Frequently asked questions

Strong NO! There is so much bad and misleading info on the web. If you search internet forums you will find many people with saunas advocating that you should definitely upsize your heater to make sure you can get your sauna hot in the winter. We understand their logic, but it is very wrong and dangerous. These comments would be from sauna owners who have bought and use the typical kit saunas that have no insulation.

Electric heaters are designed by the manufacturers with the assumption that you will be installing the heater into an indoor space that already has some insulation. The sauna itself should also have an R14 value even when indoors. So the heaters output and performance is based on the assumption that it will be used in an INSULATED sauna. Once you install an electric heater in a NON INSULATED sauna, you run into problems. The main problem is that the heater can't produce enough heat to get the sauna to the max temperature of 90 celsius. Along with that problem you will also have: 1. The heater will be on longer than it is suppose to and the elements will burn out prematurely; 2. A lot of wasted electricity; 3. Illegal installation. Let me now explain this in more detail.

Each sauna heater has a CSA label that specifies the AMPS and Watts but also the MINIMUM sauna  floor square footage that the heater needs. This is where almost all non-insulated kit saunas fail. The manufacturers know that their non insulated saunas will not work well in the winter (ESPECIALLY will all the glass they use. Glass has almost no insulating value) and so they sell you an upsized heater. But this heater is technically not allowed to be installed because there is not enough floor square footage. This creates a couple very serious legal problems: 1. The electrician that installs it is risking their license / and or risking getting a warning from ESA (Electrical Safety Authority). 2. You will not be able to pull an electrical permit for the work completed in hooking up your sauna because it will not pass. 3. If you can't get a permit, then you pretty well don't have house insurance coverage for it if anything goes wrong. In the event that the sauna catches on fire (which is rare but it can happen because of poor electrical work / leaving something on the heater...) and your insurance does an investigation, they will find out that there was no permit for the electrical work and the install was not properly done and the heater was oversized. I can only imagine that they would deny any claim you have for the fire damage.

So should you oversize your heater? NO! The whole idea of oversizing the heater is simply because their saunas are poorly designed. Our saunas are simply better and work just as they should. We use the correct size heater because our saunas are so well insulated, which allows the electrician to get a permit. And the homeowners can rest assured that they are covered in case something does happen.