I'm in the process of converting a 4 ft X 8 ft (approx) sauna room into a bathroom with a 4 x 4 steam shower enclosure. I have never owned or even used a home steam room before, I'm wondering if anybody has any experience with them that they can share? I already have the new toilet, pedestal sink, and a bunch of plumbing parts sitting in the living-room and ordered a 10.5 kw steam generator. I've pretty much gutted the old sauna room and now in the process of framing and re-wiring the room and working on the basic plumbing. It's turning out to be a very complicated project for such a tiny little space.
I had a prebuilt unit at my previous house. Believe it or the cost ended up being a bit less than husband tiling and 2 glass walls. It was ~5' x 3.5'. No idea what size your or yours are, but I am a smaller woman and I felt cramped in there. I ended up using the jetted bathtub for joints more than the steam shower, it might be worth your time to find out how much you like it before you put all the work in. Oh, and we had to add an extra 220 line, one for bathtub and another for steam shower. Before we bought I looked into the custom showers, one idea I though was clever was tiling over the generator so it served as bench seat as well.
Thanks for your input WW, my shower stall will actually end up being a smaller then yours. the whole sauna room is (was) 4' x 8' , and a bit more then half of that will be area where the toilet and sink will be, the actual shower stall will be 4' x a bit over 3', so if you felt crowded in your 5' x 3.5' shower stall, you'd be downright claustrophobic in this shower stall. However this is the room I have to work with, my main goal is to build a second bathroom in our house for convenience and resell-ability, adding the steam function in the shower is just an extra feature to replace the sauna function. Although I have never used a private household type steam room, I've been in plenty of public steam rooms, and I can say without a doubt that I much prefer steam rooms to traditional saunas. I prefer the moist heat of steam to the dry heat of a sauna. And although our sauna was quite a bit bigger (4x8) then this steam room will be (4x3), only about half the sauna room was usable because the sauna heater was on one side and it was uncomfortable to sit very close to it so we would end up sitting on the far side occupying essentially only the area where we will be building the new shower stall. Fortunately the sauna already had a 220 v line for the sauna heater, so I won't half to be adding any extra electrical lines for the steam generator. Mostly I was hoping for some input on the function of the steam generator itself, how well it worked, if it had ever given you any problems or maintenance, or if it ended up being trouble free, etc...?
I do kitchen and bath design/ sales for a living and hate dealing with the steam units. I always go to my plumbing rep with the specifics and build the kit needed. I know the biggest thing is to run them fairly reglar or the water can get gross in the steam unit and try to find the stainless internals if possible. Thermasol is the brand I have used and you can build the kits right on their website with the specifics of the shower, that way the pieces are meant to be used together. PS- They aren't cheap.
The unit I had gave very specific instructions on periodic cleaning, gross water would void the warranty on the steam unit.
Thanks for the input Chbryson You've confirmed a few of the issues I've picked up along the way, starting with they aren't cheap! LOL Also the point about the water getting gross in them, which is what led me to purchase one with an auto drain feature which drains the remaining water left in the units after every use. It stands to reason that if you keep adding water to the tank and boiling off steam you are going to leave the calcium and mineral deposits behind which would make for some very hard water mineral deposits left in the tank after a while. Not very good for the heating elements or the valves. I ended up getting a 10.5 KW SteamSpa unit. Just how good it is remains to be seen. Unfortunately the existing 220 line that I thought would work for this steam generator doesn't supply enough amps and it looks like I'll be running a new line to the electrical panel. Doesn't seem like there are many people that are really that familiar with these steam generators, and not a lot of unbiased information about the ongoing use and maintenance of them on the internet either, and what there is is sometimes conflicting. In the meantime I am muddling through this DIY install and nearly got the thing plumbed in. In fact I think I'll go finish my last connection and take a picture and post it here.
This is the view from inside the shower. (wall board is not on yet) You can see the two chrome steam heads and the drain outlet below. The drain just drains onto the shower floor and down the shower drain. The other thing I was told is that the steam generator solenoid valves don't like to see pressures over 20 psi, so I installed a pressure regulator on the intake line which Tees off the hot water line. One of the hardest things to figure out was where to situate the unit. Originally I was going to put it in the crawl space,,,, but for a number of different reasons I decided to put it just outside that shower area. Because some air ducting ran through some framing, just to the left, there was already a space between the walls. Not enough to fit the unit, but enough room to easily run and access all the plumbing between the shower and the generator. Every line has a quick disconnect fitting. I also built a sort of box to cover the generator which is right next to the washer and dryer, it will be cosmetically covered with something at a later date.
