SaunaScape

Bloomberg announced this morning that Goldman Sachs cheif equity trader in Moscow, Peter Kizenko, quit today. He plans to return to New Jersey and open a traditional Russian sauna, known as a banya.

According to the Bloomberg story, the banya will open next month in the New Jersey suburbs of New York City. No details were given on the name or location of the banya. We’ll keep digging and update this post when we find more details.

He is entering a crowded market. According to our database, there are currently 13 Russian Sauna establishments in and around New York City. Mr. Kizenko told Bloomberg, “There are a few in Brooklyn and Manhattan, but the aesthetics are not up to scratch. We are going for a mixture of the contemporary and the classical of Sanduny in Moscow.” The Bloomberg article says he had considered building his banya in London, but was stunned by the high price of real estate there.

Mr. Kizenko, if you are reading this, we wish you luck and would love to hear why you left the world of high finance behind for high temperature.

Update: The establishment will be called “Bear and Birch.” They have a website with just a landing page at the moment. More details are on their Facebook page, including this comment from Mr. Kizenko:

Whack, whack. Steam. Ice.

Over 1000 years of the Russian banya experience has finally been brought to New Jersey. Assembled and flown in from Moscow, Russia, the Bear and Birch is proud to present the East Coast with its first authentic Russian banya.

Invigorate, detoxify and revitalize yourself in a spacious setting with three types of steam to choose from. Follow up with a plunge into the cool downed pool and then saunter on over to the lounge area to chilllllll.

Enjoy a wide variety of teas while wrapped up in a Bear and Birch robe and decide on a Jacuzzi, shiatsu water massage or another round of steam as your next move. Complimentary recommended treatment cycles are offered by our in-house banya consultant to help you along the way to rejuvenation.

A full banya menu prepared especially by our renowned chef, Dmitry, in our mezzanine level dining area rounds out a superb day. BYOB and plasma screens means you don’t miss the latest sports action and two VIP rooms allow you to host a full range of social functions. Bear and Birch. Get Whacked.

We’ve added Bear and Birch to our database.

Bloomberg announced this morning that Goldman Sachs cheif equity trader in Moscow, Peter Kizenko, quit today. He plans to return to New Jersey and open a traditional Russian sauna, known as...

Glenn over at Sauna Times posted on this topic yesterday and said there are two ways to throw water on the rocks: Soft and softer. I’m a person who thrives on hard numbers, so this got me thinking.

The photo with this post is of the interior of a pretty typical sauna and heater you will find at most US hotels, clubs and gyms. It shows a Scandia heater made by Am-Finn Sauna and Steam in Eagle, Idaho. According to their website, they are the preferred vendor for the YMCA, Bally, Gold’s Gym and LA Fitness, most universities and the US Government. In my experience, they are right. Most public saunas in the USA use their brand of heater.

This heater has a shallow pan at the top to hold the rocks which prevents water from getting on the elements. Their website validates what Clint says: users can “pour water on the rocks without risk to the heater elements and control wiring.”

These heaters have an internal thermostat that limits their temperature to 190°F (88°C) in the wiring box. Looking at the way these are made, my guess is that the rock pan gets to somewhere around 250-300ºF (120-150°C). (I’ll have to figure out a way to look natural bringing my IR thermometer into the sauna with me the next time I go to the gym).

My guess is there are between 25 and 35 pounds of rock in these heaters. Mikkel Aaland says that hornblende is one of the preferred sauna rocks. A few trips to the engineering toolbox, and we find that we’ve got between 200 and 650 BTU to dissipate. A few more trips there and we find that means we can vaporize between 3 and 9 ounces of water before the rocks get too cold to do their job anymore.

In my experience, 4 ounces or 1/2 cup, seems to be the practical limit. That wood sauna ladle in the photo holds about 7 ounces of water.

So when you are in that hotel sauna, about 1/2 a ladle or 1/2 a small foam coffee cup is all you can put on the rocks at a time. Any more than that, and you’ll just cool off the stove.

With the power in those sauna stoves and their element designs, you can probably splash water on the rocks about once every 5-10 minutes, giving you a reason to use that sauna timer.

Compare that to a similar size heater made by Harvia in Finland. These hold about 130 lb of rocks and do not limit the temperature of the stove. They control only by the temperature of the sauna room, and the rocks touch the heating elements so they can get hotter.

Or look at the stove in a Russian banya. These stoves hold 10 or more tons of rock and heat them to more than 800°F! Russian banya enthusiasts say that this high temperature gives the best steam.

Stay tuned for a future post where we look at what happens when you throw water on those sauna rocks.

Glenn over at Sauna Times posted on this topic yesterday and said there are two ways to throw water on the rocks: Soft and softer. I’m a person who thrives on...

Image via Wikipedia

We often troll Yahoo Answers for post ideas on this blog, and this weekend we found a very interesting question there: “What is the difference between a black banya and a white banya?”

The difference is simple: The black banya has an open stove, and the white banya has an enclosed stove with a flue that exhausts to the outside of the banya.

The black banya is a heat storage type of bath like the Finnish smoke sauna or the Korean charcoal sauna. Inside of the bath is the stove with its mass of rock. The stove has no chimney, but vents to the inside of the sauna chamber. When the fire is burning, a hole in the roof or high in the walls is opened to allow the smoke to escape. This fire is fed until there is enough heat stored in the stones to maintain the sauna temperature.

Before the sauna can be used for bathing, the fire must be extinguished, the coals removed, and all of the surfaces of the inside of the banya need to be cleaned of the ash in the room. The smoke door in the roof is closed, and then the bathers enter. The first bathers have the hottest experience. As time progresses, the banya gets cooler, as no more heat is being applied. However, with a large enough stove, the banya could keep its heat for days.

A white banya is the urban banya. The stove is fully enclosed. It can be heated with electricity, gas, or wood. If it is fuel-fired the rocks are isolated from the smoke from the fire. These gasses are vented outside of the banya via a chimney. Since heat can be applied continuously, a white banya can be occupied 24 hours per day. It is also much easier to install a white banya in an urban setting, as it is cleaner, and there is no danger of carbon monoxide poisoning of its neighbors.

However, one advantage that the black banya has is that smoke and soot are natural disinfectants, so the inside of a black banya gets a complete disinfection every time it is used. A white banya has to be disinfected using other means. The Koreans have made some studies of their charcoal saunas and found that they convey additional benefits than saunas with “modern” stoves.

At the beginning of the last century and earlier, all banyas were black banyas. No-one had figured out how to build an enclosed stove yet. The disinfecting properties of the smoke also made the banya the cleanest place available. The banya was used for treatment for the sick, a delivery room and even the funeral parlor. In Finland during World War II, regular use of smoke saunas is credited with stopping the spread of the louse-borne disease typhus among the Finnish military.

We don’t know of any commercial black banyas or smoke saunas in the USA, but King Sauna has Korean-style wood-heated charcoal saunas in their three US locations (NYC, Dallas & Chicago).

If you know of any black banya in existence, please let us know in the comments.

We often troll Yahoo Answers for post ideas on this blog, and this weekend we found a very interesting question there: “What is the difference between a black banya and...