foot and sitting benches.

We ended up placing the top of the top bench 48” below the finished ceiling.  For bench width, I decided to go extra wide with 28” on one bench (“my bench”), and 23” wide on the other.  We also went with a one inch gap between the wall and back of the benches – for air flow.  In retrospect, maybe we should have placed the benches a bit higher to better maximize the hot air pocket, but we are very happy with the depth of the benches.

The back rests are 10” tall with the top of the back rests being 20” from the top of the benches.  There is also a 1” gap between the back rests and the walls.

I wanted the bottom benches to also double as seats in case anyone felt like they needed to sit in a cooler strata of the sauna, so those are wide enough for sitting, not just to be used as a foot rest.  We made one of the bottom benches slidable so it could be tucked under the top bench.  This is in case we wanted to use a vanik, that way the person wielding the vanik on someone laying down on the top bench wouldn’t need to lean over the bottom bench.  The other bottom bench is smaller and fixed, mostly because we couldn’t figure out a reasonable way to make that one slide in as well.

Overall, we’re happy with how we designed and built the benches with the possible exception of maybe putting the top benches a bit higher, but at least this way it doesn’t feel like our heads are right up against the ceiling.  Also, when laying down they are plenty high enough for the entire body to be in the hot pocket.

Heater:

In another example of potentially over doing it, I went with a Saunum L13 heater.  Saunums are (as far as I know) the only heaters on the market that come with a flume and fan to mix the air and steam.  They pull it in from the top and pass it through to the bottom.  I originally liked that idea, but in retrospect I think that’s more important for a sauna that has a ceiling that’s sloped the wrong way (ours is flat) or a ceiling that’s too low.  We’ve been playing around with the fan, but are coming to the conclusion that maybe it’s too good at mixing the air, which is bringing down the overall temperature.  Lately we’ve just been using the sauna with no fan. The fan has three settings, which all add some degree of noise.  The noise isn’t too bad, but it’s still extra noise.

Coming in at a whopping $5,730 for the Saunum L13, rocks, and internet enabled controller, this is probably an area where I could have gone a different direction and still ended up with a quality heater, but spending less to get there.  As exorbitant as the internet enable controller is ($1,295), I still love the idea of being able to control the sauna from my phone remotely, and would pay that again if needed.  With all that said, the heater and controller seem to be working well, so no big regrets there.

Controller placement:

Even deciding where to place the controller took some soul searching.  On one hand, electronics don’t love living inside a sauna, on the other hand, the Saunum manual that I had implied that it would be ok to place the controller lower than 40” on the wall.  In the end I decided to mount the controller on the inside wall at 37” high.  The logic I used was that I’d want to control the heater from inside with the panel, and from the outside with my phone, which is exactly how I am doing it now that it’s all in place.

I quickly doubted this decision when I thought I cooked the controller during the burn in process with the heater (when cooking the production chemicals off before actually using the sauna).  Everything worked fine for a few hours but then the controller became non-responsive and wouldn’t turn back on after power cycling.  After a few hours of trouble shooting it turned out that the controller doesn’t leave much room for the wires coming out of the back and our electrician had scrunched them a bit too much, so that one of them was losing connectivity, and probably the heat expansion had put it just over the edge.  After drilling a hole behind the wires and reseating the wires, everything is now working fine, and hopefully that hole is providing a little extra ventilation for the back of the controller

I did end up talking with Saunaum tech support, who now recommend that controllers be placed on the outside of the sauna.  Their new manual states that too, I guess they sent me my heater with an outdated manual.  We’ll see how all this plays out in the future, but I’m not moving anything at this point, all the wires are secure behind the paneling and moving things would be a huge pain.

Ventilation:

This is another area of sauna design that is hotly discussed.  With that said, Saunum is pretty clear on where they want vents to go in saunas where their heaters are used.  They call for a 4” intake vent low on the wall next to the heater, a 6 to 8” exhaust vent on an opposite wall under the benches, and a 6 to 8” drying vent high on the wall.  During initial heating, all vents are to be closed with the Saunum fan off as well.  Then when the sauna is being used, the intake and exhaust vents should be opened, and finally, when done with the sauna session, the drying vent should also be opened.

