This is the how to guide on how to add near infrared to any far infrared sauna brand for around $100 dollars. Many people have requested this, since most NIR heat lamp saunas are thousands of dollars, along with PBMT red light therapy devices also being fairly expensive (which I do recommend btw). Using these parts, you can simply mount the same near infrared bulbs used in the heat lamp saunas, in your far infrared sauna. You’ll be able to comfortably enjoy your PBMT therapy, without crouching down in a little tent sauna…. and it won’t break the bank!
https://cleverleverage.com/how-to-add-nir-to-any-fir-sauna-diy-guide/
Here’s the NIR modification parts list:
Surface Mount Socket:
I used old screws I had laying around, but any 1″ wood screws like these should do – https://amzn.to/2VWOhHs
Leviton Plug https://amzn.to/2He1qDN
Power Strip https://amzn.to/2W4E8ZD
Remote Outlet Switches:
My switches https://amzn.to/2PWQWvz
More options https://amzn.to/2HdRMBh
Socket Extensions:
2″ https://amzn.to/2vSdZ1q
6″ https://amzn.to/2PYRYar (I like these metal ones)
18″ https://amzn.to/2LDc6QT
Near Infrared Bulbs:
Phillips https://amzn.to/2vRbH2z
Rubylux https://amzn.to/2Q0QlJ9
Triangle https://amzn.to/2JxVDuE
Industrial Performance https://amzn.to/2Jx164D
Other parts you may want:
Power strip https://amzn.to/2W4E8ZD
Wire nuts https://amzn.to/2Q1d7Az
This might be easier for some people https://amzn.to/2PXRUre
Electrical Tape https://amzn.to/2YfZoZI
*Disclaimer: this is not endorsed by any sauna company. This is a custom modification you do at home. No sauna company sells this kit, nor would they suggest putting 200+ degree heat lamp bulbs within arms reach for liability purposes. Some sauna companies will not like you doing this, others will love it. For those who cannot afford high end PBMT red light therapy devices, this should get you by. This video is not to be a debate between sauna companies, it is simply a tutorial on how to install them if this is what you’re looking for.
** Additional disclaimer: I mention several times in the video, if you’re going to put children in your sauna, do not use long extensions to mount heat lamp bulbs down low. These bulbs get super hot near the surface at a distance of 10″ or closer, so you want to keep them up high near the ceiling and out of reach of children. I know this is common sense and I don’t really need these disclaimers, but for people who skim the videos and don’t watch the whole thing and don’t hear me say it 3 times in the video…
Video Transcript (AI Generated)
Hey guys, welcome to today’s video.
I know over the last few months I said I would produce a tutorial guide on how to add near infrared therapy to any far infrared sauna for around $100.
I started experimenting with this about 6 months ago in the middle of 2018.
I did do a tutorial video.
I don’t know if I lost the footage or if it’s buried on a hard drive somewhere and it’s just not named correctly and I can’t find it, but I’ve been telling people for months that I would do an upload on how to do this and I just can’t find it.
I don’t know if I made a mistake or whatever.
So we’re going to create a little guide today.
I’m going to show you where to get the parts to do this.
There’s a lot of weird names for some of these parts.
There’s different ways to do it.
Some of this stuff is called a can light, a ceiling can light fixture extension pod or something like that.
I don’t know.
What I’m going to do is I’m going to put a complete parts list in the YouTube description from all the different places that I bought various things like this, which allow you to mount these bulbs in any foreign friend sauna for like 20 bucks.
It’s going to cost a little bit more than that to do the whole thing, but I’m also going to show you how to put these on a clickable outlet switch so that when you’re in the sauna, you can turn them on.
If they get too hot when you’re in there, you can turn them off or you can put them on a timer.
You can do all kinds of things, but the whole thing is going to be around $100.
If you want to do it really fancy, it’ll be under 150.
What else?
But anyway, a lot of people have asked like, “Hey, where do you get the stuff to do that?”
I can’t remember the names of these things.
They’re really obscure stuff, but there will be a parts list in the YouTube description for everybody so you don’t have to figure this out.
Anyway, long story short, if you know me, you know that I harp on all the time about paying $3,000 and how much I think it’s crazy to spend even $2,000 on a heat lamp near infrared sauna.
For one thing, I think it’s nuts to spend thousands of dollars and then have to climb down into a little tent.
It’s very uncomfortable.
I also don’t think that those work very well because they’re not really insulated and it’s not really sealing off any of the air.
