I’ve been a Lifehacker fan since its beginning. While some of their topics are obscure geekdom, the occasional tip about a new piece of software or website that ends up saving me hours makes it a daily stop on my morning review of the news. I was really interested this morning when I saw their new post “How to Hack Your Bathroom into a Home Sauna.”
I had to check the calendar to make sure today isn’t April 1. It isn’t.
Holy sh*t Lifehacker. What will you stoop to for linkbait?
The post is chock full of lots of crazy ideas and very few concrete details, like:
If you plan to install a wood-burning stove, you’ll need to fire-proof the walls and roof around the stove. Particle board isn’t cheap, but this is one area you don’t want to skimp on.
If you don’t have an air vent in the bathroom, don’t make one: the gap under the bathroom door will work just fine.
Um, NO NO NO NO NO!
If you’re putting a wood burning stove anywhere enclosed, you need to make sure you have proper ventilation. If you don’t you’ll end up at best poisoning yourself and at worst asphyxiating yourself and your whole family in your project. Especially if you follow their instructions to build a sauna stove:
A wood burning stove can easily be made from a junk yard gas canister. Use a cheap angle grinder to lop off the top, then just find a metal bucket, cut a hatch and fit the flue.
Those are the instructions. All of them. Now go forth and build one of these and put it in your house!
Please don’t follow these instructions. We value you as a reader too much to have you kill yourself in a home-made deathtrap.
If you don’t want to shell out the dollars for a book, then visit Sauna Times or Kalle Hoffman’s Sauna Pages. Both offer plenty of free advice and detailed plans for building your own saunas and sauna stoves.
And unless you really, really know what you’re doing, build your first DIY wood stove sauna in a shed, far away from your home and anything else flammable.
Meanwhile, watch for these exciting posts coming soon to Lifehacker: “Improve your mood: Hack your bathtub and a toaster into your own electro-convulsive therapy system” and “Hack your own Botox from cans you fish out of your grocer’s dumpster!”
Stephen Colmant published an interesting tidbit on Sauna Times today showing that people who are considered neurotic have a different physical response to hot environments than “normal” people. The study, published in 2003, found that people who tend to be anxious, fearful, sensitive and self-critical also tended to sweat less in the heat of the sauna and found it to be very uncomfortable.
Stephen (a licensed psychologist with a PhD to prove it) posits that we might be able to improve these people’s personalities by regularly exposing them to a sauna. This might just be causation, but if you’re planning a study to test this hypothesis Stephen, I’m willing to volunteer my father-in-law as a subject for you. Perhaps with the USDA’s preferred sauna temperature, might they also be good candidates?
A Sauna In a Pear Tree by seattlebound 2007 on Photobucket
It’s that time of year, where every good blogger across the internet channels their inner Stan Freberg and posts a list of their gift ideas. We’re not afraid of a little commercialism here, so without further ado, here is the SaunaScape 12 days of Christmas:
12 Sauna Hats
A sauna hat is an essential accessory if you’re going to enjoy a Banya. There aren’t many domestic sources for them, here’s an authentic Latvian one via Hotsprung.
9 Sauna Towels
Again, if you’re not regularly going to a sauna that includes towels, you’ll need to bring your own. Again, these come in three varieties: Soft and fluffy, light and packable, and Ford Prefect.
8 Ex-foliation Tools
In Korean baths they use italy towels, in the Hammam it’s a synthetic mitt, some prefer a loofah, a brush, or even a venik. Whatever tool you choose, after a couple of rounds in the sauna, you’re ready to exfoliate like you’ve never done before.
7 Pairs of Sandals
There are too many choices to pick from here, so I’ll just let you decide.
5 Gift Certificates
That’s right, if you can’t take them to the spa, you can send them a gift certificate. Spa Finder and Spa Week are both offering discounted certificates this holiday season.
3 Sauna Films
Steam of Life, the Finnish documentary is contending for an Oscar this year. It’s not available to watch / purchase through any of the usual sources, but I’m sure if it wins it will go into wide distribution. To round out the list we can add the horror film Sauna, and because we’re really reaching right now, Hot Tub Time Machine
Sauna Times has placed their mobile sauna at Uncommon Gardens in Minneapolis, MN for the holiday season. This Saturday, November 20, the sauna will be fired up for all to try. From the looks of this weekend’s weather, the high will be a balmy 31°F (-0°C). Bring your swimsuit and sandals.
Glenn assures me that Uncommon Gardens is only a $25 cab ride from MSP airport if you’re planning on flying in for the occasion.
FitSugar is looking for your comments on whether you prefer the sauna or steam room. Stop by and show them some love.
The Smell of Snow
Author Laura Munson posted a piece on The Huffington Post yesterday called The Smell of Snow describing the first sauna of the season in Montana. It’s well worth the read if you haven’t come across it yet.
Glenn at Sauna Times posted today about how a sauna fits into his hair care regimen:
I used no shampoo for 74 straight days. I took a sauna 3-4 times a week. Each sauna, I took 3-4 rounds, jumping into the clear cool lake water between rounds. That’s it.
His solution is simple: Wet your hair before going into the sauna.
For those of you who sauna hotter, there are a few more solutions. You can get a felt sauna hat as is popular in the Russian Banya. These are made from sheep’s wool get a dunk in cold water just before going into the sauna. They are available in a staggering amount of different styles.
The other option is to put a damp towel on your head. If you don’t want to look like the Gumbys, you can roll your towel in the Korean style, and look a bit like Princess Leia. See the video below.
In our quest to find new and interesting sauna tidbits to share with you, we spend a lot of time combing the web looking for information.
This weekend, we stumbled upon Sauna Times, a blog run by Glenn, a “Joe American” living in Minnesota. We find the similarities between his site and ours uncanny, right down to the choice of the background images. He seems to be quite a personable fellow. So much so that with this post, Sauna times now has a place in our links page.
What really caught our attention on his site though, was his post “Hotel Sauna: How to Take One.” A laminated copy now resides in our briefcase for our next stay at a hotel with a sauna.
We have noticed that most hotel (and health club) saunas, especially here in the USA, tend to be overly dry from disuse. This becomes part of the problem: If the sauna is dry and hot, it irritates your respiratory system. Most forbid you from throwing water on the rocks, so the only solution is to turn the temperature down. You end up sitting in a warm room, which really doesn’t do much for you.
Sauna Times has a simple solution for all of this: As soon as you check in, turn on the sauna full blast. Give it 20 minutes or so to heat, then:
Flush the hotel sauna. Generously douse with fresh water:
the bench area where you’ll be sitting.
the hotel sauna rocks with water (they should bark back, if not, the sauna is lame, call housekeeping if you’re especially irritated).
anywhere else you feel the urge.
Why? underused hotel saunas can build up dust and stagnation, this ‘cleansing’ will get your hotel sauna fresh and ready to rock.
After this, reset the timer again, and give the sauna another 30 minutes to recover from this washing, and you’re ready to begin the sauna process, which Glenn distills succinctly: “It’s like the instructions on a box of laundry detergent: sauna, rinse, chill, repeat.”
If you are looking for a lodging with a sauna, don’t forget to check out our hotel sauna search engine.
and posts a list of their gift ideas. We’re not afraid of 
, 
, and because we’re really reaching right now, 
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