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About 25 years ago, doctors finally confirmed: the main secret of Russian and Finnish baths was revealed, and the discovery turned out to be amazing. One of the consequences of the revival of interest in the steam business at a new level is a home-made sauna stove. Firstly, the demand for sauna stoves is still not fully satisfied, so factory-made products are quite expensive. Secondly, both the Russian bathhouse and the sauna are complex hygienic and health complexes, the heart of the bathhouse is the stove, the entire bathhouse is built around the stove, and in the conditions of serial production it is not possible to provide for all possible combinations of local conditions. Therefore, often, even if they have available funds, true connoisseurs first “suggest” a bathhouse for the location, and then select a suitable stove for it or even design a suitable stove themselves. This is what this article is intended to help with.

The secret of the steam room

What is the main secret of bath health? It turned out that it was short-term, up to 40 minutes, warming up the whole body to about 40 degrees:

• Destroys cells with damaged DNA, i.e. capable of degenerating into cancer.
• It breaks down accumulated toxins into forms that can be easily removed from the body.
• It suppresses a certain gene, the function of which was not entirely clear at that time. Now it is quite clear - this is an aging gene.

By the way, methods of treating cancer are precisely based on the fact that cells with disorders are not as tenacious as healthy ones. They die from poisons (during chemotherapy) or radiation (during radiation) faster than healthy ones. In fact, the beneficial effects of a steam bath are much broader, and its mechanism is more complex. But to understand what follows, this information is sufficient.

A little incidental

The Russian bathhouse is inextricably linked with Russian culture. In particular, many famous Russian painters and sculptors paid tribute to the bath not only in the steam room, but also on canvas and in round sculpture. During the time of the moral code of the builder of communism, works of fine art of such content, of course, were not exhibited for public viewing, but lay in the storerooms of museums and galleries. The following selection of illustrations is intended to fill this gap to some extent.

Sauna with a stove or a stove in a sauna?

Neither one nor the other. The parameters of the stove and bath must be linked to each other. Therefore, let us first briefly consider what a bathhouse is. A detailed discussion about the construction of a bathhouse, of course, needs a separate and thorough discussion. We will just figure out what is essential for the design of a sauna stove.

Russian or Finnish?

There is more than enough debate about the difference between a Russian bath and a sauna. But everyone agrees on the main difference: temperature and humidity conditions. In a Russian bath - 50-70 degrees with a relative humidity of 20-65%; in the sauna – 70-100 degrees with 5-15% humidity. If we turn to physics, then a cubic meter of air in a Russian bath contains 50-80 g of water vapor, and in a sauna – 15-40 g/cubic. m. It is already known that steam in a sauna is dry. And from the point of view of medicine and biochemistry, there is also no fundamental difference: in both cases, the skin steams and becomes permeable from the inside, which helps remove toxins through sweat, bypassing the usual excretory pathways and without loading the body. In the sauna it is not forbidden to “pour it on with a broom”, but in a Russian bath you can take a dry steam bath. But the design of the bathhouse itself and the sauna stove turn out to be somewhat different in design. Firstly, the Russian bathhouse (see figure), kondovoy or modern, is a log house; as a last resort - a box made of timber, lined with a townhouse from the inside. The bulges and depressions inside are necessary to better capture the infrared radiation of the oven and draw in excess water vapor from the air.

The fact is that the absolute, in grams per cubic meter, humidity in a Russian bath is close to critical at a given temperature range. This speeds up the steaming of the skin and warms up the body throughout its entire volume, but also increases the risk of unpleasant and harmful heavy steam. A Finnish bathhouse can be made of logs, lumber, or even frame. But you must take a steam bath in a cap - it protects the hair follicles with fatty glands from drying out, which can lead to premature baldness or, conversely, to the appearance of thick and coarse hair, especially on the eyebrows, and excessive hair growth in the nostrils and ears . In relation to the furnace, all of the above means the following: A sauna stove must first warm up the walls of the sauna, and only then the air in it. Otherwise, even in the sauna, heavy steam may appear, which at such temperatures is very harmful.

How someone cares

About 20 years ago, a then good friend of the author, a seasoned Ukrainian owner named Vasily and nicknamed Khakhluy among his villagers, built himself a Russian bathhouse. The author, who had previously helped him build an Abyssinian well, was invited to take a steam bath. They melted it and settled down. Vasya scooped up some dark brown liquid and poured it on the heater. It was crazy, and the author felt that he was flying to the moon. At first I attributed it to habit – I hadn’t taken a steam bath for 5 years before. But the second portion gave me the same feeling. Being already mentally prepared for the next salvo, I determined from the sensations: euphoria of clearly unnatural origin. - Vasya, what are you pouring on the stove? - That hemp infusion. - Vaska, are you completely swollen? Not only is it a drug, but such a dose can even kill your motor! - That’s how the drugs are there... and the heart of mane is crippled... the eyes are kindly cleared... But let’s return to the bathhouses and sauna stoves.

Bath structure

A bathhouse can be either a cramped closet without a foundation or a solid building, comparable in area to a city apartment. We will return to the second one later, because... Only a brick stove, which slowly releases heat, is suitable for it; with a small steam room volume, up to 30-35 cubic meters. m – cast iron. In a small one-room bathhouse you can also install a welded stove made of steel sheet.

Both baths can be light - made of linden or birch, or heavy - made of oak. It is not advisable to build a bathhouse from coniferous wood, just like from maple, walnut, or ash. Over the years, when heated, this wood, especially in an atmosphere with a high content of water vapor, releases volatile substances that are not always useful. A sauna is not so critical to the wall material; it can even be built from seasoned pine. The “heaviness” of an oak bath is explained not by the heaviness of the wood, but by the presence of tannins in it. A heavy bath is not for women and children. And it lasts for 5-8 years, then the tannins disappear. But for a strong man who can run a kilometer without being out of breath and without feeling his heartbeat, a heavy bath will only give him strength and vigor.

Note: According to one version of the famous fairy tale, Alyosha Popovich went out against the Snake Tugarin several times, but was able to defeat him only after taking a proper steam bath in a heavy bath.

What does this mean for the oven? Firstly, the value of thermal power. If for a light bath 0.5 kW/cu.m. is enough. m of room volume for linden and 0.7 kW/cu.m. m for birch, then for an oak bath you need at least 1.2 kW/cu. m.

Note: the indicated values ​​are valid for a ceiling height of 2.2-2.4 m. A ceiling higher than 2.5 m in a bathhouse is generally undesirable.

Secondly, the weight of the stones for the heater. We’ll talk about what kind of stones are needed there below, but the weight needed for linden is 2.7 kg/cube. m, for birch 3.6-4 kg/cu.m. m, and for oak 6 kg/cu.m. m.

Safety

Burns

In an atmosphere with a temperature of 50 degrees or more, almost any touch to a metal heated to the same temperature or higher will result in a second-degree burn, with a blister. The metal easily conducts heat and quickly transfers it to the steamed skin, intensively cooled by the sweat glands. Nowadays, the problem of thermal safety of sauna stoves has been solved: there is an inexpensive, poorly conductive heat, durable and resistant material on sale - basalt cardboard. It is used to make a fire protection area, it is used to cover the screens of stoves such as potbelly stoves, etc. You can also make a furnace fence from basalt cardboard on wooden posts; it is strong enough for this.

