Sauna Build Pack

Everything after the heater chart: the circuit, the ventilation, the wall, the wood and the clearances

Every sauna retailer publishes a heater sizing chart, because publishing it sells heaters. None of them publish what comes next — and that is where a home sauna build actually goes wrong. This is the branch circuit (breaker, conductor, and the voltage drop that quietly starves an outdoor sauna wired correctly on ampacity alone), the ventilation scheme and where each opening goes, the wall build-up in assembly order with what fails at each layer, the timber table including which species must never touch a bench, and the clearances to reserve before you have even chosen a heater model. 8 pages, printable, ending in a fill-in build record and materials take-off you can hand to an electrician and a timber merchant. Advisory: your heater's manual and your local code govern the install.

Look inside

Two full pages from the pack, exactly as printed. Click either to read it at full size before you decide.

What is in it

• Branch circuit by heater size: draw, breaker and minimum copper conductor
• Voltage drop by distance from the panel, and when to upsize the cable
• Ventilation sized from air changes, with the inlet and outlet for your room
• Where each opening goes — and the placement mistake that makes a sauna feel stuffy
• The wall build-up in assembly order, and how each layer fails
• Eight things never to put in a sauna, and what to use instead
• Ten timbers rated for walls and for benches, with the ones that burn skin
• Heater clearances to reserve before you choose a model, and the stone specification
• Bench heights derived from your ceiling, not from a catalogue
• The build sequence, and the three decisions to make before cutting anything
• Fill-in build record and materials take-off sheet

The pack complements the free calculators — they do the arithmetic, it carries the specifications they cannot know.