I Used a Sauna During Chemo — What Did I Learn? Certified Saunas Q&A

After going through months of chemotherapy and tracking hospital-grade data every single day, I started to see something interesting. Sauna use didn’t just feel good — it lined up with real changes in my personal vitals, energy, and recovery. This isn’t medical advice, but I’ll show you exactly what I experienced, what I learned, and what to watch out for if you’re considering buying a sauna for your health. Again, this is my personal experience but I’m not alone in this. Check out Certified Saunas Group on Facebook and see what others have to say about their experience.

This video came out of a Q&A session with Aaron, who pulled some of the top questions we’ve seen in the Certified Saunas Facebook group. One of those questions led us into my chemo story — and everything I figured out about sauna use during recovery.

Read the transcript here >

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Transcript

I’ve never used a sauna before in my life. Don’t listen to anything that I ever say. What are the top health benefits for an at-home sauna? So I could tell you about my own experience.

Big disclaimer is I’m not a doctor. This is not medical advice. If you need any type of medical advice, please see a licensed physician. But personally, I could tell you what I’ve experienced.

The most valuable thing, I think, instead of what I think are benefits would be to tell you about what I saw over the course of going to the hospital five days a week for eight months while I was in leukemia treatment. Through the duration of this thing, they’re giving me arsenic, I’m on other drugs.

Even though all that stuff was happening, as long as I did my little 10-minute walks after meals and I used the sauna regularly once I was able, once I learned how to walk again, got my mobility and energy back, we could see, because when you go to the hospital every day for treatment, as soon as you walk in the door, they will not see you until they take your vitals.

So we have five days a week, off and on for eight months of data where you could see a direct correlation to my diet, my lifestyle choices, my exercise, my sauna use, and we could see the metrics change in regards to blood pressure, fatigue, energy, and we could see it on a daily measurement, not me just taking it, but using high-end equipment.

So we saw a reduction in blood pressure, reduction in resting heart rate, even though I have a little white coat syndrome when I go to that place, because who wants to be there? Less brain fog, more energy. So you get an EKG every week, too, because they’re giving you arsenic, which can drag out the space and time of your heart rate.

It can become irregular. So doing stuff to improve that is also noted, like it’s marked in your chart. So we saw improvements in a lot of those areas. Now, obviously, I can’t say that everyone is going to experience this.

I’m not a doctor. But personally, I’ve experienced a lot of benefits. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t still be doing it, wouldn’t be passionate about it. But how does an at-home sauna kind of work, like the ones at least you deal with?

There are wet saunas, right? Yeah, you got infrared, you have traditional dry electric, you have wood burning, you have steam. There’s a bunch of different variations. There’s four main types.

So I like the infrared, but there’s really, there’s two camps on how the home saunas work. You can, it’s two mechanisms of heat delivery. So a traditional sauna, whether it’s wood burning, dry electric, steam, you know, finished hot rock, it doesn’t matter what it is. It’s working off the, it’s in one camp where it’s working off the principle of heating the air.

So all it’s doing is heating the air inside the cabin, and that in turn increases your core temperature. It increases your respiratory rate, your breathing, all that kind of stuff. The other camp is anything that works off of an infrared principle, which is low air temperature, direct heat to the body, exciting the body from within.

So you’re heating from the inside out instead of the outside in. So it’s a different mechanism of heat delivery. I gravitate towards the infrared for a bunch of different reasons. I think that the detox is better.

There’s a lot of people that say you can’t make heat shock proteins because it’s a lower temperature. I don’t find that to be the case because if you measure your internal core temperature, you’re still getting the internal core temperature increase no matter which type you use. Just the infrared is a little bit, in my experience, it’s quicker on the delivery.

And then you can also usually stay in longer because you’re not breathing superheated air. Is there a benefit to breathing superheated air for the lungs and stuff like that? Maybe. Is it scientifically proven either way, one way or the other?

No. The major metric is, are you increasing core temperature? How quickly can you do that? And how long can that sustain?

And so for what you’re asking about for home saunas, like in a residential application building or something, for a steam sauna, you know, in the Southeast, in a house, to not put in a ventilation system, to not have to run 220, to not have to worry about mold. I think infrared or.

You know, dry electric is the way to go, just because ease of installation, and you also don’t have to worry about those other complications. Now, a lot of infrared companies take this and use that material for their sales people and their marketing in a wrong way. So they’ll scare people.

They’ll say, oh, you have to have this wood right here, because if that wood gets wet, it’s prone to mold. Well, there’s no moisture in an infrared sauna. So eliminate all that from your vocabulary. You know, it’s a fear-based, it’s a poor, ethical way to try to convince someone on a particular product, when the very basis of what they’re using for that is null and void.

