Sauna Fire Hazard Explained: Why Adapters Are Dangerous (PLEASE STOP!)

Too many sauna sales reps push the idea that you can just use a cheap 15–20 amp adapter to plug in a big sauna. The problem? That shortcut can overload your wiring and create a serious fire risk.

In this video, I break down why electrical adapters are dangerous, how overloaded circuits actually fail, and the safe way to power your sauna without risking your home and family.

Read the transcript >

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Transcript

No, no, no, no, no, no. Stop doing. I don’t know how many videos I can make on this. We’ve over in however many years we’ve done 600 videos buried in here is time and time and time and time and time again where I’ve suggested stop following advice from sauna salespeople that just want you to buy a sauna today that could potentially burn your freaking house down, kill your kids, kill your dogs, kill everything.

And you have no home to go to just because you are simply overloading a circuit. Let me give you the cliff notes once again, since apparently it’s not front and center even when you search. Thank you Facebook and YouTube for not making these available for these content pieces pop up.

Um, yes, I get irritated with this because we’ve done it so many times, but it’s also not your fault. I tried to search my own Facebook group the other day for something that someone asked for and I made a specific video like a year and a half ago.

I know because I made it, I searched and I scrolled and I scrolled and the damn thing just didn’t come up and I know it was in there. So I don’t know what they do with the archive of material. I don’t understand why the, the search feature doesn’t work.

Um, and now I understand why Michael kind of wants to create our own. So that sort of makes sense. We will have that available shortly to kind of archive some of the info. But what you’re asking is you want to take a 2,600 watt power supply sauna that’s rated for a 20 amp dedicated 120 volt line and put a little extension cord adapter on it to use a regular receptacle.

Like you would plug a vacuum cleaner into that’s rated at whatever, 2000, 1800 Watts max. You got to have a little bit of headroom in there. Let’s spell it out for you guys.

Now, the majority of the time, you’re not going to burn your house down. However, if you have a house that has aluminum wiring, if you have a house that has fuses instead of circuit breakers, if you have an older house that’s not up to code, if you have any kind of malfunction in your panel, in your power box, and you have a draw on a 15-amp circuit, it’s rated at…

Let’s just use round numbers. Let’s say that you shouldn’t put any more than 1,850 watts or 1,800 watts on said circuit so that there’s enough headroom. If you don’t know what headroom is, it means basically electrical code or electricians will generally add some padding to what a circuit is allowed for consumption.

So if you have something that is able to draw X amount of amps within X amount of watts, we don’t want to tap it. We don’t want to constantly be hitting the upper limit of that draw. We want to add a little headroom. So if you’re only supposed to draw 2,000 watts, just use round numbers.

Let’s say we don’t want to draw any more than 1,700, 1,800 watts. There’s a little padding there. Why? Because when you overload a circuit and you have a circuit breaker failure or a fuse that arcs or some type of anything that goes wrong and that continues to draw power on a line that’s not adequately sized, it can melt the jacket inside the wall.

If that happens, that can create a fire. That can burn your house down. Because there’s no safety precaution. There’s no breaker that’s going to trip.

It’s going to melt the jacket until it comes into contact with something else and it can spark. And once that happens, you have the ability for fire. Now, are we being overly dramatic on a normal day? Yes, of course.

But when it comes to something so serious as your kids could die in their sleep because your house is on fire, because you made a stupid choice and you bought some little 15 to 20 amp adapter, and you don’t realize that you have an old house that doesn’t have safety precautions.

you know, protection for these things, you know, that’s pretty dumb in my opinion. And by the same token, I want you to know that I’m a hypocrite saying this, because I myself have used an extension cord adapter to hook up things that should not have been hooked up in that fashion, right?

And I have personally seen in my own panel, jackets start to melt where the wire connects to the breaker inside a panel, because I was overloading the circuit. Now, did it burn anything down? No. If somebody was doing this that didn’t understand what they were doing at all, is this a serious safety concern?

Absolutely should not be doing things like this. And so my issue and why I get so irritable with it is because instead of you waiting to get the right equipment for your application or having an electrician come out and running a dedicated line for equipment that you know is going to draw far beyond what a typical, you know, spare bedroom circuit would provide, the sales agents are hammering you.

They’re just trying to get you to buy today so that they can, you know, make that quota. It’s, I feel like I’m at a used car dealership. I hate this shit. It drives me nuts.

And so for the rare occurrence, I don’t care if it’s just 1%, but for the rare occurrence for people that have aluminum wiring, old fuse style panels, you would be surprised what we see in addicts. I mean, you don’t know me in a past life, but the lack of junction box and wiring errors and all kinds of hodgepodge things that you’ve come across doing rehabs, real estate rentals, and things like that is totally nuts.

And so if you hook things up like this without paying attention to that, and you’re ill informed, and you’re just buying into what some sales guy says, and it’s not actually spec’d out for the power consumption that you’re going to need and require, you know, you’re in for a rude awakening.

So my advice is always, I guess I’ll keep making a video.

every couple months that says hey maybe you don’t want to use those extension cord adapters unless you know you’re in a brand new house and you like rolling the dice just make sure that your home insurance is up to date before you do so make sure your kids stay at their grandparents or something before you test it out and leave it on potentially have some serious problems but just so you know generally circuits most one to two person infrared saunas can be run on a 15 amp 120 volt circuit or outlet in most houses you’re going to have a 10 or 15 amp you know set of circuits unless it’s a brand new house set to stringent codes those may have afci breakers and 20 amp circuits throughout the entire house but as a general rule the majority of us are going to have 10 to 15 amp circuits if you can run a vacuum cleaner on one of those circuits generally you can run a one person sometimes a two-person sauna on them no issue as soon as you step up to a larger two person to a three person to a four person to a five or a six anything like that they have a larger power supply inside so what does that mean that means you’re going to need more power on tap what does that mean that means you can’t just swap out the outlet to match the plug because you’re not actually upsizing the wire in the wall so the ranting analogy that I just gave about how wire melts in a wall when it’s overloaded and doesn’t have fault protection is compounded right now you can’t just put a 20 amp outlet you know on a 14 16 gauge line it doesn’t work you’re overloading could you make it work if it was a five foot run probably have I done sketchier stuff I’m sure but here we are trying to make sure that you and your family are safe it’s not worth it do not do stuff like that just so that you can be done with this and get it up and running and have your have your sauna and listen to this these idiots that say that you can not plug anything else into you know this circuit because there’s so many outlets on

you can use this little extension cord adapter to go from 15 to 20 amp. You don’t even have to change the outlet. And here you can put in a four person sauna that has a 28, 120 amp, you know, 120 volt power supply, and you’ll be just fine with that 14, 16 gauge wire you got in your wall.

No, you won’t. Long term, you’re going to have issues. Do it right. It matters.

That’s all I got to say about it.