SAUNA KITS

The home sauna kit has made the luxury of a sauna an affordable and practical addition to almost any home, cabin or garden shed. In fact with a sauna kit or a pre-fab sauna it is possible to create a sauna in just about any internal location, be it a house, an out building, a cellar or a disused room. Small kits will even fit into a bathroom or utility room.

Most sauna kits fall into one of two categories, a material's kit (i.e. pre-sized and cut parts) or a more complete pre-assembled pre-fab sauna kit.

Material sauna kits

The popular and economic "material" (parts) sauna kit is, Home sauna kit as its name suggests, a kit comprising of all the materials and components necessary to construct the internal features of a working home sauna. These kits typically include components like the tongue and grooved wall and ceiling linings, the benches, a door and the stove or infrared heater.

Material sauna kits come in a range of different sizes, different qualities and different price tags and they require a moderate level of DIY (Do It Yourself) skill to assemble and install.

All material sauna kits require an existing room or cabin in which to construct and fit them and they normally have no free standing or self supporting walls. This can mean that additional preparation work may be required before the sauna kit can be assembled, but this will be dependant upon the circumstances of the sauna's intended location.

A typical home sauna material kit will take between two and three days to install and will require the owner to have access to a basic tool kit. The connection of the stove, which is usually electric, will require the skills of a qualified and registered electrician. (However, in some instances electric stoves can be connected to a mains supply with a standard fused plug.)

A material's sauna kit will come in sizes that can accommodate anything from one to several sauna users. Most sauna kits require no special ventilation requirements and have low heater running costs. This means that little if any pre-installation "preping" is required.

Pre-fab sauna kits

A pre-fabricated sauna kit has two main differences to a regular (material parts only) sauna kit.

Firstly, a pre-fab sauna arrives largely pre-assembled and items like the walls and ceiling will often be delivered as complete and fully assembled units. This reduces build time from two or three days, to three or four hours. It also reduces the build's complexity and the need for any real competence in DIY and makes the requirement of a proper toolkit redundant.

The second differentiating feature of a pre-fab sauna kit to a standard sauna kit is the inclusion of the sauna's structure. Pre-fab saunas normally have self supporting walls and a structural ceiling. This means that a prefabricated sauna can stand independently in any location and requires no preparation work before hand, i.e. it does not need to be fitted to one or more existing structural walls.

Both the "material's sauna kit" and pre-fab saunas can be purchased for fitting in the home or an external building like a wood cabin or a garden shed. Pre-fab sauna kits can also be purchased that include the cabin's weather-proof external walls, roof shingles, windows and external decking. They are simply bolted together on a solid level structural base and connected to a mains electricity supply.

Types of sauna

Not only are there two different types of sauna kit, but there are also two different types of sauna, the traditional Finnish sauna and the energy efficient infrared sauna. Sauna kits can be bought for both of these systems.

The Finnish sauna

Electric Finnish style stoves are the most popular heaters for sauna kits and pre-fab saunas in the USA and UK. The original Finnish sauna stoves did of course burn wood rather than work using electricity.

The infrared sauna

Unlike the Finnish sauna the infrared sauna cannot create a wet and humid sauna environment. However, the fact that it does not generate humidity avoids ventillation issues in a room with no windows.

Both the Finnish and the infrared sauna heating systems can be integrated into most conventional sauna kits and the selection of heater type and size is often independent of the wooden components of the sauna kit.

The advantages of owning a home sauna

In Finland, and a number of other Northern European countries, the sauna has become an important feature in the health and social structure of the country's society. People use the sauna to relax, to cleanse the skin and even to have social get-togethers in the form of sauna parties (which are very popular).

In these nations the sauna is considered to be the single best way to stay healthy, to cleanse and detoxify the body, and to gain relaxation and an escape from the pressures of the hectic world in which we live. Interestingly, Northern Europeans like the Fins, Swedes and Norwegians (who use saunas) have higher life expectancies than the peoples of many other countries in the world.

Here is an interesting fact - In Finland there is an average of one sauna per household – quite a recommendation for this once elitist addition to the home.

If you are interested in finding out more, then take a look at this website. You will find information about not just the sauna kit, but the history of the sauna, how to take a Finnish sauna, steam rooms, and how to choose, buy and plan a sauna kit installation. If you want to get an idea of the health advantages of saunas and steam rooms, take a look at this Advantages of saunas page.

This website was last updated (with the addition of two updates to existing pages on 29 June 2010).

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