Because you’re not, there’s no, the only moisture in an infrared sauna is the sweat that’s coming out of your body. I’ve seen people that do ice baths. Is it similar in the way, or is it just different things that you’re like? Complete opposite.

Okay. Ice bath is more about constriction response, and I mean, yeah, you could say that you’re having to overcome the cold like you overcome the heat, but the body’s response to do that is the opposite. Okay. Right?

And so you’re, the response in blood flow also, when you’re subjected to extreme cold and extreme heat, is the opposite. So you’re not, like you’re, the body’s not trying to save its appendages from frostbite when you’re in a superheated state, whereas when you’re super cooled, you know, and you become, it’s hypothermic instead of hyperthermic.

So it’s, you know, one is the shivering induced state to try to protect the vital organs and everything else. That’s why people’s blood flow usually changes from appendages to core. But there’s also benefits to that response. Like you got the brown fat increase and all this stuff, but it would be completely the opposite of, of sauna.

So you can. Complementary though.

You compared the two, though. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. There might be some research on that coming out. I think if you look at Olympic athletes and triathlete training profiles, there is something to…

Because we’ve had it wrong, we’ve had it in reverse a couple years. Usually, people want to get in the cold after a hard workout, like after they run 20 miles or something, if they’re training for a race, because the train of thought is that it reduces inflammation. However, I think there’s some science coming out, maybe some good research on getting cold before you work out and using the sauna post-workout.

Because if you look at Dr. Rhonda Patrick’s stuff, if you look at Andrew Huberman, if you look at… There’s a bunch of them. But if you look at the benefits of heat therapy post-exercise, the recovery time, and a few other things, those metrics improve.

It makes sense. Honestly, doing something cold beforehand actually makes sense. I feel like it would get your body ready to… You’re not starting off in a swollen state.

You’re not starting off on the most contracted state you could be. Right. And then swelling from there. I’ve always thought it was the opposite.

I mean, the way I was taught, the people that trained me have always taught me the opposite. So, but… When we would run before, it makes sense now that you say it, but when we would run, like when I did cross-country, we would have to ice our shins and everything afterwards because my ankles would get really swollen afterwards and shin splints and all that stuff.

They would wrap our legs in ice pretty much. So, like that is how we were always like taught, I guess. Sure. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been taught something wrong.

Right. I should ask my, what, high school teachers. Ask pretty much everybody who’s ever taught me stuff. How do you install an at-home sauna and what are like kind of the major steps involved?

The buyer’s guide videos, the installation videos, the, you know, sauna selection videos show you kind of… But I mean, in a short synopsis in less than three or four minutes, you’re going to put an infrared sauna in your house? Something like that. Okay.

The first thing is, is to…

figure out what size you need. And when you’re thinking about the size, to take into account the electrical requirements. Anything that’s two person and smaller, you usually can get in a 15 amp power supply, which means a regular household outlet will power it. So basically, if you can plug a vacuum cleaner into it, you can run a one or a two person infrared sauna.

Anything bigger than that is gonna switch to a 20 or 30 amp, or it’s gonna go to 220, 240 volts. So when thinking about what to get or how to put this stuff in, you need to consider that because it’s like we talked about in the other videos. If the power panel of the breaker box is 100 feet away from the location that you want to sauna, and you want this big sauna so the whole family can use it, it might not be cost effective to get somebody to trench around the house and put in a line for 220 or 20 or 30 amp to run that big guy.

Does it mean that you shouldn’t get a smaller one? No, but every person’s situation is different. $2,000 for an electrician to set this up for one person is no big deal to some people. For other people, it’s a complete deal breaker.

They won’t buy the sauna at all. And so I think that’s a huge thing is to consider your install location, what your electrical requirements are versus the size that you want to get and find something that’s suitable for you and your family and your house. So one or two person sauna, it’s pretty simple.

Make sure you have electrical requirements. Three or four person, maybe you need a 20 amp dedicated 120. If the panel’s not too far, usually electrician can put that in for you for anywhere from 250 to 500 bucks. As long as it’s not a long run, there’s no trenching around the house.

So the reason that I immediately go so long-winded into someone’s individual circumstance is because once the dang thing gets delivered, you’re not stuck with it, like you can send it back, but it’s a huge deal. It’s a pallet delivery. It’s on, you saw, it’s a box truck. Now imagine that sauna, we couldn’t use it that day.

And you call the company and say, hey, we want to return this thing. What are they going to say? Put it back in the box. We’ll send a truck, you know, a week from now.

Five business.

to come pick it up. All right, well number one, how are we gonna get it back in the box like they had it? We’re gonna try our best, it’s not gonna be perfect. We’re gonna tape the hell out of it, and we’re gonna get it back on that pallet.

