building the sauna 2006
April 18, 2006
Hmmf. Writing about building this is going to be less interesting than I thought. The stuff is from Ab Lagerholm from saunashop.com. http://www.saunashop.co.uk/ Well made, well packed, good instructions and everything is there.
April 16, 2006
Sauna stuff coming on Tuesday Tools and mess all over the carpet in the villa already. Unfortunately the space is so small keeping a photographic diary of this will end up with pictures of screw heads.
Before
Looking through. The old door is off, battons are up (some walls have plasterboard over the insulation as a fire retardant - building control told me to do it when they discovered my building) and tools and mess all over the floor. I tiled the floor a year or so ago.
April 30, 2006
Junk on the floor includes…
… my first Mac. Still works and runs at 8Mhz.
This is the ’special’ wood
Its meant to be so well-seasoned that it won’t warp in 100 degrees c - ‘unlike diy store timber’. We will see. £23 per pack of 10 2.1m lengths.
Getting the door in
This is the first task and is suprisingly easy. Its really well made but not so heavy you can't lift it.
Aluminised vapour barrier - feels like wrapping the place in tin foil.
and a wall and a half of wood. Its an easy job. I’m doing all the cutting with a handsaw. Apart from when I need to cut along the length of a piece to fit into a corner.
April 30, 2006
The light
Again, I had a wall wounted light but bought this one as its meant to be able to stand very high temperatures. Its wired to the connector behind the wall with heatproof cable. I was keen to get it fitted so I could see what I was doing. It has a white bulb in now but they sold me a ‘heavy duty rough grade’ orange bulb - another ‘don’t use any old bulb’. I’ll change it when the thing gets going.
more tin foil
rather golden vent for the cool air inlet at floor level just below and to the side of where the stove will go.
May 3, 2006
the sauna from the inside… with the door closed
Wood lining is nearly finished
May 15, 2006
this is where the heart will be
30kgs of stones and electricity hanging from here supplied by fat heat proof cable. The cable to the consumer unit was already in place - just needed the live connecting. I connected the heatproof cable to a switch in the bathroom next door to isolate the stove. Its 6KW.
building benches
The tricky thing is not having enough space to move the bench around. I ended up having to build it in situ, crawling underneath it to fix the abachi onto it. The smaller bench (see later pic) I could build outside and just drop it in place.
May 28, 2006
finnished
Just a few weekends work and its done. Nice materials made this an easy job. Even the nails were super sharp.
A year later, I need something else to do to keep a fundamental boredom at bay - for a while.