How to build a Sauna (Finnish Style) + Cost to Build

00:00 so in today's video i'm going to be showing you how i built this sauna right here behind me and at the end of the video i'm going to do a complete cost breakdown [Music] the art of sauna building was a lifesaver if you're the type of person like myself where you really like to get into the nitty gritty details this was a very valuable resource and if you want to dive deep check this one out you should be able to find it on amazon the style that i went with and that i prefer to use is the finished style which is which utilizes dry heat and you can pour some water over the stones which adds humidity to the room then there's also infrared saunas which are very similar in terms of construction but instead of having a two-tier bench

01:00 it's just going to be a single bench and it's more of a direct heat and then there's also steam baths which is totally different construction because you're going to have to have it waterproof and then you're using steam which is mainly going to be generated with moisture so it's three different things so you're gonna have to do your own homework and figure out which style you want and another thing that i really want to touch on is the health benefits of using the sauna now if you listen to the joe rogan podcast i'm sure you've heard of dr rhonda patrick i'm going to put some links in the description below where she covers the health benefits of using sauna she's going to be able to describe it way better than i ever could so i recommend you check out those videos and she does an amazing job talking about the various health benefits of using a dry heat sauna okay so now that we've covered the different types of saunas hopefully you're going with the finished sauna because that's the style i'm going to be covering in this video if you're doing a new construction home like i am doing then this is going to be a lot easier because you're able to plan

02:00 for this but i have a feeling that majority people watching this probably already have an existing home and you're planning on making it fit somewhere within that building envelope so i'm going to go over a few things to consider so it's ideal if you can have it located in an ensuite bathroom or in a bathroom the reason being that way it's easier for showering before or after you're using the sauna and you have a change room within the area too and not to mention it's just that ambiance and the vibe that you get it just it can just elevate a space completely but if you're not able to make it work within that footprint of say your master bathroom then some other areas you might want to consider is possibly somewhere in a basement or even in a cold room you might be able to utilize some unused space and make it work that's going to have to be up to you but something else to consider is especially if say your basement is finished you're going to want to have it located closer to your electrical panel because

03:00 you're going to have to get wires from your electrical panel to that room in order to power the heater so you might have to end up breaking some drywall and that's why if you are doing a new construction home it's going to be a little easier because you can plan for these things so once you've determined the size and layout of your sauna you're going to want to determine the size of your heater now this is a critical step because what can happen is if you have a sauna heater that is too small it's going to take hours for it to heat up the room and then if it's too big what will happen is it will heat the space too quickly before the cedar and the rocks are able to absorb that heat so this is a critical component and you're also going to want to know the size of your so the kilowatts so you can make sure that you run the appropriate gauge wire to your device the brand that i went with is called sonicore and they are based out of von ontario i believe and you can't buy directly from them but you can buy through their distributors so i ordered it through von

04:00 elec i think it's van eleckenko or von electric they just went through rebranding it costs the same to operate a larger heater as a small one a larger heater just does the job faster in the same kilowatts of energy it also maintains a more consistent temperature if there's a lot of traffic in the sauna as a general rule of thumb allow one kilowatt for every 45 cubic feet of room space so a sauna that is five by seven and seven feet high with 245 cubic feet would need a 5.5 kilowatt heater my sauna is a closet size it's just under four feet wide by five feet deep and then seven feet tall and i went with a 4000 watt heater it takes a little longer than i thought it was going to initially like i was assuming that i don't know i guess just because whenever i use saunas before at a rec center you just go in and generally the space was already heated up but i found that it takes about an hour to get to the proper temperature which is around 180 degrees

05:00 but within about a half hour it's usually around 160 which is hot enough to definitely start sweating so be prepared that it is going to take a little longer to heat up than you may anticipate so feature that i really like about this particular heater is it has a vaporizer built in so what you can do is you can fill that up with water and you could put essential oils in there as well just make sure when you put the essential oils in that this isn't hot because you will get flames literally shooting up because the essential oils are flammable and this product is also made out of surgical stainless steel but what's really nice about the vaporizer is that while the sawn is heating up it boils the water in there and then releases some vapor and then the scent of those essential oils so i highly recommend getting that and then i still when i want that wave of heat i still pour the water over the stones as well now you do not have to have a floor drain