That’s just my personal opinion.
But for months or maybe even years now, depending on when you started watching the sauna videos, you know that I do not speak highly of near infrared heat lamp saunas.
Late last year, I decided that I was going to start experimenting with ways to add cheap photobiomodulation therapy or real near infrared therapy to a far infrared sauna without it impacting the actual sauna experience and without it breaking the bank so that you had to spend thousands of dollars to get red light therapy.
So what I came up with was a way that anyone can mount these bulbs in any far infrared sauna so you’re not spending thousands of dollars and still having to climb into some uncomfortable tent.
You can get a far infrared sauna like this for $3,000.
It’s a nice wood finish.
It’s very comfortable and relaxing.
It’s got a glass door.
It’s something that you’ll actually enjoy.
And then some of the people that are hell bent on having near infrared bulbs can simply add these for $100, $150 to any far infrared sauna on the market.
This is not unique to any particular brand.
I’ve put these in multiple different saunas, not just the one that I’m sitting in right now.
And it’s very, very easy.
So I think what we’re going to do is I’m going to take the camera off the tripod and I’ll show you how to install these.
Oh, before we get started, I forgot to mention one thing.
A lot of people have questions about is near infrared better than far infrared and da, da, da, all this stuff.
That’s not really what this video is about.
There are several people that are like, look, we want a far infrared sauna, but we want the bulbs.
You know, this video is not about debating what’s this, what’s that.
This video is just a tutorial guide on if this is what you’re looking for.
I’ve had so many people ask on how to do this.
If this is what you want to do, this is just the video that teaches you how to install them.
So I hope a lot of times I get crazy comments or emails about tutorial videos and the video is not really meant to be an explainer as far as like which camp you’re in because some people hate these things.
Some people say that you shouldn’t use them.
You know, some people say that this is all you should be using, blah, blah, blah.
I have my own opinions about that, but I don’t want to muddy up this video on how to install these with talking about that stuff.
So it’s really just, if this is what you want, here’s how to do it.
Okay.
So if you follow the parts guide in the YouTube description, you’ll end up with a receptacle, a flush mount receptacle that looks exactly like this.
Now what we want to do as a general rule, what I do is I place these in the corner of your sauna near the front so that you’re able to have the most flexibility as far as positioning the bulbs and aiming the heat lamp bulbs where you want them to go.
So the first step here is we’re just going to kind of center this up.
I like to mount them like this in the corner.
So one screw hole is exposed here and one is hidden in the back.
And all we’re going to do is we’re going to go ahead and drill, and obviously I took this apart to show you guys how to do it, but we’re just going to drill a small hole here in the ceiling.
It’s a quarter inch bit by the way.
All you need is enough space for, to pass these two wires through.
And then, so all we want to do is fish the two wires through the hole that we just drilled, position our fixture with the wire chase facing the back so that it looks nice and clean, and then just install our two mounting screws.
This stuff doesn’t have to be super tight.
It’s really only going to be supporting a couple of pounds max.
So make sure if you’re using a drill you don’t over tighten things.
Now let me take you up top and show you how to wire it up.
Alright the second piece in your parts list in the YouTube description is going to be this Leviton outlet plug.
And so this is just a simple foldable plug that anyone can wire up.
It’s a two wire thing, it’s not grounded.
So let’s pan down and I’m going to show you how to hook it up.
Okay we’re at the front corner of the sauna on the roof now.
This is where we drilled our little hole.
This is just where we mounted the little receptacle.
We’ve got our two wires here.
We’ve got our common and our hot.
Our common is going to go on the silver screw.
So I think that should be pretty easy.
Let me focus the camera so that you guys can see that.
Silver screw here.
All we’re going to do is make a little arch with the wire.
Actually hopefully you guys can see that.
Maybe I should zoom in a little bit more.
Nah this has got to be good enough.
All you do is loop that through, tighten it a little bit, and go ahead and tighten your set screw.
There’s not going to be any pressure on these so you just want them snug.
You don’t have to tighten them so much that you flatten the wire and break it off.
We’ll do the same thing for the black.
Black goes to gold.
Loop that through and we’ll tighten that up.
So all you want to do is put these down in the actual grooves where they go there.
Route that through the rear access point.
Put this closed and then put your set screw in there.
Tighten this down and we’re done.
Now technically you could just plug this right into an extension cord.
Obviously I have a power strip up here that’s ready to go.
You could just plug this right into an extension cord.