Frenzy

In hot, humid air there is a high likelihood of carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides forming. Therefore, a stove with a flow-through heater (see below) can be “added” only after finishing the firebox and removing the ash. In any case, it is advisable to lead the combustion door of a stove with a blower through the wall into the dressing room, insulating it from the heat partition with the same basalt cardboard if the stove is metal.

Fuel

Only suitable for the bath. It is the physico-chemistry of wood combustion, the intricacies of which cannot be discussed here, that makes it possible to organize the heating of the room from the walls to the center. Coal quickly gives off the first heat - volatile components - and then the remaining carbon (pure carbon) smolders for a long time, which is good for heating, but will produce heavy steam in the bathhouse. A complete replacement for firewood “from the forest, of course,” will be fuel pellets made from sawdust or straw. They can be recognized by their size: these are logs or logs with a diameter of 30-70 mm. Pellets are also produced specifically for baths, but they are disproportionately expensive. In any case, a package of pellets costs little, and a test fire will show what this variety is good for. According to physical chemistry, gas with automatic control that regulates the flame using external temperature sensors is also good for bathhouses, but this design is not for home-made people. Industrial gas stoves for baths are very expensive and not always reliable: gas fittings that ensure 100% safety at outside temperatures of 60 degrees and above are not yet in production. The same applies to electric sauna stoves; let us mention that the heating element is not a fuel, but still a heater.

Kamenka

Any wood-burning sauna stove is a heater stove. This means that it has a heated container for stones. Stones work like a heat accumulator: they absorb the first heat and then release it with radiation; Due to the weak permeability of the stone mass, convection from the heater is not very strong. As a result, the stove heats 2/3 or more of the heating time with infrared rays, which ensures that the walls, floor and ceiling are heated before the air and the body of the stove itself. The relationship between the times of heat transfer by radiation and convection is the opposite.

Stones

Firstly, to comply with the above conditions, it is necessary that the ratio of heat capacity to thermal conductivity of stones be higher than that of brick, not to mention metal. This is provided by dense volcanic rocks: basalt, diabase, gabbro, soapstone. They can be recognized by their heaviness, dark color, and smooth or very fine-grained fracture.

Brecciated rocks: granite, diorite, syenite, labradorite, etc. are not suitable for thermal performance indicators. Metamorphic rocks are completely unsuitable: limestone, dolomite, marble, shales. In addition to complete non-compliance with the requirements of heating engineering, when heated, they can also release harmful organic matter, because often contain bituminous components.

Note: beautiful veins in marble are precisely the bituminous inclusions in it.

Secondly, the stones for the heater should have a more or less smooth surface and a round shape. In this case, the ratio of their surface to volume is the smallest (the smallest is for the ball), which ensures the desired mode of heat accumulation/heat transfer. In former times, they began to build a bathhouse only after accumulating a sufficient supply of rounded pebbles for the heater.

Laying stones

The method of laying the stones is equally important. For a flow-through heater (see below), the largest ones, the size of a fist or two, are placed at the bottom, then gradually reduced in size so that the top layer consists of pebbles the size of the knuckle of the thumb. For a solid heater, they are laid in the opposite way: the fines, which provide the largest area of ​​thermal contact, are laid down, and the large ones are placed at the top.

Flow-through and solid heaters

A homemade sauna stove can have a solid or flow-through heater. A solid heater is separated from the firebox and/or flue gases by a solid partition and is open at the top. You can press on it during the heating process, you never need to sort out the stones, they remain clean. But, due to the small area of ​​thermal contact with the firebox, a solid heater heats up more slowly. This is especially true when the size of the furnace increases, when the contact area of ​​the pelvis with the stones increases more slowly than the volume of the stones. Therefore, a solid heater can only be made in a metal stove with a power of up to 25 kW, which will provide light steam in a one-room bathhouse with a volume of up to 30-45 cubic meters. m. It is generally impossible to install a blind heater in a brick oven; it will not warm up through the brick.

Note: the ceiling in a bathhouse with a stove with a solid heater should be no higher than 2.2 m. Otherwise, heavy steam cannot be ruled out.

In a flow-through heater, stones are placed in a casing on a grate above the firebox, and flue gases pass through the stone mass before escaping into the chimney. A stove with a solid heater is more difficult, because... A hermetically sealed loading and cleaning hatch is required in the heater casing. Such a stove can only be heated with wood that does not produce soot, for example, aspen or pellets. You can add steam only after burning it completely until it turns to gray fluffy ash. The stones must be removed, washed and cleaned periodically. But the stone backfill warms up over the entire surface area of ​​the stones composing it, and very quickly. This removes any restrictions on the size of the furnace and its power. You can independently make a stove with a flow-through heater with a power of up to 50-60 kW, for a bathhouse with three compartments of 50-80 cubic meters. m.

Furnace material

Sauna stoves are made of cast iron or welded sheet metal. Provides ideal heating conditions and, when performed correctly, eliminates heavy steam in a bath of any volume. But its construction requires full mastery of the art of a stove maker., careful selection for quality and preparation of materials, because She works in difficult conditions. Only possible with a flow-through heater, i.e. Steam can be added only after complete combustion of the fuel. The minimum heating time until the bath is ready is 3-4 hours. After long (more than 3-5 days) breaks in the use of the bathhouse, it is necessary to dry and warm up the stove with accelerating fireboxes, otherwise there is a high probability of microcracks appearing in the body of the stove, which are especially dangerous in the bathhouse as a source of fumes. According to doctors, more than 70% of cases of burning of people occur in a bathhouse. As a result, a brick sauna stove is also very voracious. heats up quickly; the bathhouse with it is ready to receive visitors within an hour and a half after lighting. Design critical; If the execution fails, don’t expect easy steam. It also cools down quickly; In order to properly steam with the whole family, the stove needs to be heated. This is not such a disadvantage, because... the metal does not crack, but without a fireclay brick lining, a welded stove can only heat a one-room bathhouse to 20-25 cubic meters. m volume. A stove cast from cast iron has thermal engineering similar to a brick one, because The thermal conductivity of cast iron is low, but the heat capacity is high. In terms of cost and ease of use - to welded. Most industrial sauna stoves are cast iron.

Choosing a stove

Which stove is best for a sauna? Which one will you have to buy, and which one can you make yourself? This depends on the volume of the bath and the nature of its use. For a large bathhouse with three or four compartments, about which further, only a brick stove or a large industrial cast iron stove, with a stone filling of 150-250 kg, is suitable. Such baths, as a rule, are collective for commercial purposes and are constantly heated. We will further consider the design of the furnace for it, but simply as an example of complexity, although industrial conditions for its construction are not required.

Note: a brick stove with a flow-through heater is suitable for both a Russian bath and a sauna. In the latter case, they simply heat it harder and don’t splash anything into the heater.