Now what’s gonna happen with the pallet? We don’t have any way to get that inside. So what, are we gonna put it all back on the pallet and then tarp it, and then A, hope so no one steals it, B, no rain gets through it and destroys the thing because it’ll ruin the electronics and then they won’t give us a refund or exchange.

Right, so the reason that it’s so important to select the right thing is because once it gets delivered if you wanna change it, it’s a huge deal. It’s doable, but it’s a big deal. So immediately I’m way too long-winded. I’m trying to ask people questions.

There’s no one size fits all for selecting like the perfect home sauna. Maybe you and your wife and you want your kids to use it as well. It’s not the same as, you know, I just worry about me or a spouse, right? Like so a two person, a two and a half person, like you helped film the install video for, that would be a great size.

Do we need one that’s three times that big? Probably not, right? So getting that hammered down so that once the dang thing gets here is fine. From there, it’s pretty simple.

We’ve taken the guesswork out of it. You’ve helped with that. We’ve got installation videos that show you, I mean, once you select the right thing, the right thing for your house, right thing for your budget, take it out of the box, follow the instructional tutorial, goes together, there’s really only six pieces, a floor, a roof, left and right, front and back, and some bench pieces in the middle, hook it up.

And then we’ve got training videos that teach you how to use it. Cleaning videos, like there’s not really too much left. Most of the work is done on the front end, kind of like you took all the guesswork out of the videoing. Well, we try, you know, we try, we try to figure out, so how can we be of service, right?

Like there’s a reason that all this equipment is in this room. It’s not for, I don’t need all these just for myself, but it’s incredibly helpful if you bought one of these and you get in a pickle, then I say, hey, just FaceTime me. I’ll walk in it, I’ll show you exactly.

what that piece is. This is what you do. I mean people get into weird situations like these saunas here on carpet. A lot of times people like this sauna here is notoriously known for the doors to be misaligned.

There’s a tack strip in front of the baseboard on the back so we could do the best job in the world at shimming this thing but if you move this to another location the way the doors are adjusted is going to change. So I mean this stuff comes up and then the doors won’t close and then people think they have a defective sauna.

Well no, they just need to join the Facebook group or have a 15 second video and say I’m making this up. Hey Sherry, the door is not defective. I can tell by the alignment across the top that the the floor is out of level right. You’re either on a tack strip, you’re in a basement that has an unlevel floor, you’re on a piece of tile where the grout is raised or you know whatever or in some cases where it’s damaged in shipping.

Hey Sherry, your sauna’s messed up. Let’s get you a new piece or something like that. When they’re looking at materials what are the kind of straight away from those materials and like what are the materials where like you’re like those are probably pretty solid to be around all day?

Most normal building supplies are fairly decent. It’s the adhesives and some of the non-wooden materials and a lot of them that you want to look out for only because they off gas when you heat them up so you’re breathing them in. It’s direct poison to your lungs. Some of the biggest things are like some of the older ceramic style infrared heaters they have a metal heat grate in the front and there’s felt glued to them and sometimes it’s a it’s like a 3m spray glue that’s used as the felt adhesive.

Well when you have that directly in front of a ceramic heater the surface temperature of the ceramic heater is really really hot and so it definitely melts it heats that doesn’t melt it it heats that glue up beyond its set point from when it cures and so this is the big thing with the glue.

Everyone’s worried about oh there’s glue in saunas and blah blah blah and all this stuff. A lot of times it’s like Titebond 2 or it’s a food safe wood glue.

People will say, oh, no glue is safe. Well, if a kid can eat it and it doesn’t kill them or hurt them, how is that not okay? But the piece that people are missing is that when, like on this piece, when wood glue cures, all these saunas have strips in them that are glued together.

If you don’t see a fastener, you don’t see nail holes that have been filled and sanded, there’s glue in there. So usually the walls have support ribs and then there’s two skins that are glued to it on the outside. There’s nothing wrong with this because a lot of these saunas, the glue, once it cures, the set point to make that pliable or liquid again is lower than the temperature that it comes in contact with in the sauna.

So the stuff that isn’t safe would be your double-sided adhesives like the 3M spray for the felt. These saunas aren’t a good example of it, but there’s a couple other ones that I’ve had in the past where there’s components in there that are added, like accessories that have nothing to do with the construction of the sauna, but if you heat them up, they off-gas, you can smell it.

Some of the lumbers, if there’s MDF in the sauna, if there’s any type of formaldehyde traces or anything like that, terrible for you to breathe. So if you’re gonna use this thing for the next 10 years, probably best not to be breathing those types of things every year. How much does an at-home sauna generally cost?

And I know that’s a really broad question for a decent one at least. Anywhere from 500 to 5,000. Like a portable little zippy tent you get for probably 500 bucks. You can get a two, three-person wooden one for 5,000 and then everything in between.