Now the issue with this is that you have no way to turn the lights off and on from inside the sauna.
If you’ve never used heat lamps before, these near infrared bulbs that everyone is touting, they get screaming scorching hot if you’re really close to them.
It’s very important that you want to have a way to turn them off and on from inside the sauna.
I’m going to show you how to do that.
You probably have seen these.
Let me just grab them really quick.
Next thing on the parts list is going to be these clickable outlet switches.
All this is, it allows you to plug this into a power strip and then you have control over power of the outlet with the remote.
So let me show you how to hook that up right now.
The main benefit to this is instead of, like I said, plugging directly into a power strip, what you want to do, and these are numbered, so this is number two, this is number one.
We’re going to go with number one.
You want to plug this in first and then plug this into there.
So now instead of the lights being on all the time, we can simply hit this button and it turns on or off.
There is an indicator in there.
You guys probably can’t hear it, but it’s very simple.
So then we’re just going to take number two, put it in a different slot for the other side.
And so for the other side, I repeated the process and installed the fixture inside the sauna, but on the top side, because I want everything to be centrally located on this power supply so I can use, I’m sorry, on the, I can’t speak, on the power strip, the leads aren’t really long enough.
So basically I just added an extension.
All I did was use a couple of wire nuts and then I taped them just for good measure to make sure that they don’t come undone.
And all it is is a little pigtail extension so that I can get this plug back over to this side and keep both of these on the same side.
So those just plug into there.
This is relatively easy to do.
Just takes a few minutes.
So now we’ve got both of our fixtures plugged in.
We’ve got them both on this.
So you can probably hear it clicking.
Oops.
So now let’s go inside and let me show you how it works.
All right, so let’s hop back in the sauna.
I want to show you a couple of options before we put the bulbs in.
You’ll notice in the parts list in the YouTube description, there’s a lot of different mounting options.
So for somebody that’s in a four-person sauna or a large sauna that has the bulbs a lot farther away from them, they’re probably going to want a longer extension to have more flexibility on bringing them closer to the body.
Versus somebody who’s in a smaller sauna like this one, where you probably want something much, much shorter in order to keep them away from you a little bit because they’re simply too hot.
I also have extensions in here that are really short and they’ll work for everyone.
There’s something that I want to note here.
Some of these extensions, like this one, depending on which bulbs you pair them with, have a recessed E26 screw-in receptacle there.
So if that’s the case, sometimes if you use them with the wrong bulb and you screw this in, it will screw in too far and crack the bulb because it puts pressure on the housing.
So what I did to stop this from happening, you don’t have to do this on all of the extensions.
Like for instance, this one will work with all the bulbs.
So if you click on the links in the YouTube description, you find the picture that looks like this.
I don’t know the names of them.
There’s names on here, but I can’t even pronounce what it is, let alone remember it.
But all I did to make these work with every single bulb, even the Rubilux bulbs, is I just sanded this down on the face.
So it’s usually, I don’t know if you guys can see this, but it’s usually much more recessed.
Like the top one has been modified by me.
The bottom one is the stock one.
And so what I did was I just cut this off and then I sanded the face flush.
I just used a little hand saw, hacksaw, sawzall, whatever you have, which will work fine.
Now you won’t have to worry about that if you’re using the short ones like this.
These will screw onto any bulbs.
And because this has a flared flange on it, it will not mess with any of the bulbs.
So for instance, let me just grab one so that you can see.
I’ve tested this with all the bulbs, the Rubilux bulbs, the Philips bulbs, the cheap Element ones or whatever.
A lot of times the profile of the actual neck of the bulb is a little bit different.
And believe it or not, that makes all the difference in the world.
So anyway, I like the Rubilux bulbs.
I think they’re worth the extra money.
And for this example, we’re going to go ahead and screw in the long extension so that you can see it on the camera.
Although I will tell you, this is a one to two person sauna.
I would use the short ones in a sauna of this size to keep the bulbs a lot farther away from you because when you drop them down like this and they’re closer to chest height, it’s too hot.
But I want to make sure that you guys will be able to see everything in the actual camera field of view.
So I want to use the long ones so that you can check out what really happens here.
So basically, this is just threaded for the socket that we put in the ceiling.
This is very self-explanatory.
And then this is a complete ball swivel mount.
So you can angle these left to right.
You can angle them up and down.
You can do whatever you want.
You can pretty much achieve any placement with these that your heart desires.
Screw the bulbs in.
And now you’ll understand why we have the handy dandy remote.
