TV in an outdoor sauna? Ohhh yeah!

When I was building my outdoor sauna, I knew I wanted to have music playing during sauna rounds. I always had it in the plans to install speakers. Eventually, I bought ceiling speakers rated for bathrooms use off CraigsList.com and installed 2 in the changing room and 2 in the hot room. All wires lead in to the same junction box in the changing room. I hung a cheap stereo right next to the junction box and hooked it up to the speakers. The first few saunas we always had music, either via radio channels, CDs, or the magical AUX jack that the stereo came with. Anyone could plug in their cell phone and play any sort of music off the web. However, that ended up being short lived.

You see, I have 2 kids and no time to watch TV at home. The sauna for me is a means of warming up in the winter months, but it’s also an opportunity to get away and do what I want. And so, I started thinking about putting a TV in the sauna. I shared my idea with the guys and got a mixed response. Some said it would be good to watch sports while we sauna. Others were sure it would take away from the sauna experience and hinder conversations. I could see both sides, but could not let go of the crazy idea. After again searching for a while on CraigsList.com, I found a person selling a relatively new 24” TV with WI-FI capability for $80. So, I went ahead and bought it.

Next came the install. I wanted the TV to be visible from all corners of the sauna. It needed to hang in a place that wouldn’t get in the way, but would be visible from both the changing room and the hot room. I decided to buy a full motion TV wall mount from Walmart for under $20. This would allow me to hang the TV high and swivel it and move it any direction I needed, then, move it out of the way when not in use. It took about 30 minutes to hang the TV while the stove was warming up one sauna session and after it looked great.

A TV is a great addition to an outdoor sauna.

For the next part, we needed internet. I specifically bought a WI-FI enabled TV (not all of them are) to be able to stream videos from YouTube.com. With YouTube.com, you can stream music videos, which satisfies the music fix. You can also stream some movies, live events and sports. My house is supplied with internet via a wireless WI-FI router which is only about 20 yards from the sauna, but the signal inside the sauna from that router was too weak. Furthermore, as I found out, TVs have a very weak WI-FI receiver in general. Even the cell phones have stronger receivers. While being inside the sauna building, my cell phone could connect to the home WI-FI and stream music, while the TV could not. To resolve this, I bought a cheap WI-FI Extender. It’s a small device that you plug in to an outlet and runs you about $20 used. You first need to configure it to your home WI-FI, but once that’s done, you can plug it in to your sauna’s outlet and it will pick up your home’s weak WIFI signal and amplify it-- giving you WI-FI in the sauna. Voilà!

So far, we have built in speakers in the sauna for sound, we have a great little WI-FI enabled TV hanging in the corner for all to see. The last step is to put the two together. Luckily, the TV had a phono (headphones) style output in the back that allowed me to hook it up to the AUX connection in the stereo in the other corner of the changing room. All I needed was to run a long phono cable from TV to the stereo. I bought a 25 foot cable at www.sweetwater.com for about $10. Once all plugged in, we had the TV streaming YouTube.com through all of the 4 built in speakers. Pretty sweet!

So in the end you may ask, who was right? Was the TV a good addition or did it kill the sauna vibe? I think the consensus is--- it’s great. At the end of 2016, we all spent an evening watching one of the heated 2016 presidential debates while taking a sauna. We discussed the event while watching and enjoyed some steam. Since then, we always have the TV going at every sauna session. Whether its watching stand-up comedy, a funny movie, a sports event or just a video of waves breaking on shore with some great music behind it while the snow is falling outside our window, the TV has really been a great addition to the sauna. It even makes for a great incentive for my kids to go to the sauna when I put on cartoons. They look forward to watching the TV, filling up on sauna snacks and warming up in the hot room.

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.

Wood stove steamer or kettle humidifier for sauna

If you follow this blog, you know that the sauna was built with the help of a lot of my friends who frequently use it as well. So, it’s not surprising that any addition or alteration to the sauna gets debated by the whole group. One such long standing debate has been about the “Kettle Humidifier” or “Stove Humidifier.” There are different variations of this, but, the idea is the same. A cast iron pot/kettle is filled with water and placed on top of the stove/rocks. As the stove produces heat, it heats up the pot/kettle in which water evaporates and humidifies the air.

