How to Build a Sauna inside a Shed

hey guys alex here from mr billet and in today's video we're going to take this classical chat in and turn into that so without wasting time let me show how i built it and let's get into the video let's go [Music] before we get started i'd like to talk about the sponsors today's video area now with colder weather quickly approaching and the shops not so warm i want to share some of my favorite products i like to wear in the shop to keep me warm all right first things first these are the ariat m4 rebar duro stretch workhorse jeans here's what makes these jeans ultra comfortable they are low rise they're not baggy old man jeans they are relaxed fit through the waist hips and thighs they're boot cut it out of 13 ounces of dura stretched denim they have ultra deep pockets for you know screws and such and they're made out of tough max fabric which makes them two times more durable than your average work jeans now for the top let me show you this you guys gonna like this the ariane fr dur light stretch canvas jacket best part it's category four flame resistant this out gotta make it official it's got nine ounces of polar fleece lining it's got nine and a half ounces of the dura stretch light canvas super comfortable to work and move around in and the best part it's made of fabric from the good old fashioned us of a so do yourself a favor check out some of my favorite selections in the description below and then use the link in the description to get 10 off your first order today now let's get back to this build let's go uh good morning guys it is just a little bit after seven o'clock in the morning the family's still sleeping this is the first time we're gonna be taking this project off site we're not gonna be building at my house or anything like that we just need to stop by home depot really quick and then we're going to be doing a little road trip so let's go we are on site of my in-laws property so this is a little shed that is on the property so you're probably wondering well dude what are you going to do with the shed please don't tell me you're going to tear it down and do something modern nope the inside right now is just a regular shed and we're gonna turn that into a sauna so the first order of businesses let's get this junk out of here one two hocus pocus and just like that we got a blank canvas to work with so we're gonna need a dividing wall here with the door this section would be the changing room and then you would open the door and walk into the sauna and have benches here so we're gonna first use a pressure treated wood to anchor into the concrete itself we're gonna use these anchors for concrete we're gonna use a special designated drill bit to drill the hole our doorway is gonna be marked out here to be uh 31 and three quarters the same as that let's start framing [Music] the most important part is anchor it down to the ground and make sure it's leveled make sure you get as many securing points as you can i got my my jack studs up these are 16 inches on center they're reinforced right here to keep them from swaying i got the trim studs that will go on the inside and the header will sit on top of it so can't believe we're building a sauna it's happening all right in case you're wondering what's this wood sandwich you're making so this is a header and typically headers are either two by six or two by ten or two by twelve whatever the structure is of two by four the actual dimensions are one and a half by three and a half now the width three and a half when you sandwich two together you're still missing a half an inch that's why you'd put osb down the middle or any kind of a half inch piece of wood to make this to be the width of a two by four board which is actually one and a half by three and a half so learn something new huh i we spoke to the electrician who will be coming in so he'll come in and feed it through i'm just putting the conduit down putting these uh junction boxes in and the light's gonna be one of those uh heat protected ones specifically the ones they use for saunas and then at the bottom i'm gonna put a junction box i'll throw in another extension for the light to go here um it's the it's the yellow cable what is that 12 3 i don't know the yellow cable the insulation can be either a two by fours or two by sixes so obviously we'll go two by sixes that's what we got i'm gonna put two staples on top roll it down put two stables at the bottom how do you eat an animal one bite at a time so let's do it now the trick is to get uh the insulation into the ceiling here obviously there's no drywall my system of approach is gonna be possibly take my vapor barrier which will have to wrap everything with vapor barrier uh i think i'm gonna first do it on top of the ceiling and then from the side from the top drop it into uh to lay over the plastic that way it doesn't fall through that's about the only way i could think about getting insulation up there it'll be a little tricky but you know that's what we stand up for so typically for the attics you want to use a different kind of insulation don't call me out on it i know it's not attic insulation though this stuff is ready for floor so going to the floor and go at it logic what we got here is uh the flashing for windows which is fine because it's like a waterproofing tape though it's a little more expensive it's a lot thicker and if it's a little chilly in here which it is it doesn't stick as well which is a surprise to me but this other stuff that stuff right there below it works perfectly it's it's just it's super sticky and so now we're gonna use the radiant uh barrier and so again this is to keep the temperature inside uh just cooking so we got this stuff it's about i think 50 bucks a roll four feet by 25 feet uh we have to do the ceiling we have to do the walls and then we'll have to figure out something for the floors because we don't want the heat to escape there let's get energy efficient [Music] [Applause] so two days worth of work right here you can bust out to get to the section about in a weekend uh as far as what things cost i'll say with materials with the two by fours and stuff like that roughly around 500 bucks into it so far we're gonna start laying down the waterproofing membrane which is basically what we're actually looking for is a vapor barrier moisture barrier for the cement all right so this is what 950 linear feet of the cedar tongue groove looks like if you're wondering how to calculate it take your square footage multiply by 12 and then divide it by the width of the board it's roughly around 2.50 cents per linear foot so a little pricey i think i paid like 2 300 on this it would be so much cheaper to do it in a pine uh though they have the tongue groove it's like 80 cents a linear foot but pine won't hold up as long as suitable so just it's the cost of doing things the right way progress report i feel like i'm living on mars i don't know the ceiling a little tricky especially the first one to get done when you drive the brad nail in drive it on the tongue part right there that way you won't see any exposed nails out there and it's important to do the ceiling first because then we'll do the sidewalls and the sidewalls will actually hold or help support the top also gaps important this thing is going to expand and contract so make room for it [Music] you intentionally want to leave these gaps some are bigger some are smaller we're going to take the same wood that we're using and then just trim everything out and that will conceal it and it'll give room for expansion and [Music] contraction so today's project is going to be to build the base of it and then after that to create an insulation we're going to lay down insulation again really pricey on this whole cedar