We did opt to forgo a mechanical exhaust fan to keep things simple.  In retrospect, maybe we should have added one.  We feel good during and after sauna use, but I still wonder if the passive ventilation is enough.  I occasionally do go on the outside of the sauna to check if I can feel warm air leaving the sauna through the exhaust vent, and I don’t feel much.  This is something that I’ll keep an eye on.

On a side note, most of the interior sauna vent covers available online were either expensive or poorly reviewed (some both).  I figured I could build my own poorly reviewed vent cover with leftover wood, so that’s what I did.  Unfortunately this did not end up being the cost savings strategy I had intended because I later went on to purchase a table saw, router, and a bunch of other tools so I could continue to chip away at my left over wood pile by building a bunch of other things (more on that later).

Floor:

Our main options for flooring were either wood or tile, with the other decision being drain or no drain.  Even though most saunas end up with wood flooring, I wasn’t crazy about that strategy for our sauna.  I just knew I’d always be wondering what was going on with the bottom of the wood, that I’d never actually get to see.  I suspected that visions of semi-sentient black mold, just inches away from my precious feet would be haunting my dreams on a regular basis.  With that in mind, I elected to go with a tile floor.  After investigating the cheaper options at the big box stores, I ended up finding a higher end product that was a slip resistant 20×10 porcelain tile that looked just like natural slate.  It looks great and we are so far super happy with it.

Considering a drain is something that’s better to put in and not need than need and not have put it in, we elected to install one.  I originally purchased a circular drain that was going to go in the middle of the sauna, but after my tile guy convinced me that it would make the sauna look like a gas station bathroom, I opted for a 40” linear drain that’s installed towards the side of the sauna.

All things considered, the flooring was one of the more expensive components of the sauna.  The tile and grout cost $840, the drain cost about $100, and the labor about $3600 (yes, I got multiple bids!).  We did basically treat the entire 8×8 floor as one large shower pan, in terms of water proofing.

While the floor definitely gets pretty wet, I’m guessing that roughly zero water has made it down the drain, just because there isn’t that much of it.  But again, I’d rather have the drain and not need it, than need it and not have it.  So this is probably another area where we could have saved money by going with a cheaper option, but we’re still happy with how the floor came out, and it does look great.  If we had it to do over again, I would have done the same exact thing – drain and all.

Lighting:

I was originally thinking about buying color changing LED strips for the sauna, but after calling LEDSupply (where I ended up buying my lights) they talked me out of it.  I was told that those lights, while able to change colors, don’t have a great white light, which I figured would be the default setting we’d be using.  I also watched a video from the fine folks at TheSaunaHeater.com which basically said color changing lights can be cool, but are mainly a gimmick that doesn’t add much to the sauna experience.  Not knocking anyone who went in this direction, but I opted for a simple, high quality 2700K white light.

I made sure to go with IP68 LED strips which are rated for high temp and are water submersible.  I ordered two reels of 16 foot strips, along with two dimmable power supplies.  The person who I spoke with also convinced me to buy two strip connectors because they said the LED strips wouldn’t make the 45 degree bend where the back rests connected, but that proved to be untrue, so I ended up not using those connectors.

Someone suggested I go with under bench placement for the LEDs, but I ended up placing them behind the top and bottom boards of the back rests.  I also wasn’t sure if they’d provide enough light, but they definitely do, in fact, we rarely have them on full power.

I did end up also adding a nautical style dimmable LED sauna light that I bought pretty cheap off Amazon.  I question if at this pricing it’s truly rated for life in a sauna, but so far it’s still operational.  My logic for including that secondary light was as a back up light in case the primary LEDs ever went out, or as a service light if we ever just want to fully illuminate the sauna.  We haven’t really used this light yet.

Both sets of lights are controlled by cheap Kasa wifi dimmers that seem to work pretty well.  

Overall, I would not change a thing with the lighting set up with now have.