So you could get cheap ones. Everything has changed since 2020. Costco used to have saunas for 1,000 bucks. Now those exact same saunas are like 2,200.

Not any better quality, just the nature of the beast with the distribution and the shipping charges. Then you got mid-grade stuff where you get a one or two-person sauna for two or $3,000.

and probably the best ones would be four to five. Yeah, not every company offers white glove service because one, they’re not always super reliable. You know, the sauna gets delivered one day. It’s hard to get the white glove guys there exactly the same time, not have it sit outside overnight, all this kind of stuff.

But some companies do offer, you know, a white glove add-on service, or you can find a handyman service that’ll do white glove install for you in your city, which might be a better option. What does the maintenance look like for a sauna? Yeah, maintenance is pretty low if your towel placement is correct.

So a lot of people make the mistake of sweating into the wood. You don’t want to do that. If your sweat bleeds through the towel and it gets the wood a little wet on the bench, or you sweat a little bit on the backrest or whatever, it’s not a big deal.

The nature of infrared will dry the wood out by itself, especially if you’re in a radiant health sauna because they have the heater in the bench. But normally, as long as you are, when I sauna, I put three towels in there. So there’s one on the floor to catch the sweat from my legs and feet.

There’s one on the bench that I sit with. And then if I’m gonna use a backrest or if I’m gonna lean up against or lay down in the thing, I’ll put something behind me so my back doesn’t sweat all over everything, or I’ll just have like a separate face towel.

When you do this, the towels, I know it’s more laundry, but the towels keep the moisture from your sweat from soaking into the wood grain. It might get a little damp. It’s not a big deal. When you do that, the maintenance is very, very low.

You might wipe it down one time with a damp cloth, and let it run for an hour circle or a cycle to dry it out on its own. Other than that, clean the glass. You get fingerprints and all this kind of stuff. Wipe it down every once in a while.

Vacuum it out if you want. Your hair and stuff collects in the corners, just like dust in your house. Other than that- Is it a lot of maintenance? No, extremely low.

Very, very low. So if you’re up north or if you’re down south, you would get a different sauna? Yeah, yeah, big time. If you’re up north and you’re gonna put it in a cold basement, infrared’s gonna struggle in anything under 60 degrees.

It doesn’t matter what brand it is. Some of them out there will sell.

You don’t have to worry about ours because it gets to 170 degrees and all this nonsense. That’s a load of crap. So it’s all about the temperature swing. So it takes a certain amount of energy.

The sauna works off of a fixed power supply. It’s not a variable. You don’t just increase the current to the sauna. The outlet that it’s hooked up to is not making more power just because the sauna needs more power.

So it’s established that you’re on a fixed power supply. So there’s only so much power on tap. When you stick it in an environment, it takes a lot of energy to go from 50 degrees to 150 degrees. That’s a 100 degree temperature swing.

Versus somebody in Florida, I don’t know, maybe it’s 90 degrees outside. You keep the AC at 78, 76 in the house. It takes far less energy to go from 76 to 150 than it does to go from 48 degrees to 150. And so they struggle.

And then, you know, I know I always say that the air temperature in the infrared sauna doesn’t matter. But for you to feel heat in a snow climate, you know, it’s got to at least get warm in there. Otherwise, it’s not working correctly. So up north, if you have an unheated basement and it’s going to be 45 degrees in there, you’re never going to heat it.

The sauna is not going to perform in stock form. Now, you have a couple choices. You could still do an infrared. Inside the Facebook group, I show you a couple methods on how to modify them.

You can put additional heat in the ceiling. You just drill a hole and mount a second heater in the sauna. What that will do is help with the preheat time because it’s so cold in the environment. Any infrared sauna that you stick in cold like that is going to struggle because the temperature swing is too far.

You need more available heat on tap in order to counteract that. And then for people who are in freezing or below freezing, you got to go with something more extreme. If you’re going to put it outside, no infrared sauna is going to work, you know, super great unless it’s an outdoor sauna that has insulated walls, not tempered glass, but double.

double pane windows and some type of weatherproof roof because you can’t have any moisture get down in there or the electronics. So these companies that sell indoor saunas and you just put a cover on it, absolutely not. Especially not in a snow climate. They’re not going to work.

They won’t last. You could go to something more extreme like a barrel sauna that is a wood burner, which has a wood stove inside. It’s going to be a two hour heat up time, kind of isn’t fun, but they’ll get super super hot no matter how cold it is.

You could do the same with dry electric or steam, again, very long preheat time compared to having a modified infrared in the basement. The far infrared saturation on your body, there’s so much far infrared and there’s that heater in the bench that I showed you on the FLIR camera and then you got the heaters in the front.

Basically when you’re in there, you’re wrapped in far infrared. So it’s basically like having a heat gun on you on all sides. Oh, that’s why it got so hot so quick. Yeah, it’s not about the air temperature that’s inside because it’s not that, I mean it’s warm in here, but it’s not that cold.