For a private bathhouse, heated once or twice a week, but designed for a family with in-laws and also multi-room, but of a smaller area, the best option would be a factory-made cast iron stove. There are many models on sale, of different power and price categories; we will touch on them later. All of them allow flooding when washing, and many are equipped with a water heating circuit. And finally, for a country house or a small individual bathhouse, for a family of 3-4 people, with one or two compartments, one of the homemade steel stoves described below is quite suitable. Which one is more suitable for which bath is indicated in the description.

Everything is big and real

Bath

Let's first decide what kind of bathhouse we can build. If the hut is about 3x4 m or an extension to the house of the same size, you can skip this section, except, perhaps, for information about the construction of floors and bath equipment. Although everyone already knows this. Here we will describe the bathhouse, arranged, as they say, according to the complete scheme. Its plan is shown in Fig. on right. Designations:

1. Capital (load-bearing) wall;
2. Light wooden partition;
3. Waiting room;
4. Washing department;
5. Steam room;
6. A bed, there may not be one, but in return there will be a bridge to a pond;
7. Sauna stove with solid heater;
8. Furnace firebox;
9. Kamenka;
10. Chimney;
11. Furnace foundation (flooring is not shown);
12. Sand bedding;
13. Double entrance door;
14. Regular single door;
15. A fiberglass window, approximately 400 mm wide and 250 mm high. It is necessary to quickly release excess heat, if necessary, without drying out the compartment;
16. Regular casement window;
17. Water heating register (water heater);
18. Hot water storage tank, suspended from the ceiling;
19. Steam room equipment: hot water tub, ladle, brooms. Gangs, benches, soap, washcloths - in the washroom (4);
20. Polati;
21. A tub of cold water.

We will give the necessary explanations. It has already been said what the walls of the bathhouse should be like. To clause 7 - it is assumed that a cast iron stove for a Russian bath is installed. The disadvantages of a solid heater do not affect it as much as the heater works and the cast iron of the stove itself. And adding more heat to the heater at any time, which will immediately warm up again, is much more convenient. To paragraph 9. The stove on the foundation should be located so that the projection of its center of gravity (and not the center of the chimney, as is often incorrectly written) falls on the geometric center of the foundation. Otherwise, the heating of the soil may cause the stove to warp, even if other conditions for its stability are met. To point 10. The chimney structure is shown in the figure, which shows a sectional view of the bathhouse. Fire safety for a bathhouse is vitally important, and factory stoves, as a rule, are not equipped with chimney elements and materials, with the exception of its lower bend with a damper. This must be taken into account when drawing up an estimate for the bathhouse.

To pp. 11 and 12. The design of the furnace foundation is shown in Fig. below. Its foundation must be separate and not in any way in contact with the foundation of the building. Sand bedding is also required; without it, the stability of the stove cannot be achieved. The fire-resistant blind area (dark blue in the figure) is made of basalt cardboard.

Note 6: for a cast iron furnace with a power of up to 20 kW, a simplified foundation of ready-made reinforced concrete monoliths laid directly on the ground is possible.

To pp. 17 and 18. There are many designs of homemade stoves with a built-in water heating tank. They all have a common flaw: the water in the tank boils before the heater warms up. Keeping the tank empty and throwing hot water into it is then dangerous: the instant release of a large amount of steam can simply cause the stove to explode. It is also impossible to make a safety valve in the tank or open its cap: the uncontrolled flow of water vapor into the room will produce heavy steam. Therefore, the only acceptable solution is a U- or W-shaped hot water register in the firebox in combination with a storage tank, see figure:

However, if the bathhouse is not used every day, then the heated water will cool down in vain. Here again, the only acceptable solution is a bathhouse in the form of an extension to the house, and in the tank, along with the bathhouses, there are nozzles for a kitchen or heating stove register. Then the tank will be a common hot water storage tank for the entire household.

Note: This, of course, does not apply to factory furnaces with a correctly designed water heating circuit.

To pp. 19 and 20. Equipment for the steam room must be made of wood, see fig. Otherwise, burns cannot be avoided. You need two- or three-tier floors, see next. rice. on the right. So each of the steamers can position themselves according to their taste and health. It’s not just a question of taste - you can put a lower-power stove in the same bathhouse and steam for several people. The fuel costs are very noticeable.

And a brick oven

And if you want to make a bathhouse completely in the old fashioned way? Or, let’s say, several owners agreed to distribute expenses, bath days, hire a stove-maker, and jointly build a bathhouse according to all the rules? Well, in order to know what you need to get in the end, and to control the quality of work - in Fig. on the right is a brick stove for a bath. We will give the order below, but for now let’s talk about materials and accessories:

• All parts in contact with flames or flue gases are made of fireclay bricks only; in Fig. (below) highlighted in yellow.
• The seams between fireclay and ordinary brick, between any brick and metal - from 6 to 10 mm.
• Halves and three-fours of bricks are ready-made, with smooth edges. Chopped or sawn with a grinder will go anywhere except a sauna stove.
• All doors and grate are cast iron; others will not last long in the bathhouse.
• The heater grill is made of channels; best of all - used pieces of rails, i.e. cold forged wheels of a train or tram.
• Masonry - medium fat with sand 1:1.
• Sand - calcined, washed and sifted through a sieve with a mesh size of 0.15-0.25 mm, gully or mountain, with ribbed granules. River sand with rounded granules is not suitable for a sauna stove; it produces microcracks.
• The cladding is made of facing, smooth and with rounded corners, brick. This will give optimal heat transfer in both convection and radiation modes.

The fat content of the solution is checked “on a stick”. Planed, wooden. Let's say a mop handle. They stick it into the solution, mixed until it becomes thick with sour cream, take it out and look. There should be a continuous layer of 1.5-2 mm. If it drains, leaving gaps, the clay is too thin. If lumps or lumps are visible, it is too oily. Nowadays, construction stores sell ready-made dry clay of any fat content. If you dug the clay yourself (this needs to be done from a depth of at least 1-1.5 m), and it is too greasy, then you can add crushed brick. Not sand! Brick is made from clay. But this is not the best option, and not because fatty natural clay is a valuable raw material and is not so easy to obtain. It is much better, although more troublesome, to fatten the skinny gully clay. Then there will definitely not be any foreign particles in it that cause the same microcracks. Clay is fattened by grinding:

• Dry clay broken into small lumps is poured into the barrel 1/4-1/3 full.
• Fill to the top with water.
• Beat with a mixer until a homogeneous slurry is obtained.
• As soon as the top of the batch begins to lighten (this means that a precipitate has begun to form), pour off the top third of the solution.
• When all the clay has settled and is visible through the water, drain the rest of the water and remove the silt deposits from the “cap.”
• Mix the masonry mortar and check for fat content as described.

As a rule, one torture is enough. In the old days, stove makers for wealthy customers built sauna stoves on tortured clay. And now in industry clay is fattened in a similar way.

