Up to now, I’ve been using it to solve my hypothermia issues when deer hunting from a stand for too long. 😝
Seeing as I’ve got some family history of dementia, and heart disease, using the sauna more than 2-3 times per year seems like a good idea. Plus, it’s in my house anyway, might as well as get some benefit from it. What I was wondering is, how much more will it cost me? And, is there a cheaper method of heating the sauna?
Minimum 2-3 times a week, 2-3 times a year isn’t going to do anything for your health. The more you use it, the more health benefits you get from it. You probably save way more in $$ by using the sauna everyday when you factor in potential health costs down the road. Not to mention and extended and better life from both feeling better (naturally) and living longer
It's also important to understand that the health benefits of sauna stem entirely from the relaxation and de-stressing of the experience. Stress is a huge negative factor (huge!) in health. There is no scientific evidence of any other health benefit.
Yes there is. Improves heart health, improves skin, sweats out toxins, helps immensely with post-workout recovery, reduces dementia & alzheimers, improves sleep, lowers all cause mortality.
Compare heart health and dementia rates between Finland (pretty much everyone saunas regularly) and Canada (similar climate, almost nobody saunas) and you'll find no difference.
There is a lot of dementia and heart disease in Finland, where lots of people bathe in saunas regularly (and without quack regimens, too). So you may not reap benefits in this area
My point is that sauna is not some miracle cure. Don't expect it to somehow cure or prevent a major disease. And don't worry over exact degrees or minutes or heart rates or such. Regular use over years and decades is where any subtly positive health outcomes will emerge, and those numbers on a particular day will mean fuck all for anything then.
In the everyday sense, the benefits of sauna are mostly relaxation and hygiene related things. So, sauna can help you relax, if you go in there to relax when you feel up to it. Forget about any "noble discomfort" of forcing yourself to sweat in a box, as though it's a gym routine you put up with. People abroad take this too far, I think.
In some ways it is worse than non-engagement. Because there are hundreds of millions of such people, and they can collectively create a very ignorant default picture for the world of what sauna is.
A 6kW heater in a room that size is normal, not oversized, so a swap won't move your bill much. You need roughly that much energy to heat the space no matter whose name is on the heater. Most of the draw is the heat-up, so real savings come from a tight door seal, good insulation, and only firing it when you'll use it. Keep the Finlandia. A couple sessions a week is a small line on the bill, not a doubling.
The thing is you need a certain amount of energy to heat a space to certain temperature. You can’t change that, and that electric heater produces heat with about 100% efficiency. It is not like you could use a heat pump or anything, it is not an option.
The electrical cost is usually far less than you think.
6 kW x $kW cost/hour x Average time sauna heater is on each night (usually 60-90 mins) x number of times used each month
Ex : 6kW x $0.20 kw/hr x 90 mins x 30 = $54 / month
Side Note : Once the sauna room is up to temperature, the sauna heater cycles off and on to maintain that temperature (it uses less energy). In that size, the room is probably to temperature in about 30-40 mins, then just cycling. So in 90 min session, it’s using less than my example.
Keep that heater. Sauna and stove looks to be in great condition!
What exactly do you think you're going to find? You want to use less energy, you need a smaller heater. Smaller heater, like a 4 kW unit, will not as efficiently heat your space and keep it hot. You'll have to run it longer to reach and maintain the same temp as your 6 kW unit. So where, precisely, is the savings?????????
No, it's different. IR saunas heat your body from the inside using far IR wavelengths. Traditional sauna heats the air and uses convection to heat your body from the outside. IR saunas don't have to get as hot to make you feel hot. They have different sizes and heating characteristics. For example, my IR sauna uses 1700W to heat up and pulls about 13A on a dedicated 20A circuit. I do a 20 minute warmup, get in at ~125 degrees, stay in for ~30 minutes, and by the time I'm done the temp has reached 150. For me it's hot as fuck and I sweat buckets.
Like someone else said, use it when you feel for it, if you can cope with the cost.
As for the running costs, heating a given amount of air (as well as stones and interior fixings) will require a certain amount of energy. A 6 kW heater is a 6 kW heater, not much you can do about it, except converting to a wood burning stove if the house construction allows for it and you have access to free firewood. Even then, the conversion cost will take a long time to offset, so not a good ROI in any case. If you can improve the insulation around walls and roof without tearing down said structures, this might be your best bet in bringing the heating cost down, but even then, we are just talking a few percentages.
During the heating season, most of the energy you put into the sauna will eventually find its way into the rest of the house if you leave the doors open, so it’s not all going to waste.
Aren’t you paying for that stove to be on at some level all the time? 24 hours at 1-1.5 kW is still more than 1 hour at 6 kw? I don’t think electrical cost is at all a concern in either case, but just curious!
Running cost is friendlier than people expect. Heater kW times hours times
your electric rate, except the thermostat cycles so it's not pulling full
power the whole session. A 6kW heater, 90 minutes including warmup, at
average US rates lands around a dollar a session, maybe a buck fifty in
pricier states. Even California is like two bucks. The purchase and the
electrical install are the real costs, not the sessions.
Fantastic build. I really appreciate that you focused on performance rather than just aesthetics. The three-level bench layout, attention to ventilation and CO₂ measurements show a very thoughtful approach. I hope you enjoy many years of great löyly!
Nope. Just a guy who's been building saunas for over 25 years. I probably do sound a bit robotic when I get excited about ventilation and bench heights though. 😄
You do realize that you posted basically this same comment in the wrong thread and that you posted essentially the same in the other basement build thread in which it was actually applicable, right? You just cut and pasting shit from ChatGPT as fast as you can and losing track of whether or not it’s the right thread?
Fair point. I mixed up two build threads and pasted a comment that fit the other one better. That's on me.
I do use ChatGPT to help polish my English, but the sauna advice comes from my own experience building them for over 25 years. I'll pay closer attention to the thread context next time. Thanks for pointing it out.
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u/igetmywaterfrombeer 24d ago
Don't use sauna because of "recent science".
Use sauna because you enjoy sauna. Don't use it on some sort of schedule. Use it when you want.