Guest post continues! Let’s check in with Riley & Kass, the duo behind Hot Island Sauna, a custom sauna build and rental company based on Madeline Island, WI. Their goals in life are simple– experience life as fully as you can with wonder, heart, and passion at the center of it all. They operate their business with this ideal in mind and they hope to share that with as many people as possible–on or off the bench.
What compelled you to build your own sauna?
We didn’t really know where the journey would take us when we started learning about saunas. All we knew at the start was that Kass, who is from California, needed a way to keep warm in the northern Wisconsin winters. She wanted a hot tub, but we don’t have running water at our 10×10 tiny house in the woods. So we thought, why not a sauna? We used our experience working in other material fabrication settings and applied them to our first build. So, we recently completed a mobile sauna out of a horse trailer from the 80s and now we are already thinking of the next exciting project. We want to keep bringing good heat to as many people as we can.
How did you find SaunaTimes and give us a few examples where the DIY ebook helped you out.
Before we started our first build we searched for as many sauna building resources we could find. Stumbling on a few articles we found on saunatimes turned out to be most helpful in our build. The DIY ebook helped us in thinking about how important it is to have a proper stove at the heart of any sauna (we love our Kuuma stove!) and how ventilation is a key factor. Even when it came to smaller details like what kind of rocks to use, Saunatimes had an answer. Another example where the ebook helped us out is the overall attitude it gave us going into the build. Building a sauna from the planning stage to the finishing touches is a blast and the best saunas are the ones that get used the most. These ideas put our mind at ease and with that we decided to jump into building.
What were the biggest 1-2 challenges for your sauna build?
Metalwork, uffta! Welding isn’t our wheelhouse–preparing the 1983 horse trailer for a sauna build was very difficult. The most difficult part was remaking the ramp and doors on the back. One benefit of the horse trailer which you talk about in the ebook is the dual axles, it makes for a more balanced weight differential. This allowed us to put the stove closer to the tung of the trailer.
Building on an island–where the nearest hardware store is at least a boat ride away and means taking hours out of your day–makes planning for materials an extra challenge. You can’t just go run to your local hardware store when you run out of screws or need extra lumber.
Tell us something specific about your sauna that makes you especially proud.
Seeing the growth from our first sauna to our most recent sauna build makes us proud. Each time we go through the process, we improve. Our creative solutions for things like wood storage and lighting turned out really cool-discrete and yet fully functional.
Any regrets or do overs for Hot Island Sauna?
The only thing I would have done differently is allowing more time and more budget for materials. When you buy an old horse trailer, you never really know at first glance what problems and solutions will present themselves. We just kept rolling through the punches and got creative with it. But unforeseen problems cost time and winter had arrived early on the island. Luckily, a good friend let us finish out the build in his driveway down in St. Pete, FL. It was stressful, but admittedly we were giddy to be working in the warmth of the sun.
If you bring a mobile sauna anywhere in the world, where would you like to go and sauna?
Kass says she’d like to bring the sauna to Montana. We were working out there earlier this year and had a chance to visit Glacier National Park. We found a waterfall and though the water was cold, we went in. It was awesome and peaceful. A sauna there would be epic.
Riley is perfectly happy having the sauna right at home on Madeline Island. Surrounded by Lake Superior and breathtaking beauty, it’s a perfect place to sauna. Hot Island Sauna!