Arranging and drying

The order of the sauna stove is shown in Fig. on right. The principle of masonry is, i.e. ligation of seams is necessary only between rows, and in rows the seams may not be tied. The first row is laid out dry on a sheet of metal laid on the foundation and covered with a sheet of basalt cardboard 4-6 mm thick. The seams between fireclay bricks are 3 mm. Undercutting corners, where necessary, is done with a grinder using a stone wheel No. 220-240. Row 22 shows the filling of the heater; this is where it ends. Backfilling is done after drying the furnace and accelerating furnaces. Dry the oven for at least 2 weeks at a temperature of 20-30 degrees, i.e. The stove needs to be built in the warm season. After drying, you need at least 4-5 accelerating fireboxes with high-quality fuel (aspen firewood or pellets), with an interval of 12 hours. The fuel load for the first acceleration is 4-5 kg, and gradually increased to the maximum. When there is a break in the firebox for more than a week, one accelerating firebox is needed for a third of the load, and after a month of inactivity - 2-3 with an increase in load from a quarter to full.

Video: brick sauna stove

We take on the metal ourselves

Now let's try to choose a prototype for a welded homemade stove. Drawings of some well-proven designs are shown in Fig.

Bath stove

This one differs from the well-known one in the presence of a tray for stones and a firebox paved with dry, without mortar, fireclay bricks. When lighting, place a bucket or boiling water with water on the handles on the sides of the heater (made of 8-12 mm steel rod). It is not so much the stones that heat it as the convection currents between the screen and the body of the furnace. This helps to create an optimal heating mode for the bath, and a 20-liter boiler heats up in 30-40 minutes, covered with a lid, to 50 degrees. It’s quite enough for two and there will still be enough left for a child. A screen for a potbelly stove in a sauna is even more necessary than for a heating stove: a tray for stones disrupts the circulation of hot gases in the firebox, and the stones take away a lot of heat. It is undesirable to apply thermal insulation to the screen when the bath volume is close to the maximum; it must effectively radiate IR outward. Therefore, in this case, you need to make a fence for the stove. A potbelly stove is suitable for a very small bathhouse, up to 20 cubic meters. m volume. It does not need a foundation; it can simply stand on a layer of basalt cardboard. The height of the straight chimney is 4-5 m, no damper is needed. The draft is adjusted according to the season and weather by a sliding damper made of a galvanized strip that covers some of the holes in the firebox door, but at least 2 should not overlap. A potbelly stove in a sauna can be heated during washing. You can feed no more than 0.25 liters at a time with an interval of at least 20 minutes, otherwise the heater will dry out and heavy steam will come out. This is more than enough kvass in a small bathhouse.

Note: Do not add bottled store-bought kvass. Instead of a bread spirit, such a spirit that you could at least take away the saints. Soon, probably, they will start making children from powder concentrates.

Without brick

This is an all-welded stove made from 4-6 mm sheet metal for a small sauna, also up to 20-25 cubic meters. m. The design is simple and clear from the drawing; it heats up the steam room quickly, which is good. But there is nowhere to attach the water heater, which is bad. On the heater hatch, a bucket will heat up to 40 degrees in a maximum of an hour. There is no need to shield this stove, but it is advisable to insulate it. Most of the heat already goes into the stones; the screen simply has nothing to reflect. Therefore, in such a simple stove it is necessary to have a blower: there is no vortex in the firebox, and the efficiency, which is already low in sauna stoves, will turn out to be completely unimportant. The grate is made of reinforcement bars welded along.

In a case

A brick stove in a metal case made of 3-4 mm steel is already suitable for a sauna, and for a Russian bath of 30-40 cubic meters, which it will heat in 2 hours. Therefore, a U-shaped water heating register can be built into the smoke circulation, during which time it will produce into the storage tank 40 liters of 50-degree water. Enough for three or four. The masonry is made of fireclay, the stove is without foundation. The screen is not needed for the reasons described above, but the fence is necessary - the temperature of the case is more than 100 degrees. Before washing and steaming, the oven must be completely heated; Keeps warm for about an hour.

From a barrel

This stove has similar properties to an all-welded sauna stove. It’s just as difficult to put a water heater in it. But it is very simple to implement and therefore suitable for a summer house with a bathhouse-shed of up to 15 cubic meters. You can heat it during washing/steaming, but you can’t press it in any way: for the sake of simplicity of design, there is no cleaning/loading hatch in the heater. Therefore, with frequent use, this stove will not last long. This stove is made like this: a concrete slab is placed directly on the ground, or a mini pit is filled with concrete. Then a cube is laid out from ordinary red brick; At the top, reinforcement bars are built into the masonry, forming the grille of the heater. A metal barrel without bottoms is placed on this pedestal and lined from the inside with fireclay on clay. You can simply coat the inside with a layer of very thick (the consistency of plasticine) fatty clay solution of 50-60 mm. It will also take a little fireclay bricks; they are placed upright with a spoon. Finally, the top of the barrel is welded with a sheet of 2-4 mm steel with the first chimney elbow welded into it - a piece of 100 mm pipe - and the sauna is ready.

Fast

This stove is also for a country house, or for a hunting lodge. It is made entirely from a barrel and can be installed directly on the ground. The heater grille is made of welded reinforcement bars. The internal lining is the same as the previous one. The stove heats the sauna-room with 10-12 cubes in 15-20 minutes. and cools down just as quickly. Therefore, without flooding, it is designed for single washing with a little steaming, or quickly for two people. But at such a speed of bathing procedures, there is no danger that the water in the boiler will boil, and here it is designed on the principle of titanium, covering the chimney. The boiler capacity is 15-20 liters, which is enough for one or two people.

Video: a simple homemade metal stove for a bath

About brick cases

You can come across advice to cover the outside of metal stoves with bricks, this supposedly improves their properties. In fact, the outer lining does not improve anything, but only worsens it. The metal of the furnace, unable to give off heat, heats up to orange and quickly burns out even with a thickness of 8-10 mm. And the heat transfer to the heater, whether solid or flow-through, hardly improves. The outer lining simply does not release infrared, and such a furnace most often produces heavy steam.

Pipe stove

Here in the picture is a stove for a large diameter sauna.

Rarely does anyone have pieces of 525 mm pipes lying around in the trash, but if you find one, it’s a godsend:

• No foundation is needed, only heat insulation from the floor and walls.
• Heats a bathhouse up to 35 cubic meters.
• A deep double-heated solid heater allows you to add heat to the firebox at any time.
• The mouth of the firebox with the blower, extended forward, easily opens into the dressing room.
• The round cross-sectional shape provides an optimal combination of radiation and convection, which is why such a stove heats a bathhouse almost twice as much as a “bourgeois” one with practically the same thermal power.
• The heater tray in the smoke circulation is covered by a U-shaped hot water register without the slightest loss of stove quality.

Note: The water heater must not be placed flat. It is necessary to tilt it slightly across so that the hot water supply pipe is higher than the return pipe.

About hot water boilers

Not every sauna stove can have a water heating circuit installed so easily. But heating water for a bath in the kitchen and carrying it in buckets is nonsense. And it’s not always possible, because the bathhouse can be located on the outskirts. But you can attach a ring-shaped hot water boiler to any sauna stove by placing it on the chimney pipe. The degree and time of heating can be adjusted by moving the boiler up and down.