Outdoor shower:

This was another item that didn’t come cheap.  Plumbing to run both hot and cold water lines was $1200, the shower itself was $844, and labor to dig and fill the drain pit was probably another $1000.   For me, this was all pretty much a requirement and I’m definitely glad we did it.  My normal sauna process is to shower before entering, shower in between rounds, and shower after the final round.  Having an outdoor shower makes this much more pleasant and convenient.  Plus, who doesn’t like to shower outdoors!

I didn’t put a whole bunch of thought into the specific shower we ended up with at the time I ordered it, it just seemed to look good, but I’ve really grown to like this one.  It has a rainfall shower head which is nice because the typical angled shower head would have probably ended up spraying the walkway quite a bit, this way all the water ends up in the drain.

Labor:

Not really a design decision, but a big decision none the less was who I would hire to build the sauna.  My choices were going with a professional sauna builder (who I’d need to find) or a more general builder who I knew, was ready to get started ASAP, but who had never built a sauna from scratch before.  Because I was both impatient and put weight into known relationships, I went with the latter option.  This was a person who was foreman for our big home remodel project, so I knew that he was capable of good work, and I took it upon myself to communicate all the sauna specific nuances of the build, which I had already researched.

A little consultative help along the way

As I mentioned earlier, I ended up buying my heater from TheSaunaHeater.com.  When I was on their website I noticed that they offer free sauna consultations.  I ended up booking a Zoom session to go over my design, which was really helpful.  That consultation helped me nail down a few things like lighting, bench placement (that’s when I decided to go wider than originally planned), and in general just made sure that my plans made sense.  

For anyone who could use a little help, I recommend reaching out to the guys over at TheSaunaHeater.com.  In addition to the Zoom consultation, I made a few ad-hoc calls to their question line as well.  They were always pleasant to speak with and were happy to answer any questions I had.  In addition to the heater, I ended up buying my door and aluminum vapor barrier from them as well.  

Starting the Build

The sauna basically started its life as a typical high quality shed, a very expensive high quality shed.  It was overhanging our patio by a bit so we did end up needing put put down some piers, with the conduits going along the back. 

My builder had a ton of experience with this type of rough framing construction and I didn’t have too much to offer other than the general design layout, but I left it up to him to make that happen.

One tip I have is to take plenty of pictures and video during all phases of the build, that way you can refer back to them to know what’s behind the walls.

On a related topic, don’t forget to put backing in for the benches.  We ended up putting backing in on both sides of the vapor barrier.  Backing that went on top of the vapor barrier was made flush with the furring strips.

This was one of my reference photos:

Once we started getting into more of the sauna specific aspects of the build, I started jumping in more and more to make sure we were adhering to sauna construction best practices.  Primarily that we weren’t using anything that would off gas, had the right air gaps, and that we were using material that could withstand the harsh realities of sauna life.  At one point I noticed that we were about to use standard deck screws for the benches, so I ran off to buy stainless steele screws (the most I’ve ever paid for a box of screws in my life!).  The one thing I did miss, which hopefully isn’t terrible, is that we used galvanized finishing nails for the interior cladding rather than stainless steel nails.  Galvanized nails used to be the standard though, so hopefully this wasn’t a huge miss.

We pretty much stuck to the original design, but there were plenty of ad-hoc conversations which led to small small tweaks.  One example is that we framed out the smaller of the two top benches but it seemed too shallow, so we ended up adding to the framing and pushing it out a bit, that was an important catch.

From start to finish it took about two months.  Part of the reason it took that long is that it started out as a weekend job for my builder, although that changed to 5 days a week for the second half.  I also suspect that it took a bit longer as we got into the sauna specific areas of the build (like benches) because my builder, to a certain extent, was also figuring some things out as he went along.  Since I was paying hourly, I’m sure this also caused the cost to go up a bit too.

I have no regrets about who I hired.  Had I known a sauna building expert who could have started right away, I may have gone with them, but I didn’t.  Things may have cost more than I had originally expected, but I’m still very happy with the end result.