It’s about that far infrared that you see in the FLIR camera that’s coming in contact with your body on all sides though. So there’s nowhere for your body to dissipate the heat. It seems like they’re generally pretty safe though, I mean overall. Yeah, unless you have some type of health issue, there’s really not that much to be worried about.

I mean, if you can exercise and you can sweat, I mean you don’t die, I don’t think. Not a doctor, not medical advice, please see a licensed medical physician for anything that is regarding what I’m about to say. It’s just heat therapy, so it’s no different than going to the beach and exercising.

Yeah, there’s all kinds of stuff to look out for. We covered that in other videos, like make sure there’s not formaldehyde, make sure there’s not off-gassing that’s crazy that you’re going to breathe in, make sure it’s not a super high EMF sauna. There’s some older saunas that are 100 milligauss AC magnetic field right at your head.

They have an unshielded ceramic heater that’s right behind your back, so you’re sitting two or three inches from it, and there’s no step-down…

transformer in the sauna. It’s literally AC wiring directly from the wall, 20, 30 amp directly to the heater, directly from your back, which is basically like, you know, you’re supposed to be relaxing in front of a power panel. Not ideal to be doing that every day for the next 10 years.

Like it’s not the most healing environment. Yeah, I mean, those are specific. Ceramic style heater, AC powered, direct connect, no step down transformer. There’s a couple of companies.

One of them is out of Canada that used to build those. I think they still build them like that, but I mean, whatever. I think people are tired of me beating the EMF thing to death. Yeah, we’re all tired of it.

When you order a sauna for your house and they drop it off, is that pretty much the end of your interaction with them? For some companies. I mean, yeah, it’s like pulling teeth to get, that’s why I make it such a big deal to select the right thing in the beginning.

But no, like if you buy a sauna from Radiant Health, they’re kind of one of the exceptions. Their service is really, really good. That’s one of the reasons they’re at the top of the list. If you need anything, basically, they’re gonna take care of you, no matter what it is.

If there’s a part broken in shipping, they’ll ship it to you overnight. Like I smashed that one piece just because I was filming in there. Call them up, hey, broke this. Okay, is it mission critical?

I’m like, no. Okay, give us a week or so and we’ll get you one. What is the warranty terms? Some sauna companies have a lifetime warranty.

Sometimes it’s lifetime on heaters, electronics, minus like the speakers or the stereo or something like that. Really comes down to, like, I hate that, I hate to say this, but a lot of people base the decision of purchasing one brand over another on how long the warranty is.

But if you’re pulling teeth to try to get anywhere when you have an issue, or if the company that you choose to purchase from has an online customer portal, and they don’t take your calls, and they make you open a support ticket.

And then it takes a week in between of you asking for help and here you are four to six weeks later and you have a big hotbox in your house and you can’t use it, how good is that lifetime warranty? So it comes down to the service, the way the companies treat their customers, and this is why sometimes the stuff on the certified sauna list is changing.

We’ve had saunas on there in the past. We just removed a company maybe a month or two ago. I’ve had them on there for years. I’ve been listening to complaints for years about the pricing.

There’s a bait and switch. They tell me that the price is one way, the customer calls, the sales agent is saying, hey, no, you can save money or do this or do that this way. And then the people are like, oh, great. And then they’re like, oh, well, you’re not referred to us by ex-doctor or whatever.

Oh, sorry, you can’t get the price. And then they come back to me complaining and they’re like, hey, it’s not what you said it was. And I’m like, I can’t control that situation. The customer experience is bad.

I alert the company, give them time, say, hey, this needs to be fixed. They refuse to do it. I’m like, hey, look, we can’t recommend you guys anymore. You’re making me look bad.

I’m doing the best job that I possibly can to refer people and want them to get the same experience that I got when I purchased from you. And then you’re not delivering on that. You don’t want to fix it. We can’t do this.

That’s part of the reason for the certified sauna Facebook group too is so that it’s not just my experience now, it’s everyone else’s. So we keep tabs on how companies are treating people because it’s one thing to say, oh yeah, we have a lifetime warranty and give you this little written paperwork that’s signed and all this jazz damn near want to cut the thing up with a chainsaw and set it on fire.

By the time you’re trying to get somebody to help you with a warranty claim, that lifetime warranty is lifetime warranty really isn’t worth what they make it out to be. It becomes a sales tactic on the front end to make you think that you’re safer with this purchase when in fact these people don’t.

won’t treat you as well as a company that has a shorter warranty. It’s just, it comes down to people and service and do you wanna perpetuate a good service with your brand? That’s what it comes down to. And so these larger companies that have been bought out a couple of times, they get so big.

