Description
Outdoor infrared saunas sound great in theory—but most of them just don’t hold up. I break down what works, what fails, and why most sauna companies aren’t telling you the whole story. I’ll show you what to look for, which brands actually last, and what I’d do if I needed to put a sauna outside in cold weather.
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Transcript
sauna companies are going to hate me as soon as we get into the details of why outdoor saunas suck. There’s people out there that just demand it. I want an outdoor infrared sauna. I don’t care.
Okay, well, if you want that, here’s the options that I see in the marketplace. Here’s the ones that I think look cool and will work the best for you. There’s very few companies that make infrared outdoor saunas. You can find steam saunas, you can find barrel saunas, you can find everything in between shed-style finish saunas.
There’s DIY kits that you can build yourself. There’s some stuff at Costco that’s halfway decent looking. You’ve got to look at each one of those solutions and see what works for you. There’s a lot of people out there that just demand it.
I want an outdoor infrared sauna. I don’t care. Okay, well, if you want that, here’s the options that I see in the marketplace. There’s very few companies that make infrared outdoor saunas.
You can find steam saunas, you can find barrel saunas, you can find everything in between shed-style finish saunas. There’s a lot of people out there that just demand it. Okay, well, here’s the options that I see in the marketplace. You’ve got to look at each one of those solutions in its entirety because they’re not all created equal.
Some of them come with floors and some of them don’t. You don’t really on the market, I think. There’s some new ones coming out. We haven’t had a chance to test them.
A lot of them look like sh**. They look like indoor saunas with a Lexan roof on them. Those are never going to last. There’s no insulation in the walls.
There’s no coating on the outside. For the last several years, we’ve been recommending the Clearlight Sanctuary outdoor models because it kind of fits the bill where there’s sort of lacking, like there’s the solutions are lacking in the marketplace. There’s not a lot of options that are good for consumers for an outdoor infrared.
You know, I love the way the outdoor Sanctuary from Clearlight looks. It has a really beautiful aesthetic. I like the inside too because they put the full-spectrum heaters on the back of the glass. So even if you put it out in the cold, it has a good chance of having a still a pretty good preheat time.
And the walls are denser than the indoor.
or models, so they’re going to hold the heat a little bit better. It’s thicker, higher quality construction. There are some things that I’ve never liked about it. And I’ve voiced this, you know, I get flack for voicing my opinion sometimes because it’s not favorable.
I don’t really like the roof construction on those things. I don’t think that they’re really up to par. Like if I put one in negative 20 in Maine and let the snow and ice wreak havoc with the edges of the roof, I think I’d rip it apart. Right.
But that’s a pretty extreme environment. And a lot of these companies say that you should use like a cover and all this stuff, which I think is insane. I’m never going to put a cover on it because it looks too nice without it. So I’m not going to ruin the look and feel of my backyard, especially up there when we have we’re feeding the deer and we’re overlooking the landscape or the trees or the woods or mountains in the background or whatever.
Right. Because it looks terrible. So I’m not going to spend 10 grand, 15 grand, probably by the time I trench out the electrical, put in a quick disconnect, pour a paver pad or concrete pad, you know, set up supplemental roof protection. So this thing actually lasts.
But for years, this is what we’ve recommended, because there’s really no other great options in the market. There’s some other like semi knockoff ish brands that make infrared outdoor saunas. You can find them on Amazon and Wayfair. But if you just look at them, they are really cheap.
They are an indoor sauna that somebody took and put like. I wouldn’t even call it an outdoor roof. Every once in a while, you’ll see a shingle roof. Hardly ever do you see a metal roof and you don’t see drip edge protection.
So if you don’t have drip edge protection, I’m a guy that comes from a construction background. So sauna companies are going to hate me as soon as we get into the details of why outdoor saunas suck, because it’s absolutely true. But I know exactly what I’m talking about because we deal with this in non sauna structures that we’ve had up north for 30 years.
Right. So when we talk about wood delamination or when we talk about, you know, no eave protection or we talk about rain splash.
up, or we talk about UV, or we talk about all the things that can happen when a sauna is exposed to the elements without additional protection. A lot of these infrared saunas that these companies are slapping on Amazon for whatever price, when you see how thin the wall construction is with just a little spray on varnish on the outside, that’s never gonna give you UV protection.
Depending on how you build the pad that the outdoor sauna sits on, you’re gonna get rain splash up for the first two feet of the sauna. You just are. And based on the angle of the Sun, you’re also gonna get UV on three sides of the sauna, depending on how it’s oriented, right?
If it faces south, you know, that front face of it is just going to get beat on. It’s just the nature of the beast. But there’s people out there that just demand it. I want an outdoor infrared sauna.
I don’t care. Okay, well if you want that, here’s the options that I see in the marketplace. Here’s the ones that I think look cool and will work the best for you. And that’s what we’ve been recommending.
Now we’re starting to see some new things come on the market. I really like the Heavenly Heat Combo Hybrid, right? Because they’re trying to bridge the gap between infrared and traditional. So they have a traditional sauna heater on one corner, and then they have infrared panels throughout the rest.
