Traditional Wood Sauna Stoves and the Finnish Sauna Culture

Traditional wood burning saunas go to the heart of pure sauna experience. Everything is remarkable from the ritual of tending the fire to the incomparably soft heat, the crackle of a wood fueled fire, lush hiss of steam and the relaxing moment. Traditional Finnish saunas are definitely a treat for body and mind.

Throughout the world cultures and races can be seen using sweat baths for hygienic and medicinal purposes. Every culture has their own reasons for using sweat baths, yet all with the same objective. Sweat baths are known for preventing disease and imparting good health by eliminating toxins from the body through sweat.

Most of us will agree that Finnish sauna is the most notorious and popular sweat bath. Modern wood saunas that we see today first came into existence in around 5^th century when northern European tribes came and settled down leaving behind their nomadic lifestyle. Sauna is a Finnish word as a matter of fact and it is the only Finnish word to become part of the world vocabulary. You will be taken by a surprise to know that sauna in Finland is for every occasion, not just for leisure, people are seen having their business meeting while having sauna bath. In fact it is absolutely normal to have a political or business meeting in the sauna.

Wood fired sauna heater - Kota Family 16 - Heats 550 Cubic Feet

Traditional Finnish saunas are heated by wood. These are either burned in a Wood Sauna Stoves with a chimney or without chimney. The sauna stove without the chimney is a smoke sauna and is considered as an original sauna by the Finns and is believed to be the best by them. The door of the sauna is closed after the wood is burned and much of the smoke has already escaped. Traditional Wood Sauna Stoves gives it a soft heat along with aroma of wood smoke.

Apart from all of these there are other benefits of having Wood burning Sauna Heaters:

1. It doesn’t require electricity making it perfect for remote locations and cabins
2. Wood burning Sauna Heaters have large rock capacity, this means you get soft heat/steam
3. They are provided with optional enclosed water tank

Wood fired sauna heater - SaunaCore Country Living 16- Heats 700 Cubic Feet

The Wood burning Sauna Heaters are designed to eliminate the requirement of electricity and have effective flame circulation system. Wood Sauna Stoves heats up the rock evenly and warms up sauna pretty quickly. This results in soft heat. A pleasant steam can be created by sprinkling water over hot rock. The Wood burning Sauna Heaters are designed to deliver excellent efficiency ratio, that means more heat and less wood consumed.

Saunas in Finland always had a strong significance and social importance, especially along county side. The quality of heat from Wood burning Sauna cannot be matched with any other type of sauna heaters. The efficient design of sauna and convection vents allows sauna stoves to heat up quickly. Wood sauna comes with heavy duty steel fire box and cast iron gate that is surely to endure many years of traditional sauna enjoyment.

Relieve Your Tension and Stress with DIY Sauna Kits

Though many will think Sauna to be the latest fitness fad, yet they have been known for relieving stress and tension for more than 7000 years now. The credit for Sauna invention goes to the Finns (Sauna is a Finnish word). Although if we look into ancient cultures, we will find that Russia and North America had sweat lodges like Banya and temescal for medical purposes, but it was Finnish who had the tradition of having home Sauna and so this culture of having home Sauna is technically exported from Finland.

What is it that sets apart sauna from steam room? 

It is the invisible steam that differentiate home sauna from steam rooms that you see in athletic club. Home steam sauna doesn’t look like a steam room since the difference is very distinct and can be clearly observed even though both of them have steams. Steam rooms generally have tiles and have humidity level of almost 100%. The steam rooms are marked with constantly billowing clouds of condensed vapor that is created using a generator. The temperature of steam rooms is around 104⁰F.

Sauna Heater - SaunaCore Elite 6.0 KW sauna stove

DIY Sauna Kits will help you set up small sauna at your home easily with enclosed cabins made of cedar wood. It is provided with gas or electric heater to heat special rocks in an open oven. When the water is poured over hot rocks placed on top of heater or around the heater, dry steam is produced. This burst of steam is called as löyly in Finns language. This term has gained popularity throughout the world where ever there is a home sauna. Löyly means dry vapor and is referred as ‘spirit of life’. The steam thus produced in home Sauna is visible only momentarily and quickly dissipates.

A good DIY Sauna Kits is constructed using wood like cedar, hemlock or aspen. Home sauna created using DIY Sauna Kits is efficient in maintaining high temperature of up to 200⁰F. When water is poured over hot rocks (which are heated using the electric or gas heaters) a thick hot vapor is created and is often called as wet sauna. However humidity level in home sauna remains at 10% (it may go up to 20% in some extreme rare cases). If you sprinkle water over hot rock and it does produces bubble which subsequently turns to steam, this means the rocks are not sufficiently hot. Actually for a perfect dry sauna, the rocks are left alone. The temperature of the dry home sauna is more tolerable and in most of the cases, adding water to produce steam is done just few minutes before the sauna session, if at all required.

Wood fired sauna heater

Dry home sauna provides an excellent atmosphere for people to relax. People don’t realize as much as they are sweating. Many a time people don’t even realize that they are sweating. This is deceptive since dry heat immediately vaporizes the sweat from your skin and so people are able to stay in the dry home sauna longer than a wet sauna.