situation the uh one by what is that five that we had the tongue and groove stuff uh it was two thousand three hundred dollars in the cedar and i'm getting about three hundred dollars more to finish the sauna off we're sitting at 2600 and then i paid another 350 for this hopefully this is gonna be it if you're gonna do this aim on the smaller side of asana the one side of the middle is the most important part because that's where we're walking so they're roughly around nine and a half inches 10 inches aside and then obviously keep these a little bit tighter just because we're going to have the heater on there so now we're going to take our one by fours cut them up and do lengthwise installation [Music] look what just showed up yeah buddy the sauna part itself the 5x9 part is um 350 ish uh cubic feet this heater is rated for a thousand cubic feet that one's about two thousand dollars i think my background's russian right so i kind of grew up around saunas my uncle's adam my grandfather's had him my dad has them the advice that my dad gave me when i was doing the research on this was don't skimp out on the heater my dad has a really tiny one so he's got the more inexpensive one he's like i have a friend who has got a heater he's got a big sauna that he built he put a small heater in there because you want to save money it takes like three hours to warm that thing up my dad's just like a four-person heater sauna he says mine heats up in like 45 minutes either save up and get yourself the bigger heater or just built a smaller one i made a little silhouette for our heater we're gonna do a one-tier base here about 18 inches of the ground your average chair and then one that's gonna be high enough that a six foot two person like myself can clear head space [Music] what i did is i placed three recessed two by fours to basically have uh the bench area or the seating butt part butt part uh to go right over it and i'm gonna secure it with screws from the bottom that way you're not gonna burn the butt part with the screws we said we i could say we officially have a sauna obviously minus the heater speaking of heater let me just drag this thing in here let's see what we got freedom [Music] look how good it looks oh man all right so this is the uh the regulator just you know the knobs the old turn the thing on we're gonna let the electrician figure this out i i don't learn so good [Music] freedom [Music] we have a local store uh it's part of the habitat for humanity it's called restore it kind of like a good wolf in the construction world this could not get any luckier this is tempered glass oh my goodness uh it's got a few knicks dings and scratches but we can fix that up uh i gotta kill a deal it's 40 bucks that's unheard of that door like that is probably like an 800 door the door is 36 inches wide by the time we shim this thing out it will occlude the 38 inch that we made the opening we're going to router out the seat for these hinges to sit and then we can start attaching the door hey one bite at a time let's do this is about the second time ever i've hung up a door jam in the door itself so before it starts getting dark let's throw some tile right down here and uh that way tomorrow we're gonna go out so we picked up the same tile luckily enough at the same habitat for humanity um nice and big i think it's like 15 bucks a box i needed three so really inexpensive we have the waterproofing membrane down behind this is concrete so we can actually lay this down straight down without having to use a membrane because solid concrete [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so now we're gonna do the baseboards and the trim and i swear this thing's gonna start popping let's do it [Music] all right so they took the door off just to clean it up and get rid of any kind of crayons or dings on it it cracked from here to here all the way down which is perfect because we can't have a metal handle on this check this out now if you're laughing me about the handle the majority of the saunas they look as fancy as this the door handles so i'm working with a circular saw obviously i'm not in my garage so i can't make a super fancy one please be sure if you're gonna use a glass door get a tempered glass regular under glass will crack with the heat number two you can make your own door use half inch plywood then on the one layer of it put the aluminum foil reflecting insulation right and then after that finish it off with cedar and then basically trim it off however you want and if you can find a small piece of tempered glass put it in there if not you made yourself basically a 60 door [Music] all that's left is hooking up this heater uh my electrician's gonna be here in two days i believe i gotta go home and see my family i miss them already uh this is a unit that he'll be hooking up down here basically the motherboard board and then this is the digital thermostat let's go home kids i'll show you everything once the heater's hooked up hey real quick i don't know if you knew this yet but my wife irene and i we started a podcast called nextdoor neighbors available everywhere you get to stream your podcast including video on youtube all the links will be description below we talk about design we talk about marriage and our kids and we talk about business and we talk about everything and we have a great time so make sure you check us out let's go back to the work all right guys so i just got the call the electrician said he's all done with the sauna hooking up the heater uh let's check it out it looks like he ran the electrical right there that's our uh power coming in he installed this power bank here there's a master kill switch there that's basically the whole mother ship looks like the heat temperature is going in there oh let's see this thing that oh that turned on let's see how she does all right yep he got it all hooked up nice perfect got our tempered light here excellent all right so currently it's 53 degrees in here i just turned it on time is uh about 10 11. we'll see how long it'll take to heat up to temperature i'll let you guys know in a [Music] second [Music] all right so 151 time right now is uh just a minute or two past 11. so less than an hour to heat up to 150 now typically some attempts are between 150 194 degrees depending how tough you are i'm rushing i've been doing this since i was a kid i'm gonna come in here and start warming up let's have a good time hey thanks so much for sticking around watching yet another one of my videos it means the world to me if you bring the channel and you like videos like this or any other kind of home improvement project make sure you hit the subscribe button and tap the notification bell that will you'll be alerted every time a video comes out make sure you like comment and share this video with friends if you have any questions jot them down in the comments section down below remember guys we are not experts who are not trained professionals we're just not afraid to try and fail courage and sweat that's our motto here we need the courage to take on a big intimidating project this and we need to start the hard work to get through all the difficult things to learn something and take that to the next project to be better builders and better people make sure you follow me on my social media profiles all the links will be down in the description below as well as the merch section and the patreon account which both help support this channel tune out this week we'll see you guys on the next one see ya bye there we go we got a hole they're going to look nice so you can look next single minute this is the work solving problems that's what we're in the business for solving problems shut up all right we're just teaching people how to get started and that is it