SAUNA KITS - Running a home sauna

Running and maintaining a home sauna falls into two areas, the first relates to the cost of owning and using the sauna, and the second relates to the upkeep and maintenance of the sauna.

The cost of using a home sauna

How much a home sauna will cost to run will be determined by the size of the sauna, the type and output of the heater, and the frequency with which the sauna will be used.

Electric stoves vary in power outputs, but the typical home sauna stove is 6 Kilowatts. This means that it will use 50 to 60 pence of electricity per hour based on UK pricing, and less than 1 dollar per hour based on USA pricing.

Allowing for pre-heating time and a sauna session of two hours, this equates to considerably less than 2 pounds Sterling in the UK, or less than 3 US dollars for a sauna session. Naturally, the cost per person per sauna session will drop further if the sauna is shared by two or more people.

Infrared sauna heaters are very efficient, they require little if any pre-heating.

A modern and energy efficient infrared heater will have the equivalent running costs to that of a domestic light bulb. Obviously the larger the sauna kit, the more infrared heaters will be required to heat its multiple users.

Gas and propane stoves are rarely, if ever, used in conjunction with home sauna kits and pre-fab saunas.

Ongoing sauna costs and maintenance charges

For a home sauna, maintenance costs are typically zero. Once correctly assembled and installed, most home saunas have no ongoing upkeep costs.

You can add an extractor fan to an in-house sauna but, as long as there is ventilation within the room in which the sauna kit has been assembled, this is not necessary. (Suitable ventilation would be a window in the room in which the sauna is housed.) As such there are no extractor or ventilation running costs associated with either indoor or outdoor home sauna kits or pre-fab saunas. (This is not to say that you cannot add extractors and ventilators if you wish.)

Equally, there is no necessity to have any kind of drain or wash-out facility for the sauna room. Sauna’s essentially produce a dry heat, so condensation, vapour and steam are limited unless they are induced by the addition of water. Removing them requires nothing more complex than leaving the sauna door (or window for an outdoor sauna) open until the vapours disappear.

The dry heat from a sauna is also sterile, so it acts to kill rather than promote any kind of mould or bacteria. In essence, a sauna is self-cleaning.

Any good quality sauna kit or pre-fab system will be supplied with a treated wood lining (normally cedar), so no painting or surface treatment will be required unless recommended by the manufacturer.

In the case of outdoor sauna cabins, it may be recommended that the external structure and finishes be treated with a preservative every few years. It may also be advisable to check roof shingles etc for weathering periodically, or at the beginning and end of the winter season.

In short, the kind of home saunas that are assembled from sauna kits are very cheap when in use. They typically have no, or very negligible and infrequent, running and maintenance costs.