Shipping container pop up sauna brings a community spirit to Wellington, New Zealand.

From the mailbag, Enter Sam:

I was just listening to your most recent podcast, good stuff! Your call for listings of saunas all over the world reminded me to email again, feel free to throw our sauna up. We are in Wellington, New Zealand (although I’m originally from Idaho).

From a building perspective, biggest challenges:

• Framing inside the container due non-flat walls. Corrugations, reinforcements, etc.
• Sufficient ventilation and draining. The big metal box doesn’t breath well, and as it sits next to the ocean people swim a lot, bringing lots of moisture in with them on top of sweat and water for the stove.
• Every time we ship the container things shift a little, door closes differently, etc.
• A few other things unrelated to the fact that it is a container. Cedar we paneled with shrunk more than expected, causing a few gaps. We did a feature wall with cedar shingles that caused a few headaches. Mostly all good and your book was super helpful!

The Positive Vibrations of a sauna in the community

I know you love the community and spiritual sides of sauna, and since your recent podcast was about the merits of a public sauna, check out this piece my partner wrote about the experience:

Ritual and Community Building in the NZ Pop-Up Sauna

In the article, she sums up to me what is the ultimate beauty of sauna: Sweat is a great equalizer. What you do, what you wear, who you talk to outside of the sauna all melts away and leaves behind salty, sweaty, water-guzzling common humanity. There is connection. You belong here.

Check out www.nzpopupsauna.com for some photos and details.