The customer service agent that a Sana customer is talking to when they have a warranty claim, isn’t invested, they’re not invested enough in the company to care, to move, you know, to make things happen, because the company is too big. Like it’s grown beyond the point of good service.

And that happens. Yeah, check the certified Sana list for one thing, because those are up to date. You know, each year making updates, every six months changing things, retesting, trying new Sanas that come on the market. Here’s, hopefully it’s out of frame.

Here’s a Sana that will never make it to the certified Sana list, but it’s being marketed heavily right now. Really? I have it, but won’t make videos on it. But this one, they just lie about it.

They say that there’s like shielded wiring inside. There’s not. Do I tell people when the Sanas are bad? Absolutely, I wouldn’t tell somebody to buy this.

I’d tell you not to buy this. But I don’t have to parade around and try to slander the heck out of the company. I can put up, you know, a review video or a comparison. Hey, I have this and I have this.

This is supposed to be this way. Here I am testing it. It’s not that way. Now the company will refute all that.

They’ll say that the testing that we do is not scientific and should be done in a lab. Are there any permits or building codes that you need to pull or get certified for to get a Sana in your home? No, but people that are doing renovations or new construction will run into roadblocks.

There’s a couple of issues. One is GFCI and AFCI. So codes now are requiring AFCI breakers on a lot of new builds. And AFCI breakers can be known to trip where there’s a power supply that has capacitors or transistors that store energy in them.

a little too crazy for most people, but what happens is there’s transient energy on the circuit which can falsely trip the AFCI, and then you’re working with a contractor that required by code to have an AFCI or a GFCI outlet. And so those don’t always play nice with everything.

You can look up electrical forums, you can look up electrician stuff, you know, online on Quora, on Reddit, and you can see a lot of people have a new construction home and they have issues with these things tripping without anything plugged into them. Or they’ll have what’s called phantom tripping.

You put a vacuum cleaner on it, or you put some type of household appliance and it doesn’t play nice. There’s nothing wrong with the system. They’re just either overly sensitive. There could be a ground neutral swap somewhere in the wiring or in the panel.

Your bus bars could be commingled somehow. And all these things present an issue because you’re gonna have an electrician or a contractor that might not wanna wire up your walls without an AFCI or fault protection breaker, if that’s to code. Or if it’s in a bathroom or a wet area, they’re not gonna wanna put a non-GFCI outlet behind the sauna, wherever it’s gonna be sunken to the wall or custom built.

That’s an issue because like we talked about before, you assemble this bad boy and once you get it back there, if that GFCI trips behind there, you take the whole thing apart just to hit that little reset button. And so the issue is no one wants to take the GFCI out and put a non-GFCI breaker in, but that’s exactly what needs to happen because this is not a wet sauna.

There’s never gonna be five gallons of water, or you’re never gonna take a five gallon bucket of water and pour it in there. So whether there’s any issue, right? Like it’s your sweat, nothing’s gonna happen like that. If there is a trip, it will still trip the breaker without GFCI.

No one’s taking a garden hose through the roof and filling the damn thing. There’s nothing that you have to be certified in.

But you will run into issues with contractors that do, you know, have to update to new code if you’re doing a renovation. And so those two things definitely are an issue. Personally, I mean, I can’t tell anyone what to do. Well, I can tell you what I do myself.

I take the GFCI outlet out, put a regular outlet in, and if it’s an issue, I take the arc breaker out and I’ll replace it with a regular breaker. They have weird things happen to them. You’ve never had to hit the reset button on a GFCI? Always.

For no reason? Or is there something plugged in over here that’s… Speaking of which… What?

The light’s just flicker? No. Oh, you hit the switch. I thought that was a sign.

Here we are talking about it. Arc breaker’s similar. Arc breaker offers a different type of protection but functions in a similar manner. There’s no reason why if you swap out an arc breaker for a regular breaker that it’s not going to trip if you have, you know, some type of a short.

They’ve been working fine in houses, you know, forever. A lot of people say that… We got my cousin, Doug, gonna come on or start a podcast or something for insurance questions because a lot of people say, oh, I’ll lose my insurance coverage if I swap out the breaker.

He’s got a whole explanation of, you know, what changes the coverage for your policy, what would be a… I think it’s called a claim denial or something like that if you were to have any type of a fire or issue. I was even wrong on that. I thought if you modified things to a certain extent that you wouldn’t have insurance coverage and he’s gonna go through and explain on someone’s policy how that’s not true.

That would be really helpful. Very helpful, yeah. It definitely makes me feel better. Like, we’ve been avoiding talking about this for probably two years now because as more, you know, code requirements get strict, a lot of contractors say it’s just a way for them to make you buy more expensive components.

