Honoring Earth Day (everyday) at Secret Sauna

At Secret Sauna, we’ve nurtured a dedication to good stewardship of our environment since day one. You might be wondering, how does a business that burns wood actually do that?

It starts with choosing the right equipment

The first (and most important) decision we made was our choice of stove.

We know the wood-burning stove is a special part of the full-on sensory experience we wanted to provide, but how best to go about that?

We opted to invest in one of the most efficient sauna stoves available, and worked with our custom sauna builder to import it directly from Finland (trust when we say the Finns know what they're doing).

Our Narvi stove is designed to efficiently transform wood fuel into maximum heat output, with little to no emission of particulate matter.

It burns so hot with near-perfect combustion, so that most particulate matter (the substance responsible for air pollution) is incinerated, limiting our emissions to primarily heat and water vapor.

Fuel quality is another critical factor

Our sauna stove is powered primarily by kiln-dried oak. This choice of firewood produces the most heat and least smoke for its mass. To achieve the cleanest possible burn, we use a moisture meter to test the wood’s moisture content and ensure it’s less than 20%.

This knowledge comes from a challenging lesson we learned from the first delivery of firewood we received (from a supplier who shall not be named here).

The wood was hard to light, hard to get it to stay lit, and producing a lot more smoke than it seemed like it should have. After some research, we got a moisture meter and tested the firewood. The moisture content was in the 25-30% range -- near double what wood advertised as "kiln-dried" should be and not acceptable. We contacted the supplier, arranged for them come pick up the rest of what we hadn't used, and found another supplier with better quality product.

Since making that switch in our first month, we were able to improve our emissions considerably -- if you look at what's coming out the smokestack when you visit, you'll observe that most of the time it's just that mirage-like ripple of heat and water vapor.

What happens when a local woodworker finds himself at a “Sauna w/ Sarah” social session?

This was a moment of true sauna magic, when fate brings people to the sauna bench who might not otherwise cross paths anywhere else (more about sauna magic in a future post).

I asked if he ever had leftover mill-end pieces and other wood scraps and what he does with them. Turns out, they had been going to the landfill, but no longer -- now, his waste byproduct is Secret Sauna's most perfect kindling, and both our operations are more sustainable!

Thanks, Dan!

Closing the sustainability loop

Speaking of waste byproducts, we have one too, and that's wood ash. We collect our wood ash, store it and keep it dry, so that we can provide this valuable resource for free to neighbors in the Backyard Habitats program. They use it as a soil amendment to nourish their native plant habitats!

Humble brag ☺️

We're proud of our efforts to tread as lightly as we can on our precious little patch of earth, while providing a transformationally grounding experience to our community.

And if you made it this far, we’re thrilled you care about this topic as much as we do! Thank you!