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.

1. 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:
   
   
2. 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.

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