Yeah, I should note, there is one instance where I would take everything that I just said and throw it out the window. And that is if you have…

That’s where the name comes from instead of now a breaker box It used to be called fuse box fuse panel if you have fuses in there And it’s the old old style that can arc that’s not such a good idea because it it might pop the fuse But it will still jump to the next one.

Yeah, and that can absolutely start a fire. You should be careful with those Should careful add sauna do it the way it’s supposed to be done. Otherwise, I think you have a lot of leeway Well in the very beginning you asked that was a really good question You said they’re like is there stuff that you see that you know is a fallacy So stats a lot of it is features like a lot of companies will say One big thing would be temperature.

Another thing would be full spectrum. Another thing would be like zero EMF. Another thing would be You know, like each one of these categories has stuff in it that is applicable and not applicable A lot of companies will use these stats or features as selling points to try to persuade you You know to buy this brand over that brand or over this brand or whatever but when you really Understand what those stats or features are You’d be very upset because they don’t really make sense So let’s talk about just a couple of them like temperature One sauna company will say well you should buy our sauna because it reaches 170 degrees and all other infrared saunas only reached 150 or 149 or something like that Well, there’s a calibration on the thermostat to the control panel So in the saunas that say they reach 170, it’s a bait-and-switch to the customer altogether Because number one, there’s no infrared sauna where the air temperature inside is 170 when the control panel Thermostat thermometer says 170.

There’s a calibration there. So when that says 170, it might be 150 It might be 145. So there’s a differential there The bait-and-switch part of it is that you don’t need the cabin to be That high temperature in an infrared for you to get the same

core temperature increase that you would in a traditional sauna. So that company is using a marketing tactic based on air temperature when in fact their very sauna that they’re trying to sell you doesn’t work off of increased air temperature, works off of the farm for it. So that would be one example.

Yeah. That’s part of the reason to have the Facebook group, you know, don’t just take my word for it. I mean, I know I have a lot of experience. I have all the equipment, but I mean, people are weary.

They’re like, who is this guy? You know, why does he do this? They don’t know my backstory. They don’t have any idea why I would be passionate enough to continue to do this, right?

Like it comes from pain and struggle, my own health issues. Otherwise like you, I don’t think you could just pay me enough to do this. Most of the time people talk to sauna salespeople and it’s just a job for them. Like it’s a paycheck.

The whole reason is to get you to buy the product because they work for the company that pays them. This is different. Second thing is the full spectrum bullshit. So the full spectrum thing is used by sauna companies so that you know, by our sauna, because we have all three wavelengths, you get far infrared, mid infrared, near infrared, and then you get a more complete detox or it heats you up better or it has this benefit or has this stat like it, you talk about stats.

They’ll say that it has red light therapy wavelengths in it, but all the full spectrum saunas, you’re not actually getting a lot of red light therapy, a thousand nanometers and down the output is extremely low. And in the cases where there is any output at all, your body is so far away from it.

It’s not like using a photo by modulation red light therapy body panel. So immediately when people see full spectrum, you should be a little leery of that and start asking questions. Well, what kind of full spectrum is it? What’s in there that has mid infrared, far infrared, near infrared.

And you know, what is the source of that? Like what’s creating these wavelengths? How far away is my body? How superheated am I in this sauna when I’m supposed to be absorbing these wavelengths?

A couple of months ago, you mentioned that it might be more.

for them to buy a panel. It absolutely is, not might be. It should be instead of a benefit or a spec or a feature in your mind, it should be demoted to a nice to have. It shouldn’t be a primary decision to get one sauna over another.

On the other videos, when you filmed me with the spectrometer and we go in the full spectrum saunas and you can see the little light graph, I think it’s the best saunas of 2022, 2023 or full spectrum morning. Either way, I mean, we could describe it right now. You had me on camera with a spectrometer.

We tested a full spectrum emitter and you could see that there’s hardly any near infrared coming out of it. So here’s a company that’s telling you that you need a full spectrum sauna, but not giving you what you’re supposed to be receiving like by having it. And so there’s two problems with that.

One, you’re making a purchase decision based on output that you’re not receiving. And two, you’re thinking that you’re good. You’re thinking that you’ve got red light therapy and that you don’t need all this stuff. Well, you’re not experiencing the benefits of having a far infrared sauna and a red light therapy device.

These are two totally different things. So if someone were looking at those things, if it was the sauna that they loved and it has that, that’s cool. Yeah. But if they’re looking to get full coverage, it’s just better to buy a panel.

Absolutely. Okay. Yeah, get a far infrared sauna and then get a red light therapy device. Don’t worry about the stuff in the middle.

Yeah, and if you just like a sauna and it’s far infrared with full spectrum heaters and all this stuff, hey, great, buy that. But add a red light therapy device elsewhere in your protocol also. Well, for one, it’s too far away from you. For two, the type of emitter that’s inside of them doesn’t have enough output to reach the body like at a six inch treatment distance, like a PBMT device would.