The biggest thing is, I don’t know if you guys can see that or if the camera will pick it up, but my head is next to this.
It’s instant heat.
It’s going to get very hot so I will not be staying in front of these with them on for very long.
But now you know why we have the remote.
If you didn’t do it this way, and I know some people are going to say, “Well, you said we could put the bulbs in for a hundred bucks.
You know, this piece is 20 bucks.
The bulbs are 20 bucks.
Here we are at 90 some dollars and we don’t have the switches.”
Technically, you can do that, but I’m the kind of person that if it’s hot like this, I don’t want to get out of the sauna to have to plug it in and unplug it.
I would rather spend the extra 20 or 30 bucks and get a set like this.
This will also be linked up in the YouTube description.
So now let me go ahead and put in the other side and I’ll show you what it’s like when it’s all done.
Okay, so now let’s do the other side.
On this side I’m going to use a slightly different length so that you can see the difference that I was talking about.
So I’m going to go ahead and screw this in.
It’s too short to really show you on camera, but you’ll be able to see the difference.
And we’ll even use a different bulb because any bulbs can work with this.
It doesn’t matter which ones you choose for yourself.
Again, I like the Rubilux or the Philips, but they all work.
I’ve tested them all.
So now what I want you to see is, I know this looks cattywampus.
I’m doing that on purpose.
I’ll show you, whoops, that is something to note.
Now these bulbs are not immune to you bumping into them.
If you’re in a larger sauna, you probably won’t have to worry about it too much.
If you’re in a small sauna like this, you want to make sure and be very cautious that you’re not bumping into them when they are hot because they do get really, really hot.
Now what I wanted to show you was, let’s turn on light one and light two.
Now what I wanted to illustrate is, I know that you can kind of understand, wow, they work instantly.
Usually these are designed to be at a farther distance.
So if I was truly sitting back in the sauna like so, and we’re creating the 24 inch distance that should be between you, what I wanted to illustrate to you is that, for instance, when you drop the bulbs down in a really small sauna, if you were to take a tape measure and just go off your chest, this is going to be really close.
So point of body contact is not that far away, versus using some of the shorter ones, you get a lot more distance.
And so that’s what I mean by tailoring the extension that you use to the size of the sauna.
Now, if this were a three or a four person sauna, which would be three times as wide, that’s going to be that much farther away.
So I would probably still want some that drop down a little bit in order to give me that frontal exposure that I’m looking for, if that’s how you want to use it.
Now the easiest thing for people to use is just use the short extension and then just go ahead and adjust it wherever you want it to point.
So if you wanted to do some leg maintenance or something like that, you can do that easily.
I do not recommend adjusting these too much when you’re using the sauna because everything is going to be hot, you’re going to be sweaty, you can slip, these are very hot.
And so the safest way is to keep them up in the corner up high.
You’ll never bump into them like that unless you’re in the corner, which hardly anybody does that.
But these, when they’re down lower, you can bump into them or graze them and they will burn you.
So you have to be very careful.
This is a modification, this is something custom, this is not offered or endorsed by any sauna company.
Some sauna companies will not agree with this, some of them won’t care, but from a safety standpoint they can’t tell you to do something like this.
So proceed at your own risk.
This is a custom modification that is not produced by any sauna company.
However, you can do this for $100.
So if you want to get these bulbs or if you want to have a sauna like this or you want to add near infrared therapy or photobiomodulation to your repertoire for cheap, this is how you can do it and not spend $3,000 on one of those crazy tent saunas that I harp on so much.
So you’re pretty much ready to go.
I mean, if you have the handy dandy remote, you can turn these off and on at will.
Oh yeah, one last thing.
I want to show you what it looks like when you’re sitting in the cabin of the sauna.
So here we are in the cabin of the sauna.
Let’s just use the remote to turn them on.
So now we have those.
This is what it looks like with the longer drop down extension.
I don’t know if this is 18 inches or 16 or whatever.
You’ll have to look at the parts description or I’m sorry, the parts list and the YouTube description.
And this is the other one.
You can see how it’s tucked up nice and neat in there.
This is what I would recommend for most people.
Go with the shorter one.
It’s safe.
Don’t use the long one like this.
If you’re going to put children or anything in here, it can burn them.
And we want to be really careful with that.
So this is pretty much what it looks like from inside.
Let me see if I can zoom out here.
That’s what the bulbs look like.
And this is what it looks like from the door.
So when you come into the sauna, you really can’t see anything.