After seeing this kettle at a store, I thought it would be a great addition. However, the debate raged on. Some people thought that it would make the sauna a steam room and that’s not what we wanted. Because of that point, I stayed away from investing in this humidifier kettle-- until recently. This fall, I decided to bite the bullet and give it a try. It’s only $15 :)

Wood stove top humidifier for sauna.

I have to say, I’m glad I bought it. It definitely does NOT make a steam room out of the sauna. However, what it does is makes it easier to breath and makes, at least me, sweat a lot quicker. An extra bonus is you can add your scents directly to the kettle water for a continuous release of wonderful Eucalyptus or Spearmint or whatever sauna scent you like. Keep in mind, this is not a replacement for throwing water on the rocks—this is in addition to. Any time you want some Löyly, you can still throw a few ladles of water over the rocks-- the kettle does not get in the way.

So, if you have never heard about a humidifying stove kettle or have been playing with the idea of getting one, I suggest you go and buy one. I know it made my sauna experience more enjoyable and I hope it does the same thing for you.  

Final sauna inspection by the city inspector

About a year ago plus a couple of months, I made the decision to build an outdoor wood fired sauna. I wanted to do it honestly and following the city rules so that I didn’t have any issues down the road. I started my build by talking to my city inspections department and figuring out exactly which permit is needed. In my city, any outdoor structure under 200 sq feet does not require a permit, however, it still needs to be approved by the city as far as where it’s placed, how it looks and such. I learned that my city inspections department had a pretty foggy idea of what a sauna is. One concern they had is there would be too much smoke outside. Apparently, as I found out, they thought a sauna was a wood boiler—the tiny house size oven you see placed outdoors behind a house in rural areas that heats the house in the winter and creates lots and lots of smoke. Eventually, the inspections department told me I needed to pull a stove permit and that the stove needed to be UL approved up to the UL 875. I paid my $90 and got the permit. As you recall from reading the blog, there are only 2 or 3 stove in the country that are even UL listed. From my further research, I found out that the listing my city inspections requested that I get actually applied to “Electric Sauna Stove” once I looked up the particular UL number. (http://ulstandards.ul.com/standard/?id=875) The correct UL listing for a wood burning stove is actually UL 1482 (http://ulstandards.ul.com/standard/?id=1482&edition=7&doctype=ulstd)

Well, I did find and install a great UL listed stove- Kuuma wood sauna stove by Lamppa Mfg (http://www.lamppakuuma.com). I followed the stove clearances and worked closely with my city inspector. When the chimney was first installed, I had my initial inspection and passed. After the stove was installed, I had my final inspection and FAILED. The inspector had some changes for me to make, such as getting half of one of my benches out of the clearance range of the stove, and covering the floor with cement. I complied.

Yesterday, I had my follow up “final” inspection. I am pleased to announce that the inspection PASSED and my sauna is now in full compliance and is ready for official use! 

Cement over the sauna hot room floor

As you recall, I had made my sauna floor waterproof by putting down a shower pan liner—a thick waterproof membrane on the sauna floor along with a drain. I planned to leave it exposed and just put duckboard over it. However, the city inspector would not allow it and told me that I need a non-combustible floor. Although it was more work, the inspector was right.

First, every time we fired up the sauna—you could see the membrane on the floor become more malleable and less rigid.

Second, no matter how carefully we used the sauna—I noticed ash marks on the membrane that could have burned through.

All three concerns (inspector included) would be solved by cementing over the entire floor of the hot room. There could also be a potential benefit (haven’t tested yet,) that the cement floor would radiate the heat better than a PVC liner. Now, one concern is the added weight. For my hot room of about 6’x12’, I ended up using 6 bags of the Sand Topping Mix cement from Quickrete.

Sand Topping Mix cement used for sauna hot room floor.