Near infrared therapy should be 1200 nanometers and down, 1000 nanometers and down. Far infrared therapy would be three to five or five and up and mid is everything in between. And so if you’ve got far infrared emitters, you’re getting the high range. If you’ve got these full spectrum heaters, you’re getting the mid, but the near falls off a cliff.

So, and that’s what we were looking at on the spectrum.

When you film me and we’re in there you can see it on the ground literally drops I remember what you know, okay, you know how it was red and then it just went Well, okay. So everything to the right of that is Missing is gone. Not only are you paying more money and you’re not getting what you think you’re getting You’re using this thing thinking that you’re experiencing the benefits of having that and you’ve never experienced it if you lived off-grid Mm-hmm, and you’re running off solar.

Could you run one of these? Absolutely, and I’ve already tested this for someone who lives off-grid in real life with a kilowatt meter The bottom line is that it can work for off-grid situation. You’ll need a little battery bank power or a lot of solar draw at a peak time If you go on I don’t know what the video is titled.

I have a video that I made from Maine with a kilowatt meter Testing the draw at various stages of sauna infrared sauna cost to run or something like that so what it does is it breaks down the draw from all the stages of an hour-long session of a sauna the preheat from You getting in there because people that are off-grid they could shorten that a little bit So it’s not such a so it doesn’t pull from the battery bank so much if you’re at a non peak Sun hour that you want to use it But what you do is watch that video Take the kilowatts per hour or per minute.

However, I broke it down You could if you’re on the grid, obviously people that the purpose of the video was twofold Can you run it off-grid and then how much does it increase your electric bill? You could take the amount of kilowatts times the price in your area if you’re on grid and check it that way First question is how much is it gonna increase the bill or how much does it cost to run?

It’s usually between 12 and 20 bucks a month depends on how much you use it and how much the price per kilowatt is in your area I’ve got a video on YouTube that I did several years ago from my grandmother’s cabin in Maine Where it’s me with a sauna and a kilowatt meter you can find it I think it’s called infrared sauna costs to run or power usage You want to go in the middle of that video and and watch the draw of the sauna on the kilowatt meter?

Take that, multiply it times the price per kilowatt on your power bill, and that’ll give you your estimated monthly usage cost. Should be about 20 bucks or less. The reason that I made that video, which is what we were talking about before, was for a lady that had an off-grid setup and she desperately wanted to run a sauna, but she was afraid to buy one and have it delivered like you helped film the install.

She wanted this thing to show up to her farm and not be able to use it. And so we basically checked and ran calculations if her battery bank would support an hour-long session of it on a cloudy day, or if she added a solar panel or had enough on a high sun day, if it could just run continuously and not pull from the stored power.

And so both were work. Can’t remember what it’s called. This is on YouTube, anybody can watch it. And it’s me doing it, so the data is good.

I think it’s called Infrared Saunas Cost to Run. If we find it, we’ll just put a link in the description or a pinned comment underneath this video and you can click on that and check it out. So it’s not as critical as most people think. Like you can be six foot six.

Just because you can’t quite stand up with your neck extended when you’re standing in the sauna doesn’t mean that you’re not gonna be comfortable in there. Like you have long legs. There’s generally plenty of depth. The saunas aren’t shallow to the point where your knees are gonna hit the walls or anything like that.

It’s more of a width thing. So usually I recommend going one size bigger than you think you need. So like if you’re just a person and you want a one size, a one person size, I would say get a two person. Because once you get in there, you might find that you like to have towels or water or something.

Or you might like to turn sideways and put your leg up. And so in a one person, you can’t do that. Same thing if you’re in a two person sauna and you wanna use it with your spouse and you plan to. Do you wanna be wedged in there, shoulder to shoulder, sweating your butt off?

Or would you like to have six inches between you have room for both your towels and water, so get a two and a half, you know, a little bit bigger? The mistake some people make is thinking they need something too big. Basically, get the smallest sauna you feel comfortable in for how you plan to use it.

People who want to stretch their legs out will not manage that in anything smaller than a two and a half or a three person unit; they are just not wide enough. You can get a corner sauna with a 90-degree bench for flexibility: you can put your legs up, turn sideways, or, if you are using it with a spouse and are not on the same bench, you can turn your neck and hang out. It is a bit more comfortable.

There is a performance benefit to a rectangular sauna: they heat up a little quicker and generally run hotter. Corner saunas, like the hot-tub-store models, have more glass in the front. They look great, but the all-glass front suffers from massive heat loss.

You are right, there is no one-size-fits-all. It depends on what is important to you, who will use it, the placement, and the climate. Do not buy a giant glass-heavy sauna and put it in a cold environment; it will take two hours to heat up, which is a terrible user experience.