It’s very discreet.
This is super easy to do.
You can put this in any sauna you like and it won’t cost thousands of dollars.
Cheers guys.
Have a great day.
Guys, there’s two things that I forgot to mention about doing this whole thing.
I should have included them in the very beginning.
I just forgot.
There’s a couple things that people have asked.
One is, can you power the foreign fred sauna and the bulbs on the existing house circuit or is it going to trip the breaker?
This is a highly individualized answer.
Here’s what I’ll tell you.
If you have a 10 or 15 amp circuit in the house, it’s most likely going to trip the breaker if you have a big sauna.
It really just depends on which sauna you have.
Here’s how you would really want to calculate it.
These are 250 watt bulbs.
There’s two of them.
So this is, we’re adding 500 watts of power to the sauna.
So if you’re sitting in a sauna that’s, let’s just say it’s a two person and it’s on a 15 amp circuit, but it has, let’s just say 1850 watts and you’re trying to add 500 watts to the circuit, you’re going to be well over 2000 watts, which is pretty much way beyond the peak for a 15 amp circuit.
Now if you have a dedicated 20 amp circuit to power the sauna, most likely you can add these or even more of them and it’s not going to do anything.
So if you have a three or four person sauna, you had an electrician put in the outlet to power the sauna, it’s a dedicated 20 amp line, or you’re using your sauna in the garage and there’s already 20 amp circuits in there or you’re in a newer house.
See it’s very, it’s almost impossible to say whether or not this will work for everybody because in some cases you’ll find instances where it won’t work and it’ll trip the breaker.
You’ll find other cases like here, I’m on a 15 amp circuit, I’m in a newer condo, I run the bulbs of the sauna and the camera lights and it’s not tripping the breaker yet.
Now the second I power on something else in the room, like an additional lighting fixture, a ceiling fan, another sauna or something like that, boom, the breaker trips and it won’t power anything.
It’s just too much of a draw on it.
But for somebody, let’s just say in an older 1950s house that’s got old wiring and stuff like that, it’s probably too much in that case.
So basically you would just want to calculate the wattage and then know what kind of circuit it’s sitting on.
So you can calculate what the maximum draw for a 15 amp, a 20 amp and so on and so forth is, and you want to take about 90% of that and not use any more.
So let’s just say for arbitrary numbers, I’m in a 1500 watt sauna, I’m going to add 500 watts of power, that’s going to be a total of 2000 watts.
I’m on a dedicated 20 amp circuit which has a maximum usage of 2200 watts.
I’m well within the 90% range.
It’s not going to mess with the breaker, it’s not going to cause any issues.
Okay second thing that I forgot to mention is for the EHS folks, people are wanting to know have I tested this stuff for EMF, how does it contribute to EMF.
It does actually bring in a little bit of electric fields.
It brings in enough electric fields to raise body voltage about 600 millivolts which compared to a lot of foreign thread saunas and things like that really isn’t that significant.
I think the benefits of having the PBMT therapy far outweigh the cons.
Also because these get so hot at close range, you’re really not going to have them on at all times.
So if you were worried about exposure limits or something like that or you’re super sensitive to EMF or you’re suffering from EHS, the nice thing is you can turn them off with the flick of a switch.
So it really becomes a non-issue, it’s not very expensive.
For the EHS folks out there, I do have a way that you can remount these but it’s going to require you to build some custom fixtures to do so.
The way that you would eliminate the electric fields from the bulbs themselves is to basically use a quarter inch mesh material, a metal mesh in front of the bulb and you would want to ground that.
And what you’re going to do is you’re going to create a grounded Faraday cage that essentially eliminates the electric fields from protruding past the grounded heat shield and your body will be protected.
That would be zero EMF.
There are no magnetic fields from the bulbs themselves.
There are only electric fields and magnetic fields transmitted along the metal rod from the fixture.
Again, it’s not that significant.
There are no magnetic fields that protrude out past the fixture that would come into contact with the body, so that’s not really an issue.
I’m being super super nitpicky and thorough here because I know people have asked in the past.
For the average person, adding these bulbs is going to have much lower EMF than the rest of your sauna.
Most saunas on the market, unless you’re talking about one from the certified sauna list, are not going to be low enough EMF to where this would even matter.
We’ll put it that way.
So anyway, I hope that clears that up.
I’m sorry I didn’t put that in the very beginning.
I know people were curious about that.
If you have other questions, let me know in the comments.
Have a great day. in the comments.
Have a great day.