This video runs a kilowatt meter on a 3 person infrared sauna (15 amp) model, and it runs for one hour. It uses about 1.35 kw, and most infrared saunas cost about $12-$15 dollars per month in electricity costs to run 3-4 times per week.
Video Transcript (AI Generated)
Welcome to another edition of Infrared Sauna Expert, your source for saunas, detox, and health improvement devices.
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Let’s jump into today’s episode with your go-to infrared sauna expert, Matt Justice.
All right, this video is really for Brandi, but tons of people have asked, “How much does an infrared sauna cost to run?”
People aren’t only concerned with how much an infrared sauna costs to acquire, but the biggest thing is, when I was going to a…
Brandi’s needs are different.
She’s off-grid, and she wants to know how many kilowatts it’s going to draw for their usage, probably to recharge the batteries or to know how much sun they need to run the equipment.
But for a lot of people, for everybody else that’s going to see this, when I was paying to use saunas or rent them, it was like $45 for a session, unless I bought a block of 10, then it was $30, and then it would just get cheaper and cheaper from there.
But that’s like $300 to use it 10 times.
I think you guys are going to be pleasantly surprised when you see this.
An average sauna session usually costs less than a dollar.
It depends on where you live.
I’m going to go over all that stuff.
You need to know the price per kilowatt in your area.
But on average, most of the time, a sauna uses about one to one and a half kilowatts for a single session.
They can be different than that, depending on the size of the sauna, but I’m going to talk about all that stuff in the video.
What we did was we took a kilowatt meter, we took a three-person 15-amp sauna, let it run for an hour, measured the kilowatts, and we’re going to do some calculations.
We’ll show you exactly how much it costs.
So let’s dive in.
Okay, so it’s about 1030.
Sauna is off.
Everything’s on.
It’s cold.
Let me go ahead and…
Oh, man.
That outlet’s upside down.
Crap.
Let’s see if I can get this.
And then…
I’ll pick this up as soon as I get it hooked up.
All right.
Let’s see.
All right, so we’ve got nothing.
Let’s turn sauna on.
Let’s turn the lights on just for maximum usage, max time, max temp.
And let’s see what happens.
All right, now we’re getting something.
All right, so I reset all this.
We can see that it’s been running for a total of three minutes now. 60 hertz is what it’s measuring.
About 116 volts on average.
Max switch just a tiny bit.
Pulling about 12 amps, 12 and a half, 12 and three quarters.
And looking like 1483 watts currently.
That might increase as the sauna continues to heat up.
It’s just getting started.
And what else?
I think it’s used 0.08 kilowatts so far.
So that’s going to jump up quite a bit.
I’m going to leave it on minutes.
I’ll come back in about a half an hour, just make sure everything’s still running good.
And check the numbers, make sure that they are 115 volts.
Yeah, I don’t know if that’ll, that may jump up significantly.
We’ll find out.
It’s been a while since I’ve looked at this.
And we’re at 0.1 kilowatts.
Okay, come back in a half hour.
Oh, and by the way, just to verify that that synced up with the time on the screen, it’s at 56 minutes, so plus or minus about 60 seconds.
We’re at a temperature of…
This camera always messes with these LCD things, but we’re at a temperature of 90.
And let’s see.
Temperature in here right now is about 63.
So pretty good.
All right, so it looks like we’ve got–I caught it right at the 45-minute mark.
We’re at 133.
Maybe it’s colder in here than I thought it was.
Oh, I shut the heat off.
I shut the heat off, shut the heat off.
So it’s about–it’s pretty warm today.
It’s about 27.
So I think temperature dropping just a little bit, 61.
Yeah, the sun is going to be fighting the ambient temperatures in here.
But it’s actually good for a kilowatt test because it’s going to be–it’ll be struggling to, you know, really bring the heat or bring the temperature.
Let’s see.
Let’s see what we’re looking like on here.
So it looks like we’ve used 1.04 kilowatts.
Let’s see.
It’s been running for exactly 45 minutes, so I missed the 30-minute mark.
But really what we want to see is 60 minutes.
How much does it use per hour?
Still 60 hertz, flat 60, 117 volts.
Let’s see, 10 amps.
That’s actually dropped.
So 10.9–actually, I’d have to look at the footage.
Wasn’t it 12 before, 12 amps?
12.46.
Oh, wow.
The efficiency has gone up.
So that does happen sometimes.
Once the–of course, right at the critical moment, the memory card is full.
That happens so often.
I don’t understand what I do wrong.
But, okay, I don’t remember where we were at, but it looks like it’s pulling about 1,200 watts.
I think that’s down from before.
I’ll have to review the footage to check.
Looks like 47 minutes now.
I want to see it at 60.
Should be–let’s see, total pull.
Should be–I would say it’s going to be right under 1.5–I’m sorry, 1.15 or 1.25 kilowatts for the hour.
So what we’re going to do is once this finishes running, I’m going to unhook all this stuff.
We’re going to go into the office on the computer, and then we’re going to check and see, like, the average price per kilowatt in this area.
We’re going to calculate that.
Then we’re going to figure out if you use the sauna three or four times a week, most people use it three times and for an hour.
We’re going to see how the cost or how much the usage really affects the cost on your electric bill, and we’re going to really calculate.
Because the other thing to look at is depending on if you want to use the sauna really hot or not–I mean, I’m not doing it any favors today because I could have not let it get so cold in here.
You really don’t want it to be below 65 degrees.
The sauna companies recommend 70 degrees.
So the sauna is really fighting to get up to temperature.
Usually it’s already way past 140 by now, especially with only 12 minutes left on the clock.
But one of the things that we could calculate is, okay, if we want to use the sauna at–if we want to get in and it’s 125 degrees, usually it has to run for 30 minutes for it to do that if it’s dead cold.