Each bag is 60lbs alone. Plus, you add water to activate it. So, from my quick calculations, 6 x 60lbs = 360lbs + water = (Roughly) 400lbs extra weight to the sauna. That’s like 2 guys. However, I think I should be OK because:

One: the cement is spread out over the entire floor—not concentrated in one area

Two: when building the sauna, I oversized things (smart, eh?) 6” x 6” instead of 4” x 4” posts, double 10” beams instead of 8” and so on.

Anyway, then came the hard part of actually doing the work. To begin, we got everything we could out of the hot room—the less obstacles the better.  We cleaned the existing floor as well as we could for the best outcome for the cement. I made sure that all the holes or openings were well sealed on the floor membrane. This was the last chance to truly make the sauna floor waterproof. I glued down the liner around the drain hole to make sure it was sealed. I also glued the actual drain to the liner as well. Things get dirty when working with cement, so I made sure and put down a tarp over the changing room floor so nothing got ruined. Finally, I gathered my tools so I was ready for work. I used 5 tools:

A mixing tub (about $6)

A shovel

A 16” x 4” Cement Trowel (about $14)

A 6” x 4” Cement Trowel (about $8)

A 2” x 5” Cement Trowel (about $4)

Tools used to form and shape the sauna hot room floor.

The work started by putting one cement bag, wrapper and all, in the tub. I then used the shovel to cut the bag open in the middle, then flip it over to empty it out in to the tub. I then poured water in to a bucket and added it to the cement in the tub in batches, mixed, and added more water as needed. The proportions of how much water to add are on the bag. Those are the best guidelines for you. However, I am too busy to read instructions ;) besides, I’ve used cement before. I just mixed it to a state slightly more watery than wet sand at the beach. If you get it too watery, add cement. If you overdid the cement, add more water. We used the shovel to mix the cement with water. There was no water left in the tub, the cement was pretty malleable and easy to spread yet it didn’t run down like water. Anyway—read the manual :)

Mixing cement with a shovel in a cement tub.

Now, cement is not like glue—so you have some time to work with it, but you still need to be aware that as it dries, it’s harder to work with (you got about 30-40 minutes). So, I started putting it down in the hard to reach areas, such as behind the sauna stove.

First batch of cement around and behind the sauna stove.

With the Sand Topping Mix cement, there’s no aggregate (pebbles) just sand and mortar. Technically, it can be spread as thin as ¼” and still do its job. I was aiming for about a ½” thickness throughout the floor. Now remember, we have already previously given the floor a slope towards the drain from all angles of the sauna hot room. Our goal with putting down the cement is to preserve that slope. This can easily be checked with a long level after you have finished putting down a section of the cement on the floor. The cement mix is pretty thick and should hold the level tool just fine.

When forming the cement on the floor, use the longer trowel as much as you can to give the cement a nice uniform smooth look. If the big trowel doesn’t fit, switch to the smaller one. Only use the smallest trowel for detailed work and not to smooth over an area. Remember, you can always add or remove cement from an area and smooth it over again. Do that until you’ve achieved the look you want. Finally, once you confirmed that the slope still exists, and the cement is smooth and looking good, you can move on to the next hard to reach area.

Next hard to reach area of the sauna hot room floor.

Farthest section of the sauna hot room floor is done with cement.

Final section of the sauna hot room floor being cemented.

Last piece of the sauna hot room floor being cemented.

Once you have all the hard to reach areas completed, go ahead and finish off the last part. Remember to feather the cement down towards the drain right around the drain—use the small trowel. Once done, clean up and let the cement cure. Spray the tools, the tub, and the area where you mixed the cement with water to keep everything clean for next time. Next day, you can walk on your new cement hot room floor to admire your work, but give it about a week to let it fully cure before really using it.

 

Cemented sauna hot room floor 24 hours later.

First sauna firing after the cement floor was completed.

Well, I am more than pleased with how the floor turned out and what it does for the hot room. I think others agree with me as well. Not only does it look good, it's functional. We can now stack wood near the stove while we take a sauna and not worry about it ripping the waterproof liner. The cement was cool to walk on barefoot even though we had the sauna up to about 190F. The light color of the cement actually seems to make the room brighter. Overall, I am very happy with the results. We will soon see if the inspector agrees with me ;)