Ice cubes for steam? That's brilliant!

Sometimes, completely unexpected, an idea is born out of necessity that is just brilliant. As I have previously blogged, we started using bottled gallon water from the store to throw on to the stove to make steam. The city water gave a bad smell. http://outdoorsaunabuildmndiy.blogspot.com/2016/04/a-thought-about-throwing-tap-water-on.html

Sometimes, we have water left over in the gallon jugs so we simply leave it in the sauna until next time. 

With it being winter, the water freezes. Sometimes, by the time the sauna is back up to temp the next time we use it, the water thaws. Sometimes, like last night, we just can’t wait. We needed water and it was all frozen. We ended up cutting the plastic jugs and breaking up the blocks of frozen ice in to cubes. We then put those cubes in to a bucket. That exposed the brilliance of the idea. As it come out, throwing a 4” chunk of ice on to the stove provides the same steam wave as throwing a ladle of water, but, in a much smoother and slower form. There are other benefits to having these chunks of ice that we discovered. First, it provides a place in the hot room to hold your drink and keep it cool. Second, it provides you with cold water and chunks of ice that you can use to pour over yourself in the hot room to cool down without leaving. Of course, there’s room for improvement. Imagine mixing water with your favorite sauna scent like Spearmint and freezing that into preformed chunks of ice prior to your next sauna. Next time you sauna, no need to chisel a block of ice. Simply take out a cube or two of your scented ice and toss them on the stove for a slow release of steam and fragrance. Ahhh, when’s the next sauna?

Use ice cubes to throw on the sauna stove for slow steam release.