From waste materials, in order not to master or order complex welding and tinsmithing work, a reliable and durable boiler can be easily obtained from two unusable car wheel rims and a piece of pipe of a suitable diameter, see fig. Excess holes are welded without much care using any suitable pieces of metal. The boiler is attached to the chimney by the protruding ends of the axial pipe with clamps.

Purchased

If you have sufficient funds, buying a stove for a bathhouse is not a problem. As already mentioned, there are many models available. The world's leading producers are Finland and Russia. The Finns make Helo, Kastor, Harvia, Narvi, Iki, Upo, Tulikivi, etc. Kastor is called a “stove Mercedes”, and, it must be said, the Finns do not take money “for an asterisk”. Among the Russian ones on the market, Termofor, Teplodar, Ermak, Inzhkomtsentr VVD, Vulcan, Sukhovey are known, but special mention can be made, firstly, of Troika. These are high-quality, expensive stoves for wealthy customers or commercial bathing establishments. In Finland itself, in saunas you can often find “Troikas”, which, with equal quality, reliability and durability, are much cheaper than Mercedes from the stove. “Troek” is produced in a wide range of models, see Fig., of different power and configuration. There is only one drawback, and that is a conditional one: it is heavy compared to analogues from other manufacturers. The installation of Troika, designed for a company, requires a strong, reliable foundation and a whole team of workers.

Bath stoves “Troika”

This is explained by the fact that the company, without further ado, achieves ideal bath heating technology using the “oak” method: increasing the thickness of the material and the weight of the stones. In Troikas, the filling required by the specifications can exceed 250 kg, and the entire furnace weighs more than a ton. Cast iron ATBs have long been popular among a wide range of consumers, see Fig. Below, they have proven themselves to be excellent for small private baths and are affordable. Of the commercially available models, only ATB2 had a serious defect: water boiled in the boiler before the heater warmed up. But craftsmen quickly found a way out: they turned the firebox cover over with its “horns” facing forward, opposite to the standard installation. At the same time, the path of the flue gases in the heat exchanger was shortened, and at the cost of a slight decrease in efficiency, which is not significant for a bath that is heated infrequently, the water was heated just in time.

But the stove had to “turn its horns” before its installation, because the chimney hole was moving back from the firebox, and then why not break the ceiling, attic and roof? Therefore, they soon came up with another method: they placed something under the legs of the tank (it simply stands on the body of the stove) to lift it from the firebox. This method of adjusting the water temperature in the boiler is applicable to almost all ATB models.

Camping sauna

The camp bathhouse was invented by tourists. But not those who buy tours to Thailand, but those who go anywhere at any time of the year and in any weather. In the Sayan Mountains, during the spring thaw, on a day trip to the bathhouse, oh, how I want to... my whole body aches, and from the mud and in the back of my neck I squelch... It will be a good thing if there is a hollow next to a flat place for a tent with rather steep walls for a fire. Then - aluminum tubes from a tent frame or easel backpacks; in winter - from ski poles. Connect the pipe sections with socks washed in the snow, they will dry so quickly, tied with laces from the vibrams. All that remains is to make a fire, place the end of the pipe with an upward slope into the tent, and put its other end into the flame, but so that the mouth is away from the fire and fresh air enters it, see fig.

Such a bathhouse saved not only from dirt and fatigue. The author knows of a case where, thanks to her, a group survived a critical situation. One winter night, a tree fell on the tent. After that, only one could move, but going for help was out of the question. Then he built a hut from spruce branches, dragged his comrades there, then built a stove from a fire with a chimney, and heated it until the deadline passed and the rescuers came. Everyone then spent a month to six months in the hospital, two received disabilities - but all survived. And without a shelter with heating at minus 15-20, they would freeze in an hour or two.

And after the bathhouse?

The author once had an acquaintance – a Finn. And in Finland then there was prohibition, and the valiant representative of Scandinavia regularly came to Leningrad on weekends to drink himself to death, to the point of being a green serpent. One day he caught himself at the beginning of a drinking binge, decided to quit and asked to arrange a bath for him. Russian, with a broom, from which the birch spirit penetrates to the marrow of the bones. Having steamed thoroughly, I concluded: “You know, your bathhouse is still different” - “Why?” - “After yours, I’d like some tea. Strong. With jam” - “And after yours?” - “Vodka.” A lot of. A woman. Rarely". However, this difference is most likely explained not by the actual difference between Russian and Finnish baths, but by Eino’s individual characteristics and a series of previous sprees.

For many centuries, the bathhouse in Russia was considered perhaps the most important attribute both in cities and in remote taiga settlements. Our ancestors loved to take a steam bath so much that even on his trip abroad to France, Peter I ordered the construction of at least a temporary bathhouse - right on the banks of the Seine. Since that time, much has changed in both the design and the interior of the steam room, but something remains that will not disappear over the millennia: in a real Russian bath, the heat should be soft, but quite noticeable, and the steam should be thick and enveloping.

All this directly depends on the stove chosen for the bath. Therefore, even before constructing the steam room itself, experts advise first reviewing the drawings of the sauna stoves and choosing the most optimal option.

Sauna stove connected to a water tank

Design features of sauna stoves

Sauna stoves “black” and “white”

It has long been the case that in Russian baths only “black” stoves have been used - their difference from the second type is only that they do not have a chimney. This is just a modern “white stove”, with a chimney, you can light it right during the washing process - you just need to add fuel occasionally. And it’s easy to regulate the temperature in the steam room using such a stove.

But in a more archaic version, even before the bath procedures, the stove and the whole room were well heated, the fire was extinguished, and the bath itself was thoroughly ventilated. And only after that you can steam and wash in it. And what’s interesting is that these days there are many fans of “black” sauna stoves: they say that the heat of the stove and the aroma of walls smoked with smoke are charming in their own way, and the smoke itself adds to everything destroys both mold and rot at the root. That’s why the black baths really stood for centuries.

Furnace designs for convective air distribution

Modern designs of sauna stoves have a variety of convective air distribution systems. Basically, these are special casings for effective heating of stones and relatively small heating of the outer walls of the furnace, due to which the latter is considered safer in operation.

On the other hand, the stone lining, which can simply frame the stove, or can act as a full-fledged screen for the body, perfectly combats the so-called “radiant heat” - the unpleasant infrared radiation of a red-hot metal casing. Among the domestic ones, these are mesh ovens “Sayana”, “Termofor” and “Imbolk”, the lining of which is made of soapstone.

A selection of drawings of popular designs

Due to its design, a stove for a bath has completely different drawings than traditional stoves for heating a house. It is not for nothing that they are also called heaters - they are equipped with a special pocket for heating a pile of stones, due to which such stoves heat up quickly enough and their heat capacity is high.

Drawings of brick stoves for a bath

If we talk about the material of the stove, then for a long time in Russian baths massive brickwork with clay mortar was used. And even today, many fans of steam and brooms prefer only this type of oven - after all, they are best suited for producing dry steam.

Depending on their design, sauna stoves come in grate and grateless fireboxes. The grateless type is easier to maintain and more economical, and therefore is simply ideal for careful use of firewood. But the grate firebox, with a separate ash pan, creates a fairly powerful high-temperature flame, thanks to which the air in the steam room and the stone filling heat up as quickly as necessary.