I’m not convinced that it will withstand the elements in Maine. I’m not convinced that it will withstand an ice storm. But it does have a much better roof on it than something like a Lexan roof or something you see on Wayfair or Amazon or any of these other, you know, choices.
It was. It was metal. I’m a stickler though. I mean, you’re talking to a guy that would prefer to put a standing seam metal roof on something, and I can install it myself.
So when I look at a sauna and it’s not seamed correctly down the center, and I see sealant or caulk or something that lines up that gap, is it going to be an issue? Not necessarily. But would I have rather them hemmed that joint or at least created a raised ridge in those two panels?
Here’s your cleaned-up transcript:
I wouldn’t like that, because that means there’d be a mohawk—a single mohawk line—going down the center of the sauna. But from a water, ice, snow, rain, sleet penetration standpoint, when you create a raised ridge like that or hem those two joints together, aesthetically you’re creating a ridge, but you’re also creating a water penetration ridge. There’s no way for the water to work itself into a crimped edge like that. You don’t need sealant, caulk, or roof cement because it’s designed correctly to keep water out and let gravity do what it’s supposed to do.
This is very, very difficult for me because if I were to build an outdoor sauna—the roof, not necessarily the walls, but the roof—would be built like a house roof. If we’re truly being 100% authentic about how I’d build one of these things to withstand the elements, it wouldn’t look like any of the ones available on the market. But I’m also coming to you from the harshest environment you could possibly put it in. Most people can get away with something of lesser design or build quality. And a lot of companies offer exactly that. But the cheaper you go—I mean, you buy once, you cry once in this case. Because if you buy a cheap sauna, you might only get two years out of it. Look at the used ones I’ve posted in the Facebook group before—the wood curls on the bottom, there’s mold inside, they flood.
Now, it’s different if someone built a custom sauna and then wrapped it in Hardie board, caulked all the joints, and gave it a really good urethane coat. Then you could take everything I’m saying and say, “Well, let’s roll the dice,” because that thing’s probably going to work for four or five years before it needs a recoat.
If I could literally jump up and hang off the edge of a roof that we built, and there was no issue—if it had kick-out flashing and everything considering water management was accounted for—I don’t think it’d really be an issue. At the same time, here’s the devil’s advocate: these companies would never be able to offer you that sauna for less than probably $15,000, $16,000, $18,000, $19,000, $20,000. Number one, it’s going to be a lot heavier, and they wouldn’t be able to ship it to you in one little package like you just got.
Even though this is my opinion, I don’t know if my opinion really provides an alternative because the real alternative is for you to hire a contractor and build one yourself. I think it comes down to what latitude you live at. If you’re above, say, Georgia, North Carolina, or further north, you’re going to be dealing with cold weather. Take that into account. If you live in a northern environment, like Canada, where you get tons of snow and long, really cold winters, you’ll want extra horsepower to make the sauna perform efficiently. You’ll probably want insulated walls, and you likely wouldn’t want infrared-only because if it’s zero degrees all the time, the sauna will take a long time to heat up. You’d be better off with either a custom solution, an outdoor Finnish-style sauna—probably not a barrel but a shed-style—or maybe a Heavenly Heat combo that has traditional and infrared as well.
To answer your question, “When should someone buy an outdoor infrared sauna?”: When they don’t have space inside to adequately set up an area that really works for their lifestyle.
The real time to buy an outdoor infrared sauna—and not worry about everything I said earlier in this video (but I want you to know all that first)—is if you have a patio, lanai, shed with an overhang, a garage with a cantilevered roof, or anything providing just a little extra roof or element protection. If you have that, I say buy it, because it dramatically changes how the sauna weathers over time.
Not everybody has this. A lot of people don’t understand—if I just said this without explaining everything else, you’d think, “Oh, Matt said we could get an infrared sauna and put it on the porch.” No, I’m not talking about a tiny 4-by-6-foot porch where everything I just described will blow underneath the eaves. That’s going to be the same problem. I’m talking about a large area where you could provide sufficient protection. In that case, I think you could avoid the troubles I’ve outlined.
I wanted you to know about all these factors before you make that decision so you’re well-informed and no one can pull the wool over your eyes. Listen, you’re going to talk to some salespeople who say, “Oh yeah, our outdoor sauna works fine in the snow—it works great.” But then in the fine print, they disclose that they don’t actually make an outdoor sauna; they’re selling you an indoor model with a weatherproof cover. That’s very different. You’re rolling the absolute dice—just taking your chances. What happens if you take the cover off and you’re in the sauna during a session, and it rains? Where’s the electronics protection? Where’s the weatherproof roof cover?
You’d have been better off buying an outdoor sauna from a company that provides a Lexan roof because at least you’d know moisture wouldn’t seep into your wood roof. You need the context of everything I said earlier to understand why that’s not the case. And I don’t want to see you spend ten grand and get taken for a ride.