How to build a bathhouse in the country

There is no more pleasure than taking a steam bath outside the city: the smell of wood, hot steam, goosebumps after a gang of icy water: However, if you have built a bathhouse incorrectly, the pleasure can be seriously ruined. We will tell you how to avoid mistakes in the construction of baths and saunas.

Let’s start with a traditional Russian bathhouse, the outer walls of which are usually built from round wood. Conifers are recommended for these purposes – spruce, pine, and everyone knows about it. However, not everyone knows that not every pine tree is suitable for building a bath, that is, not every tree will be durable in this quality. For the baths that are being built in the Leningrad Region, experienced experts recommend choosing pine or spruce from the northern region, for example, from Karelia. These trees grow in a similar climate, but slower than ours, because their wood is denser. Hence the low indicators for wood moisture; and such a log also gains moisture to a lesser extent. Of course, you can order the southern pine, which is more porous, but then do not be surprised if in a year or two the lower crown of your bath begins to rot. The optimal diameter of a log for a bath is 20-25 centimeters: thinner ones are fraught with heat loss, thick ones are cumbersome and inconvenient to install.

It is also desirable that the logs be harvested in winter, when there is a minimum of moisture in the trunk. All building logs are dried and very wet logs are difficult to dry well. In addition, you need to make sure that there are not many <resin pockets>, why you need to take logs from the middle of a tree trunk: the butt and top are not suitable for building a bath. If all these conditions are met, then the walls will transmit less heat, which is very important for the bath, and the structure itself will serve for a long time, without rotting from below and not warping.

The foundation may also be the cause of the skew. Depending on the nature of the soil, it can be columnar, consisting of several concrete or reinforced concrete piles installed below the freezing depth (on average, this is 1.2 meters, so the foundation is usually made to a depth of 1.5 meters). In this case, it is necessary to make an anchor pad below. If necessary, you can install a strip foundation that runs along the entire perimeter of the structure. A reliable and correctly installed foundation is a guarantee that your bath will stand for a long time without requiring rebuilding.

However, the bathhouse is not a single log, that is, you can make it, for example, from a bar. It will not cost more, since the processing of logs with their subsequent adjustment is a laborious process, which means that it requires costs. The external walls of the panel bath are made of sandwich panels on a frame basis. At the same time, the space between two chipboards or particle boards is filled with synthetic mineral wool, which allows very good heat retention. External and internal finishes are made at the discretion of the owner. While this version of the bath is not the most popular, because it is unusual, but it is the cheapest. In addition, in this case, you also save on the foundation: since the walls are light, it will be enough to install a cheap columnar foundation under them..

The interior decoration of the bath also has its own specifics. As a rule, aspen is used for wall cladding from the inside, less often alder and poplar. For the decoration of saunas, the same species are used, as well as linden and cedar. The wood of all these species is moisture resistant, slightly susceptible to splitting and splitting, and also has a low heat capacity, that is, it does not heat up at high temperatures. In addition, these rocks practically do not exude resin. Although many people like their smell, when heated to high temperatures, resinous rocks release the aromatic substance pinene, which in high concentration leads to toxic poisoning, which means that it can negate the entire health effect of the bath. For the manufacture of shelves, backs and fences, an exotic African abashi tree is sometimes used, on which you can sit or lie in a sauna even at very high temperatures. But wood is quite expensive.

An important part of the bath is the heater, which ultimately determines whether the same “goose bumps” will appear or you can simply warm up in the bath after walking through the frosty air. Now the market offers many types of equipment for a bath, so there is no point in making a heater yourself or ordering it. Depending on the size of the steam room, you can choose a stove, for example, of Finnish production: this is a reliable and convenient equipment that allows you to create different climatic modes. If your stove is electric, then for small saunas (steam room volume up to 10 cubic meters) it is not difficult to calculate the stove power: 1 cubic meter of volume – 1 kilowatt of power. The stove can also run on natural gas, and unlike an electric installation, it is more economical (after all, gas is the cheapest fuel). And in comparison with a wood-burning stove, you can reduce the heating time, since the calorific value of natural gas is higher than that of wood.

The stove is filled with different materials, sometimes with those that are lying right under your feet. Diabase is popular, which is plucked out of the pavement during the repair of old tram tracks, since it keeps heat well. However, with repeated heating and cooling, it cracks and therefore requires frequent replacement. The optimal filler, as both experts and customers recognize, is talcum chloride, which also keeps heat very well, but at the same time is resistant to temperature changes and does not crack..

As a rule, an ordinary Russian bath does not need additional ventilation – one small through hole under the ceiling is enough for the moisture to quickly evaporate, and the room is completely dry. If the walls are made of wood, then the bath “breathes” by itself, it is not as tight as, say, a sauna installed inside a large house and does not require forced ventilation. If the steam room works for more than two hours, it must be equipped with ventilation with an air circulation of 10-20 cubic meters per person per hour..

The lighting in the steam room should not be made very bright: 25 watts is enough, and the lamps should have a special protection class for wet rooms. Natural light is always better than artificial light, and it’s great if you can make a window. But you should not swing around to prevent heat loss: usually the windows in the bath are about 60 by 70 centimeters.

The floors in the bath can be made as you wish. But it should be borne in mind that the tile floor in the steam room will be very hot and you will not be able to step on it with bare feet. But for a washing tile is suitable: firstly, the temperature is lower there, and secondly, the wooden floor can begin to rot from the abundance of water. Bath ceilings make <with a secret>: before finishing with clapboard, they are lined with aluminum foil to reduce heat loss (it is recommended to cover the walls with foil by half).

The construction of a bathhouse in a suburban area should not be approached lightly. It is advisable not to engage in amateur performances, but to entrust the construction to professionals, in extreme cases – you need to get the most detailed advice from them. And the work should start with a detailed project. The construction of the foundation, the supply and drying of wood, the construction itself – all these stages must be linked together in order to optimize the process and ultimately get a good-quality bath, so that “goosebumps” are on the skin.