06:00 but i would recommend putting one in especially if you're gonna be doing a new construction because when you're pouring water over the rocks or if you have in my situation i have an area where you can fill it up in the and then it boils off the vapor but sometimes that overflows and it's just nicer having the floor drain built into the sauna for clean up and ease of use and then i also have my plumber bryant from target contracting he put in a half inch water line and he was also really nice enough to gift us the faucet that's in there as a housewarming presence so thank you so much for that bryant and having those two things in there the water um which you can use to fill up your water bottle keep hydrated and then also pour over the stones and having the floor drain to me are must haves but if you're trying to make work in an existing space you can easily do that as well without having those things okay the next step is going to be you taking your cursor if you're watching this on a computer and

07:00 hovering it over that thumbs up button or if you're watching this on your phone smashing that with your finger that thumbs up button please to help out the almighty youtube algorithm okay now that we've got that out of the way let's move on to ventilation of the sauna now this is nothing fancy you don't have mechanical ventilation involved what you need to do is have an intake below wherever your heater is installed and then you're going to have an exhaust usually on the opposite side of wherever your intake is the opposite wall and it can be mounted on the ceiling or could be installed just below your second bench the reason why you want to do this is it's going to bring fresh air into the sauna for the occupants who are using it so common signs of a poorly vented sauna are headaches or dizziness caused by a low oxygen level so dizziness can also be caused by taking a sauna too soon after a big meal so those are things to keep in mind and this is something that you really want to factor in

08:00 now if you noticed i actually ended up covering my exhaust in insulation the reason why i did that there's a flat roof here a non-conditioned attic space and i just wanted to make sure no condensation formed so i just did that as an extra step i used aria vents the reason why is they're just a little more aesthetically pleasing to the eye you could also use like a standard hvac grille and you can also get pre-fabricated cedar ones where they have the louvers built in that you can open and close on the ceiling the one below your heater is always going to be open okay guys so to quickly recap you are going to want to have proper ventilation in your sauna you are going to want to make sure that the flooring is a hard surface something that's going to be non-porous so if you're doing this in your basement just keep it that plain jane concrete if you want you can install some duct boards which is going to be cedar planks installed horizontally or you could do what i did and you can install a tiled floor so i had my tile setter pedroom from parts tile he did an

09:00 amazing job he used these 24 by 48 tiles he ripped them had them all sloped towards the center drain speaking about the drain i prefer to have one you don't need one and a water supply is nice to have but once again you don't need it you could go for you know the old school way with a bucket and ladle ladle whatever you call it tomato tomato yeah so teach your own okay so if you're watching this video and you plan on building your own sauna i'm assuming that you have adequate skills to do that or you're going to hire that part out so it's pretty simple it's going to be your standard 16 on inch center framing and you want to make sure that wherever you're going to have stuff mounted like your sauna heater or benches that you have adequate blocking installed all right the next step is going to be insulating the room now this is a very critical step because this is what's going to retain the heat inside the sauna now i use the product called rockwool you could also use fiberglass insulation

10:00 or spray foam depending on your scenario so for inside walls you're obviously not going to be using spray foam but i had a portion of this room behind me where it was a knee wall and a little bit of that was an exterior wall so there was spray foam there and then the rest had bat insulation which was roxol or rockwool whatever you want to call it they've rebranded since so it's totally up to you whether you want to go with the rockwool or fiberglass insulation but i'm i usually lean towards using rockwool the main reason is it does not promote any mold or mildew growth now that the room is insulated we're going to install our vapor barrier now in this case we're going to be using a special foil coated vapor barrier the reason being it's going to get so hot in this room you can't use a standard poly vapor berry that would end up melting so the aluminum foil is coated on one side only and has a required high temperature rating it is also an extra insulator as it reflects the heat back into the sauna room

11:00 so the two-sided reflective aluminum foil has no advantage over the one-sided so in this case i just used the one-sided and i started with and you want to make sure that the reflective side is facing towards the sauna the inside of it that way it reflects the heat back into the room and i started doing all of my walls first and i fastened staples wherever the studs were and then i installed the ceiling last and i also went over any seams with a aluminum foil tape so i purchased my 1x4 clear seeder from a local lumber yard and the reason why i went with clear cedar is it just has very minimal imperfections and no knotting in it it's just nice clean and modern looking now this next step is going to be optional for residential saunas but in commercial saunas it's mandatory and that's installing strapping now the reason why installing strapping is recommended especially for commercial saunas is it allows