And grate stoves are simply irreplaceable for those who have only raw or freshly harvested firewood in stock, but grateless stoves are much more demanding on the quality of the available fuel.

Popular options for metal stoves

But it’s easier, of course, to buy a ready-made steel or cast iron stove, already equipped with a “heat accumulator”. And ordinary heaters are a metal lattice container with stones above the firebox and a 30-liter water-heating tank in the upper part.

Metal heater stoves are usually made from sheet iron 4-5 mm thick. Usually a water tank is also welded to them - it can be placed either around the chimney or on any side of the stove. But for backfilling the stones, a special open chamber is already being organized. By the way, such stoves can operate on absolutely any fuel.

As you can see, all the drawings have the following common elements: a box and a firebox, which is a steel box with a neck of about 60 mm, designed for a heater attachment. The firebox is made from strong high-quality steel, the thickness of which is not less than 5 mm. The set includes two valves, a blower grille and a heater grille. The heater grate must be welded from steel rods 20 mm in diameter so that the distance between them is 5 cm and they are freely installed on supports. And the vent grate must be made from 8 mm steel rods - it must also be removable.

The heater for the stove is traditionally made of steel, the thickness of which does not exceed 3 mm - it should fit freely onto the neck of the top. But the doors to the heater itself should be made from the side facing the steam room.

As for metal gas furnaces, they consist of a housing and a special thermostat, which regulates the power of the unit. In addition, they must have a device that ensures the safety of such a stove.

But for a small family bathhouse, a closed one is also quite suitable - it is very compact and quite easy to manufacture. True, its heat capacity leaves much to be desired, which, in principle, can be easily corrected by full brick cladding. An open stove differs from it only in the presence of a heater.

But in any case, metal stoves must be lined with red refractory bricks, which must be laid from the grate to the edge. Only the front side of the stove is not covered, and on the other three sides the masonry only needs to be half a brick. They should be secured with wire clamps 3 mm in diameter.

And after you choose a suitable project or drawing, study in the corresponding section of our website how to build the stove you like with your own hands.

Metal stoves have a high heat transfer coefficient, do not require a powerful foundation and warm up much faster than brick ones, which is why they are often installed in bathhouses. It’s not difficult to make them yourself - all you need is to have welding skills and have thick-walled metal on hand.

Metal stove in the shape of a boot

Direct smoke output sharply reduces the efficiency of the furnace, which is why our design includes internal heater, delaying the direct exit of combustion products and accumulating heat. This allows for maximum heating of the room in a fairly short period of time and significantly reduces fuel costs.

Manufacturing stages

1. To obtain a boot-shaped stove with a heater, we will need four metal boxes. The first and second boxes will be joined together using a detachable connection and form the oven itself. In the first of them there will be a firebox, in the second (“top” of the boot) there will be a hole for the chimney. The third box with stones will be inside the furnace. The fourth removable stainless steel water box is installed separately.

2. To avoid errors during assembly, the sheets of metal are first grabbed together, starting from the bottom of the sheets. Final welding is carried out only after the product has been completely assembled and inspected. To prevent smoke from penetrating into the room, the connection of the elements must be of very high quality.

3. We collect box for stones size 50x50 cm. To prevent the top sheet from moving out during welding, it is better to install it on a tripod with a magnet attached to it.

4. In order to grip the lid and bottom, you can place a thin metal square under them to ensure their stability.

5. The bottom of the box for stones, which will bear the entire impact load of the fire, is made of a sheet of thickness not less than 10 mm.

6. Using a grinder, cut out the top of the box door for heater. Its size should be sufficient for steam to escape.

7. At the bottom of the third box, in which the stones will be located, cut out 2-4 holes for pipes(the number of pipes can be arbitrary) at a distance of at least 5 cm from the bottom of the cube to improve traction. A cube with heavy stones will be installed on them.

8. Cut it out hole for firebox size 28x28 cm.

9. At the top of the first box we make hole for inserting a second cube. We cut and weld around the perimeter of this hole on three sides two plates each 4 cm in size to strengthen the incision site and the corner in the left, fourth part. The first three strips are attached to the inner surface, the second - to the outer part of the cut with slight mixing. A small gap is left between the plates for inserting a second box.

10. One plate is welded to the doors of the firebox and heater to strengthen them. The firebox is separated from the ash pan by a grate made of 10-12 cm steel rods. To ensure complete combustion of the fuel, it is necessary to ensure better air flow, so the grate bars are welded along the ash duct.

11. In the second box on the pipes welded in its lower part third cube is inserted, in which the stones will be located.

12. To strengthen the inner cube for stones, small headscarves.

13. For cleaning soot A small hole is made above the door, next to which bolts are welded on 4 sides to install the door. Before installation, it is wrapped to ensure tightness. asbestos thread and screwed brass nuts, protecting the metal from acidification.

14. A lid with a hole for a chimney pipe 12x12 cm (the size of half a brick) is welded to the top of the heater. To install it, it is welded to the hole. "skirt" made of metal. The cube with the stone box installed is inserted into the first one.

The design of the stove may vary. Order cutting blanks a stove with an open heater and a built-in water tank is shown in the following figure:

Installation of a metal furnace

To protect the metal from rapid burning and increase the heat transfer of the furnace lined: the bottom and sides of the structure are lined with refractory (fireclay) bricks. A metal structure can become red-hot under intense fire conditions, so it is placed at a distance of at least 1 m from flammable objects. Adjacent walls are plastered, faced with brick or sheathed with sheet iron.

It is undesirable to cut the floor beams to create a hole for the chimney, so it must be provided during the construction of the building. Availability knees in a chimney can lead to the formation of a significant layer of soot in horizontal sections of the pipe. If for some reason the creation of an elbow is still necessary, it is made collapsible, which greatly simplifies the process of cleaning the chimney.

A good bathhouse in your home has long been a proven means of maintaining health, relieving tension and accumulated fatigue. At home, it is profitable and convenient to use a sauna stove with electric heating. In an outdoor home or country house, a metal sauna stove running on solid fuel is considered the best option. Today it is easy to buy metal, order it in a locksmith workshop for almost any taste, any fuel and heating power. But if you have ingenuity, tools and suitable material, it is easier and cheaper to make a sauna stove from metal with your own hands.

The advantages of such a metal sauna stove are undeniable:

• It is possible to “fit” the stove into the bathhouse according to your own ideas about convenience;
• The light weight and durable design of the sauna stove makes it easy to transport even in your own car;
• The design of the furnace makes it quite easy to make changes and improvements with minimal labor and materials.

When starting to manufacture a sauna stove, it is worth determining its location in the steam room, the main geometric parameters, based on heating needs. Drawings of the most successful metal sauna stoves can be downloaded on the Internet, and you can make your own adjustments if necessary. A stove is chosen, first of all, based on the ease of use of the stove; the heating power is taken to be 1 kg of firewood per 1 m 3 of steam room room.

