We build outdoor, backyard saunas. They’re used to promote muscle relaxation, relieve stress, improve cardiovascular health, and overall wellness.
We’re called Smart-Sauna, named after our original company brand and name, Smart-Shed.
Our 8 by 12 Moderni model is our most popular sauna size. It features a mono-slope roof with a 6.5-foot low wall and a 7.5-foot-tall wall. It has an 8 by 7 sauna room, large enough for 4 or more adults, and a 5 by 7 dressing room. All of our saunas are pre-wired for interior and exterior lighting as well.
For materials, we use pressure-treated floor framing on pressure-treated skids with a 5/4 by 6 Western Red Cedar floor. The walls are traditional stick-framed 2 by 4 walls. We use fiberglass or mineral wool insulation and a full thermal foil vapor barrier. The interiors are Northern white cedar. The roof deck is fully ice and water shielded with architectural shingles.
For the wood-fired saunas, we use Huum woodstoves from Estonia, Finland, as well as Huum double-walled stainless chimneys, sauna stones, and our own proprietary stainless-steel heat shields. The windows and doors are custom-built out of cedar with .25-inch tempered plate glass in either clear or privacy tinted.
We use typical construction tools such as miter saws, drills, finish nailers, table saws, etc. We also use some more specialized woodworking tools like jointers, thickness planers, pocket hole jigs, square hole mortiser, etc.
Sauna building is extremely gratifying because they feel more like building furniture than building a utility structure, such as a shed. It’s an intimate process that requires a lot of calculation and patience. They take a considerable amount of time and also a large overhead investment so we aim to build them as perfectly as we can.
We are meticulous and careful with every aspect and always try to take a systematic approach that promotes efficiency and the best end result. We do this by constantly improving tooling and jigs that help reduce the use of tape measures and human error. We don’t ever want anything to look forced, but rather intentional and clean.
Safety tolerances are always at the forefront of our concern. Before quality and aesthetics, we have to be 100 percent confident that our saunas are as safe as they can be. We are always working to improve this aspect and even went as far as having our own oversized heat shields fabricated for each wood-fired sauna. They are 3-foot by 6-foot stainless-steel panels bent in a way that allows them to stand off the wall and promote constant air flow from the floor up behind the stove—always ensuring the cedar wall paneling will stay as cool as possible. No matter what brand or type of heater we install, we make every effort to follow the manufacturers recommended safety clearances.
We have exclusively 5-star reviews, and our sauna business only continues to grow. Most of our customers say that the quality we provide exceeds their expectations, which is always wonderful to hear. They claim our saunas heat up very quickly and retain heat extremely well. Beyond that, they look fantastic.
Most of our customers are beaming with excitement from the time we arrive to the time we leave, and will often reach out later to say how much they love their new sauna.
Our focus is always on making a better product. We ask the question daily, “How can we improve this?” We continue to reinvest back into our company with better tooling, equipment, and technology. The goal is not only to be more efficient but to one day build the best backyard sauna in the U.S. We’d like to have a name in the industry that is synonymous with quality and integrity.
I like to tell myself, “Someone has to be the best, so why not us?” Even if we don’t reach that point, our optimism still pushes us farther than we would have gone without it.