12:00 the cedar to breathe so it creates an air gap in between the vapor barrier and the cedar itself so i definitely recommend doing this because this wood is not cheap especially after covid we all know how expensive lumber prices have been it's just insane so you want to make sure that you're really going to get a long life span out of this wood so all of the boards that i used on the wall are tongue and groove and what this allows you to do is have a clean finish where you don't see any of the fasteners it's called blind nailing and i highly recommend that you use stainless steel fasteners whenever you're working with saunas if not you have the high probability of getting streaking happening because there is going to be a little bit of humidity and moisture in this room even though it's mainly going to be dry heat and what will happen is those if you do not use stainless steel fasteners the heads of the nails will rust over time and you'll get streaking in the wood now in terms of installing

13:00 the cedar planks and orientation whether they're going to be vertical or horizontal that's going to be totally up to you now what i went with was horizontal on the back wall horizontal on the ceiling and horizontal on the front wall so kind of all waterfalled this way and then the way the pattern goes on the ceiling it ends up flowing from the ceiling into the walls vertically so i personally like this look but in terms of orientation like i said it's totally up to you and whatever design choice you like so i framed my benches out of cedar 2x4 material and the finished dimensions of the bench heights were for the bottom bench it was 18 inches tall to the top of the bench and 36 inches deep i carried it all the way to the back wall and the top bench was 36 inches to the top of it and 21 inches deep

14:00 so if i could have changed one thing what i would have done is i would have fastened the cedar planks that are on the top of the benches from the bottom so i would have done something similar to what you do with blind nailing but instead you do the same thing but you just drill up on an angle using screws and you can pre-drill them that way it doesn't create any issues with your cedar planks because what i did is i used galvanized finishing nails and i nailed the boards from the top and aesthetically it doesn't look the best and also i find that when i'm sitting in certain areas you get a lot of sweat that it actually causes the galvanized nails to get like dirty and a little bit of rust and that ends up those marks transfer onto the towel that i'm sitting on so i highly recommend that you fasten your bench boards from the bottom on an angle that way none of the fasteners are visible and you won't have that same issue that i ran into all right drum roll please here we go i'm going to break down

15:00 the final cost of this sauna build now one thing that i didn't really touch on is the sauna door you can buy pre-fabricated doors which i would recommend doing if that is not your area of expertise because you can end up spending way more time on trying to construct it it's probably going to drive you nuts so you can buy them pre-built or you can go with the style that i did it's not going to be as energy efficient because i went with glass door and a glass section in the front but aesthetically it just looks so much better and i'm not concerned about that minimal amount of heat loss that i'm going to be getting because i opted to go with glass versus insulated cedar door so here is what you guys have all been waiting for the final cost breakdown it ended up now that i put like pencil to paper it ended up being a little more than i thought it was going to be so here's the breakdown the heater it was a four kilowatt kws sauna core vapor edition

16:00 the total for that was 805 dollars and 13 cents the foil vapor barrier was 45 dollars and twenty cents framing material was roughly two hundred dollars the one by four clear cedar was one thousand eight hundred and ninety one dollars and thirty cents the electrical material was 350 plumbing material was three hundred and fifty dollars tile material and labor was two thousand dollars and the glass door was twelve hundred bringing in a grand total of six thousand eight hundred and forty one dollars and three and that is for a sauna that is roughly um call it four feet wide by five feet deep by seven feet tall so i am a licensed electrician and did all of the electrical work here myself obviously if you are not an electrician i highly recommend that you do hire one to make sure that everything is done safely and what i did for

17:00 lighting is a pot light in the ceiling and i built a housing for that pot light out of drywall the reason being once again i have a area it's a flat roof and i just don't want any condensation building with the heat so that's what i did there is i just built that housing that also i hid the low voltage driver in that way it's an accessible area for the led tape lights that i put underneath the benches so i actually find that i never use the pot light i actually keep that unplugged from the driver and i just use the low voltage tape lights i find that when i have the pot light on it just kind of shines into my eyes and you just want it to be more of that dark chill ambiance and vibe so that's why i find that the low voltage tape lights that are under the bench worked perfectly so you could go for that you can either go for a pot light a lot of people do wall mounted fixtures as well that are designed for saunas that can

18:00 withstand that heat or you can do what i did with the led tape lights and i hid them inside a um aluminum track and then put a diffuser in there as well okay guys thank you so much again for tuning in and watching this video i really appreciate it now there was a lot of content covering a lot of talking and even with that being said i'm sure there's still some points that i didn't cover so if there's a question that you need answered hit me up in the comment section below and i'll be sure to answer to the best of my abilities and please once again hit that thumbs up button to help out the youtube algorithm and i will see you guys on the next video i

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