Apartment sauna

October 13, 2007 

Owning a dedicated building sauna is a dream that is out of the grasp of most. City-dwellers simply do not have the luxury of erecting a building in their back yards, right next to the parking lot.

Thankfully, there is a solution for apartment buildings - basement and in-apartment saunas. They are just as fun and pleasurable as their loghouse counterparts by the lake, out in the countryside!

 

Basement saunas

As an example - the apartment of my parents has a sauna in their basement (I don't have one myself - I mainly use the one at the gym these days). It's shared between three families and it was built very shortly after the apartments were built and we moved in - I was still living with them at that time. Back in the day it cost around 10,000 EUR for all of it. These days I imagine it would be more and it of course also depends on your location. 

It has a small front room with clothes hangers, tables and chairs, a washing room after that with two showers and the sauna area (perhaps 6 square meters) in the corner of the washing room.

There's a small electrical heater and the room goes to around 110 Celsius. It takes an hour and half to heat it and it can also be activated with a time delay - an especially excellent feature after winter walks when you know you'd love a hot sauna afterwards.

If you can build a sauna in your basement, go for it. If that is not an option, you can build a tiny one into your bathroom.

Apartment saunas

I recently visited a spa called Tervise Paradiis with my girlfriend in the Pärnu resort area. We opted to book a suite - mainly because it had an adorable small sauna. The the stay was excellent and the sauna almost as much so. It was a small one, but it was more than enough for the two of us. Later on, we sat on the balcony and enjoyed the view of the resort beach at night. 

It's also quite common in many private owned apartments. Apartment sizes can be so small as to only fit one person at a time (a friend of mine has one and it's bordering on comical - but does the job) to a normal sized sauna. The average size is enough for 2-4 people.