One of the most successful stove options

To manufacture a sauna stove, no special grades of metal are required; available grades of sheet metal and pipes are used. Thanks to the thoughtfulness of the design, the given version of a metal sauna stove can be assembled with your own hands by studying the drawings. Made to the dimensions shown in the drawing, the metal stove easily heats a steam room of 15 cubic meters.

The sauna stove is divided into several sections located in one body - a piece of pipe with a diameter of 500 mm and a length of 1300-1350 mm:

• The combustion chamber, with a loading volume of up to 10 kg of firewood, is located in the lower part of the body.
• A heater with a separate hole for laying steam stone and spraying water.
• Tank with heated water. Heating occurs through the wall of the chimney pipe. The removable top lid makes it easy to clean and maintain the container. Water can be taken either through the top or using an additional fitting or tap built into the wall of the tank.

In addition to the main sections, the design of the stove uses a separation chamber between the heater and the water tank. Soot will accumulate intensively in this cavity, so it should be removed periodically through a special window covered with an overlay.

For your information! This design is the safest and most practical to use, requiring a minimum amount of cutting and welding work.

Before starting construction of the furnace, make sure that the pipe blank is strong and that there are no cracks or local deformation of the metal.

Before cutting the pipe for the sauna stove, we first remove the layer of rust and oxides present on the metal surface using a manual sandblaster or a metal cleaning brush. The use of phosphoric acid-based chemicals is not recommended.

To make a sauna stove we will need:

1. Welding equipment and materials,
2. Sheet of metal 5mm thick and dimensions 60x350cm,
3. Accessories for making door canopies, fittings or outlets for hot water,
4. Metal pipes for removing gases from the firebox with a diameter of 108 mm - a 100 cm section, heating pipes for the heater with a diameter of 60 mm - four sections.

Considering the fact that the greatest danger to humans is the threat of carbon monoxide poisoning, the developers of this sauna stove design took measures to reduce the number of welds in the combustion part

Sequence of making a sauna stove

We mark the pipe according to size on the drawing. Using gas welding or an angle grinder, cut 6 circles with a diameter of 500 mm from a sheet of metal.

From the cut round blanks, we select two that fit inside the pipe with minimal gaps between the edges of the flat pancakes and the inner wall of the pipe. These two will go to the top and bottom of the firebox.

We mark the position of the top cover of the combustion chamber at a distance of 450 mm from the pipe cut, and use chalk to make marks on the inner surface of the pipe blank. We mark the location of the combustion chamber door, blower and heater. Carefully cut out the windows using a grinder - an angle grinder. We use the cut out rectangular fragments to make doors. To do this, use electric welding to weld the hinges of the canopies in the places where the doors are attached.

In the round blank of the upper wall of the combustion chamber, we cut out four round holes with a diameter of 60 mm and, using electric welding, weld in sections of flame tubes used to heat the heater. We install the blank for the upper wall of the heater on the free ends of the welded pipes and weld them. As a result, we get two flat pancakes connected to each other by four pipes.

We install the body of the sauna stove in a vertical position and place the resulting assembly of four flame tubes and two round bottoms inside the pipe blank. Using electric welding, we weld the round upper wall of the combustion chamber into place, according to the drawing.

1, 2, 19, 20, 28,29 - doors and elements of the firebox, blower; 3 - valve; 7, 8, 9, 10 11, 12, 13 - sections of the firebox and heater - the walls of the blower; 14, 16, 18 - bottom; 15 - grate; 17 - hole for replenishing water; 21, 24 - hatch for loading the heater; 23 - heater heating pipes; 25, 26 - main pipe for exhaust gases; 27 - hot water tap;

Attention ! Welding of the upper bottom of the furnace should be done in several passes with maximum quality.

We turn the body of the sauna stove over, install it vertically, and weld the upper bottom of the intermediate chamber in a similar way. Next, you need to install and weld a round pancake of homemade grate bars, the bottom of the stove and the bottom of the water tank into the body. To make grates, you can choose from two ways:

• You can use one of the blank pancakes, having previously drilled a grid of through holes with a diameter of 10 mm in the central part, spaced at a distance of 15-20 mm from each other. To do this, it is better to choose the workpiece that is “weakest” in size - the one with the largest gaps between the inner surface of the sauna stove body and the outer diameter of the “pancake”.
• A more preferable option is to use ready-made cast iron grates that are suitable in size. To install them in the “pancake”, a grinder is used to cut out a window to the size of the grate, which is secured with four bolts and a pair of metal strips.

After installing the grates, the bottom of the stove is welded - its lower wall. In the stove body, a metal blank is installed with a distance of 10-15 mm from the edge.

An equally important step is installing the bottom of the water tank into the upper part of the sauna stove. The design of a metal sauna stove provides that a combustion product removal pipe passes through the central part of the tank, and it is not located coaxially with the cylindrical body of the stove.

Important ! It is necessary to weld the chimney to the lower base of the tank with additional control of the geometry of the relative position of the pipe and the bottom.

The welding seam is welded at least twice, only after that the lower wall with the chimney is installed in the body of the sauna stove and welded along the contour.

The top cover of the water tank is easily removable; to attach it to the stove body, you can use a pair of ordinary clamps or simply press it down with a heavy object on top. You can put a ring on the chimney to seal the gap between the hole in the cover and the pipe.

At the final stage, the doors of the combustion chamber, blower and heater are hung. It is better to secure the window for cleaning the intermediate chamber between the heater and the water tank with bolts and a sealing gasket.

Decorative finishing

Modern paints and varnishes make it possible to protect even highly heated metal parts of the stove. High humidity and hot air will inevitably lead to intense rusting of the metal surface, even covered with thermal insulation or lined with brick.

The best option for treating the metal surface would be silicone paints that can withstand heating up to 250 o C. For the walls of the combustion section, it is better to use special powder paints made from thermo-reactive compounds or based on powdered aluminum. It is better to test the durability of the protective coating on individual scraps of metal. The metal surface of the sauna stove is degreased and coated in several layers with intermediate heating of the structure.

Installation of a metal sauna stove

The most preferable option is to install a metal furnace, with the firebox loading window and vent opening into the dressing room. For this purpose, special loading boxes can be added to the housing.

Some complexity of the design is more than compensated by the advantages:

• It is more convenient to heat the stove and warm up the bathhouse from the dressing room;
• The dressing room will be sufficiently warmed up, which also adds comfort and ease of use of the bathhouse;
• If the stove is not operating properly or there are problems with the chimney, carbon monoxide will not enter the steam room.

To install a metal sauna stove, it is necessary to line the walls with fireproof materials near the body; it is permissible to use an easily removable casing - a heat insulator covering the walls of the furnace section of the stove. Such a device will protect against burns and help regulate the temperature in the steam room without interfering with the operation of the stove. The same should be done with the chimney pipe.

A metal sauna stove should be installed on a foundation, preferably with heat-resistant insulation and a metal base.

The humidity and temperature of the air, comfort and benefits for the body depend on the stove in the bathhouse. A sauna stove must be equipped with a tank for heating water, a chimney and a heater pocket for stones.

