| |
Home Sauna Stones Video
In this short (one minute) home sauna stones video you see the inside
of our
Finnish home sauna. We
have a very typical sauna which comes installed with
most new homes in Finland.
The sauna has wood walls, benches, and an electric burner. A
fresh air intake is at the bottom corner of the floor, drawing air into
the hot-room, and a ventilation pipe
releases the heat out through the top center of the room.
The stove comes from the factory with these jagged type home sauna
stones see them in my
hand on the video.
The kinds of Heats' in the Finnish
home sauna
How the heat in our Finnish home sauna is transferred. There
are at least two ways.
- Infrared radiation - The type of
radiation related with the transfer of heat energy from one
location to another. We can see a persons body emitting
heat in the heated sauna hot-room. The red parts show
up as hot areas of the body under an infrared camera.
Which means... Heat from the resistive elements of the sauna has
transferred to your body.
Resistor driven, Oil heated and wood burning type sauna stoves transfer
heat by:
- Convection. That is... transferring heat by
the movement of a heated substance.
The heat
transfer example of a wood burning sauna
Burning wood heats up the stones and the air in the hot-room. When you
pour water onto the hot stones, water rapidly enters the steam phase
and the heat is tranferred through the air and steam onto your body.
Your body is hot.
Finnish sauna - Heat flow diagram
for a wood burning stove. Heat is transferred by convection to
the body at least three ways.
|
Origin
Destination
|
Burning
wood --> sauna stones --> air
--> body
Burning wood --> air -->
steam --> body
Burning wood --> sauna stones --> steam --> body |
Focusing on the sauna stones
The escaping heat wave behavior around the countour of the stones makes
the quality of steam. And aids in making the steam softer and more
enjoyable.
If we look at jaggedy, exploded type sauna stones, especially older
cracked stones, under the infrared camera we see:
- Erratic and irregular heat wave patterns
escapes from the top of the stones.
- Poor efficiency. You put more heat in and get
less out.
The end
result...
The transferred heat to the body is erratic and your body
feels it.
The quality of steam suffers since the water molecules travel with the
heat onto the body. So the steam hits you body in the same way as the
transferred convected
heat.
In some cases, you may be heating up your Finnish sauna too much and
damaging the resistors of the stove.
How to improve the quality of steam on your
Finnish sauna?
Try changing the style of the home sauna stones. Take some of the old
stones off the top of the stove. Then add smooth rounded stones on top
of the jaggedy stones.
Commercial
smoke sauna steam quality significantly improves using this method.
See:
www.saunagranit.com/en/en/heaterstones/rounded_heater_stone.html
for information how to install the rounded smooth sauna stones.

|