Now, obviously, if you stick it in a cold basement or you have it in an unheated cabin like I do right now, it’s going to be working against you.
But the reason that I like doing it this way is that we’re seeing the worst-case scenario numbers.
If I was in Florida doing this, it would be pulling a little less kilowatts to achieve the same temperature.
But I’d rather it be a worst-case scenario for folks.
I mean, you can see we’ve still got snow on the ground.
I was feeding the deer this morning, and it’s by no means warm in here.
So if we can do it here, pretty much for everyone around the globe, it will cost less than whatever my figures are when we get done today.
So we’ll let that run, and we’ll get in the office in about 10 minutes.
All right, there is one minute on the clock.
We caught it just right.
We’re at 137.
And it looks like here, 1.34.
Okay, so I was a little off.
I underestimated, I think.
I said 1.25 or 1.–let’s see, 59 minutes exactly.
So let’s let that run out.
Man, I can’t talk today either.
Let’s give it about 30 more seconds.
The sauna should shut down on its own.
We’ll get the full hour.
We can do the price per kilowatt.
This is the Radiant Health Corner sauna, by the way.
Just trying to kill idle time here.
A lot of people asked if I got it set up.
I haven’t released a lot of the reviews.
There’s been some delays with the virus stuff and all that jazz, but the sauna is awesome.
I really, really, really, really like the bench.
It’s a 90-degree angle in the back with a 45-degree front.
And I’ve been shooting some videos, doing all the testing.
As you can see, I’ve got towels on the floor because I have my shoes on in there.
And what I really, really like is that you can sit on that side and put your feet up on this side.
Or I haven’t had two people in it yet, but if you’re seated here and your spouse or whoever is seated here, you don’t have to sit on the same plane anymore, so you don’t have to turn your neck.
And it’s just more comfortable.
It’s a lot bigger feeling.
It’s more spacious.
It’s got more windows.
It does take a little bit longer to heat up.
But the biggest thing–OK, we’re done.
Let’s stay on topic here.
That’ll be for another video.
All right, so we’ve got–let’s make sure we’ve got 60 minutes of runtime.
We’ve got 1.35 kilowatts used, 61 minutes precisely.
And let’s check the–oh, no, amperage will be to zero because we’re done.
OK, let’s go in the office and calculate this up.
All right, so now that we see pretty much everything that’s associated with how much power and amperage and wattage the sauna is drawing, you can tell that if you’re in Florida like I am usually or in Maine, you know, 13 to 9 cents a kilowatt is kind of average.
If you’re in California, you could double the figures.
A lot of people ask questions like, “What about steam saunas?
What about an outdoor sauna that runs on 220?”
So most of those are going to draw a lot more amperage.
If you have something like that, it’s going to be more like a hot tub.
So I’ve seen, you know, folks–it’s not uncommon for them to spend $70 a month to run a 220 sauna like a steam sauna, either an outdoor or indoor, it doesn’t matter.
It just matters how much power is it drawing, how often are they using it.
But just to summarize, it’s the same thing that we’ve been saying for a while.
An average homeowner that buys a 15-amp sauna, which is, you know, a one-, two-, or three-person sauna that can plug into a regular household outlet, not something that you have to have an electrician come in, put a dedicated circuit in for, draw tons of power, all that stuff, it’s usually going to be about a dollar–a little less than a dollar a session.
So if you use it every day, it’s a dollar a day.
On average, just taking the averages for the United States, it’s going to be about $12 to $15 a month on your power bill if you use it four times a week.
So for most folks, if you just take–we’ve got 30 days, it’s a dollar a day to run.
If you use it 15 days a month, it’s going to be $15 on your electric bill.
If you’re in California, you could double that.
We’ve got reports from some folks that say it’s about $35 a month to run their sauna a few times a week in California.
That’s just because the price per kilowatt is pretty much double or not quite triple, but a lot more expensive than on the East Coast.
It just depends on where you’re at.
The other thing to consider is if you have–if you put the sauna in a cold climate like I am right now, it’s going to fight the ambient temperatures if it’s in a cold environment like a basement.
So the longer preheat time, the more kilowatts it’s going to use per session.
You might have, like, a slight variance, but, I mean, come on, guys.
We’re talking about a couple of dollars per month here.
Everyone wants to get so particular with it.
In Brandi’s case, it makes sense because you’ve got to know exactly if you need extra batteries or if you need more solar time to charge the batteries or, you know, especially if you plan on using it at night, you don’t want to burn out your battery bank overnight and then not be able to have stuff for the morning before the sun comes up.
So I don’t know if they have auxiliary power or things like that, but this should be really useful for everybody.
If you have other questions about a specific sauna model, a lot of people don’t understand that when you go from a 10 amp to a 15 amp to a 20 amp to 220, say, 30 or 40 amp, the average hourly kilowatt consumption goes up.
And so you would just add a couple of dollars for that to accommodate for that.
And then if you’re going to use the sauna every day for, like, 9 hours a day, then obviously you could redo the calculations and come up with something.
Worst case scenario, if you did that, I mean, we’re still talking under $200 a month maybe.
And so I think it’s very affordable considering what you get.
It’s definitely cheaper than renting sauna sessions.
So if you’re like me and you were renting sauna sessions and you’re like, “Oh, my God, you know, this is going to get really expensive,” if you — I did the math and it was like, I think, less than 6 months.
I think 4 or 5 months I would have paid for, you know, a decent portion of the sauna, either a third of it or a quarter of it.
I can’t remember.
So the saunas definitely pay for themselves.
Electricity is not that big of a deal to me.
I think it’s an affordable thing, and the benefit that you get out of it is a lot better.
So I hope this was helpful, guys.
If you have any other questions, let me know.
We’ll see you tomorrow’s video.