If you have a great desire to build a sauna stove with your own hands, and not to hire specialists, be sure to read this article several times, you can even print it out on a piece of paper and use it directly as a cheat sheet. At the same time, you will save significantly and gain invaluable experience, which will allow you to build similar structures for money in the future. External decoration plays an important role, because a bathhouse is a place of relaxation, both physical and moral, and the appearance of the stove plays an important role in this! After external finishing, the stove in your bath should become its “highlight”, an exclusive decoration that is simply pleasant to look at, like a painting.

The sauna stove is placed either with a combustion door into the adjacent room, or directly into the steam room, where firewood is stored. Naturally, it is better for the firewood to be supplied from the next room; if the size allows you, do just that.

Water tanks are mounted either behind the stove body on supports (floor or wall mounting), or they are mounted directly above the stove firebox. At the same time, a stationary floor mounting of the tank is safer than a wall mounting.

Calculation of tank volume for a sauna stove

The volume of a water tank is calculated by taking from seven to ten liters of water with a temperature of at least fifty degrees per person. So, if you plan to visit a steam room with 3-4 people at the same time, you should choose a tank with a volume of at least 40 liters.

How to calculate the volume of the steam room and firebox of the stove?

It is not enough to measure the dimensions of the room. You also need to take into account the material of the surfaces. If the room has windows, a glass door, or surfaces made of tiles, bricks, or concrete, their area should be measured. For each square meter of area of ​​such surfaces, add one and a half cubic meters to the volume of the room, which will be taken into account when choosing the size of the stove. The minimum power of a sauna stove is 8-10 kW.

Oven requirements

A sauna stove must be safe (both in terms of fires and for human health - not cause burns if accidentally touched and prevent smoke from entering the room), the temperature must be regulated, and the dimensions must correspond to the volume of the room.

Metal heater stove, is it suitable for a bath?

This furnace design is the simplest. For work you will need sheets of steel with a thickness of at least 5 mm, a welding machine and a grinder (or a gas cutter), pipes for water supply and drainage, refractory bricks, stove clay solution, stones, pipes for the chimney, tap, stove doors with latches and hinges, metal profile for mounting the stove support.

The structure itself consists of a water tank with pipes and a tap connected to it. The tank is heated from the back wall of the stove, the internal space of which, in turn, is zoned into a firebox and an open heater. Flue gases are disposed of through a chimney exiting the firebox through the heater and the walls of the bathhouse.

First of all, it is necessary to cut out the bottom and side walls of the future stove from steel sheets and connect them by welding. We weld corners inside the stove - they will support the sheet of metal on which we will lay the stones.

On the front wall we cut out a rectangular hole for the door, and from the cut out rectangle we make a door. You can weld it around the perimeter with strips of steel for a tighter fit. We drill several holes in the lower part of the door or front wall of the firebox to allow air to enter the stove. We weld the door hinges and the hinge for the bolt.

To make a chimney, we will prepare a pipe and make a hole in the sheet of metal on which the heater will be located. We weld the pipe to the steel sheet.

Let's start installing the water tank. It consists of three walls and a bottom, hermetically welded together and the back wall of the furnace. We weld the inlet and outlet pipes for water to one of the side walls of the tank. Then we weld the tap at the bottom of the tank. We install the entire structure on a frame made of steel profiles or on a brick base 20-30 cm high. We cover the metal parts of the stove with fireproof paint. We lay stones on top (soapstone, porphyrite, basalts, etc.) ranging in size from 5 to 12 cm. We install the chimney and chimney, pour water into the tank, cover it with a lid and ignite the finished stove, checking the structure for the presence of draft and the absence of smoke in room.

To modernize a potbelly stove for a bath, you can equip it with an ash pit with a grate and a box for collecting ash. This will greatly simplify cleaning the stove, and the ash door will help to better regulate the draft, and, accordingly, the temperature and rate of fuel combustion. For the same purpose (regulating the heating temperature of the stove), as well as to reduce heat loss through the chimney, it is equipped with a valve. It can be a gate type or any other.

Gate valve - view 2

Sauna stove made from a pipe or an old cylinder

The difference between this design and the previous one is that the water tank is located directly above the firebox. For work you will need: a pipe for the stove and tank (wall thickness 1 cm, diameter 50 cm, height 150 cm); pipe for the heater (the wall thickness is the same, and the diameter is 35cm); mortise valve; metal fittings; hinges for doors; steel sheets with a thickness similar to pipes; tools for welding, metal cutting.

Pipe sauna stove

• We divide a pipe of larger diameter in two using a grinder. From one part (length 60 cm) we will mount a water tank, from the second (90 cm) we will construct a heating device for a bathhouse.
• We make markings on a sheet of steel to cut out a circle equal in diameter to the pipe - the furnace body. To do this, it is convenient to use a can of paint or a marker. This circle will serve as the bottom of the structure. We weld it hermetically to the pipe.
• We immediately make the legs of the structure. To do this, we strengthen the bottom of the sauna stove with a metal frame made of profiles. Frame height 10-15 cm.
• After the stove stands firmly on its legs, draw a 25x7 cm rectangle on the body. This piece of metal will be the blower door. We cut it out with a grinder, equip it with hinges, a handle and a latch.
• We make a grate. Its task is to pass air from the ashpit into the combustion zone, hold fuel and not prevent ash and ash from entering the lower chamber of the furnace. Such a grid can be made from pieces of reinforcement or a sheet of metal with holes cut in it. The grate must be secured by welding in the inner part of the pipe at a height of 12-15 cm from the bottom.
• The firebox will be located above the grate. We cut out a door for it measuring 25x30 cm, departing from the level of the grate about 20 cm. We install the door in the same way as the ash door.
• We will construct the heater from rebar. By bending it in different directions, we give the reinforcement rods the shape of a basket, and fasten them together with plastic wire. This is where we will place the stones for the stove. We install the “basket” on the top of the pipe. Here we cut a door of any shape and again equip it with hinges and a latch.
• Next we'll take care of the water tank. The tank body is a pipe, 60 cm long. For this pipe we cut out the bottom, in which we in turn cut a hole and pass the chimney pipe through this hole. We secure the parts by welding. We cut in a tap closer to the bottom of the tank.
• Now we assemble the two parts of the stove together so that the tank is located strictly above the firebox. We make a weld.
• It is convenient to make the lid for the tank double-leaf. We cut out a circle, divide it into two equal parts, one of which is tightly welded to the tank, the other is attached to the first half with loops. To make it more convenient to open the tank, we equip the lid with a bracket handle made of reinforcement.

Thus, from the simplest materials you can quickly and cheaply build a sauna stove with your own hands, and it will not be functionally different from its purchased counterpart! By doing the work efficiently and slowly, you will get a result that will delight you and your guests for many years!

Do-it-yourself row masonry of a sauna stove - photo report

Everything is very simple, just look at the photos and do exactly the same, of course you need to use suitable materials and mixtures!

Zero row of the oven base: Second row of the oven base: Second row and air chamber Fourth row - blocking the vent We put the grate Third and fourth row of fireclay bricks We cover the fireclay brick with regular We lay the fifth row of fireclay bricks Installing the fire door Finished combustion door Appearance of the furnace at this stage We make a lattice on which the stones will lie