Speaking of expenses

All said and done, I was all in for about 50K, but that included some electrical work for a hot tub that we put in around the same time.  If I was a bit (ok a lot) more handy, I’m sure I could have cut this almost in half by doing the work myself, but I’m sure that also would have taken much more time as well.

Some specific expenses:

Labor (excluding plumbing and electrical):  $22.5K

Heater, door, and foil (my purchases from TheSaunaHeater.com:  $7K

Framing/foundation lumber:  $3K

LED lighting:  $359

Outdoor shower:  $845 (not labor, just the shower itself)

Plumbing:  $1200

Electrical:  $4900 (included some work for the hot tub)

Tiling labor:  $3600

Window glass:  $94 (what a deal!)

Tile and grout:  $840

Cedar for front face and inside cladding:  $2765 (including $700 delivery fee)

One box of giant overpriced stainless steel screws:  $200 (this one still hurts)

There were of course a bunch of other small and medium other items – I’m not trying to be comprehensive here, just trying to include a few representative costs for some of the larger and more interesting items.

What I learned and what I’d do differently

• Building a nice sauna the right way isn’t cheap.  I didn’t really go into this with a budget in mind or having mapped out all the expenses, but even so, I managed to surprise myself with how quickly expenses started adding up, including but definitely not only, the hourly labor.
• If I had to do this all over again, I’d probably have looked harder at higher end kits, although with our specific space constraints, there’s a good chance those wouldn’t have worked well for us.
• Finish work takes a long time.  There were days I remember thinking to myself, “that’s all that happened today?”, but after later attempting to build some things on my own, I now realize that all that detailed work doesn’t happen quickly.
• It was both fun and stressful.  I do believe it’s always good to have your brain work on new things, which was both fun and engaging, but having a two month project that was costing me money on a daily basis also added to my overall stress level.
• In terms of the build specifics, I’m very happy with almost every decision we made, the few things that I’d maybe change are:
  • Raising the top benches about 4 inches to really get the toes above the stones (those Saunum heaters are tall!)
  • Maybe go with mechanical ventilation for peace of mind
  • That’s about it though.  Some of the other things that I could have done differently would have been to save on cost, but that also may have led to a lesser sauna.

Overall, I’m really happy with how it turned out and there’s very little I would have done differently.

Unexpected side projects

One other thing that did somewhat surprise me is that I became inspired to build things out of wood.  I haven’t really done that before, but having my builder’s tools lying around inspired me to buy my own.  I already had a mitre saw, but then added a table saw, router, and few other power and wood working tools to my collection.  So far I’ve built:

• Interior sauna vent covers
• Towel racks
• Step stool
• Privacy panel for outdoor shower
• And have a bunch more things on my to do list

Final thoughts

So, was it worth it?

For me, absolutely!

Even with the cost, the time, and the occasional “what did I get myself into” moments along the way, I ended up with exactly what I wanted and envisioned. There’s something that’s really satisfying about sitting in a space that started as just an idea in your head and is now… a very hot wooden box on my patio that I actually use on a regular basis.

It’s still early, so I can’t definitively say my sauna transformed my health or added years to my life, but I can say this: we’re using it, we’re enjoying it, and it’s become a really nice way to spend time together as a family, without phones, without distractions, just sitting there sweating and talking. That alone just might make it worth it.

If I had to do it again, I’d definitely go into it with a better understanding of the time and cost involved, and I’d probably take a harder look at some high-end kits.  But at the same time, I’d be giving something up going with a kit.  This thing fits our space exactly how I needed it to, looks the way I imagined, and functions the way I wanted it to.

The whole process also made me realize I actually enjoy building things. I didn’t really know that going in, but now I’ve got a small (and growing) collection of tools and a list of projects I want to tackle next, which may or may not end up costing me just as much as the sauna.

So if you’re on the fence about building vs. buying, my only real advice is this: be honest with yourself about what you want, how much time you’re willing to invest, and how much uncertainty you’re comfortable with. There’s no wrong answer, just different paths that hopefully lead to a very hot room you’ll love using.

Either way, I hope you end up with something you enjoy as much as we’re enjoying ours.