As the description states, I wish to build my own steam room.

The room itself is easy enough, just to basicly tile and make the entire room leakproof, a drain in the floor, and make the ceiling tilted, so that you don't get dripping all over the room. The steam inlet isn't a big issue either.



There are many companies that produce and sell steamgenerators, but they are all pretty expensive. (At least compared to what I could perhaps build/transform into myself?). I've thought about using something that already produces steam, but all I've come up with is the the clothing iron.

Anybody else thought about this, or know how to do it?

As you said, the room itself isn't so much a problem.

The steam generator is.

This basically requires 2 components. Heat and water. (Yeah, obvious, but let's work from there.)

Water: The DIYer in me says that the easiest way to provide this would be to use the float valve from a toilet. This is something that's designed to keep water at a designated level in a tank. At that level, take a copper pipe, and siphon off a manageable amount of water into a heat exchanger.

Now, you use a heat exchanger. One salvaged from a gas hot water tank should do the trick nicely. This basically makes a regulated gas flame under a water manifold, so that the flame can heat the water. Normally, this would be temperature controlled so that the water cannot boil, but that can be overcome easily enough, and still leave a safety margin. Basically put the thermocouple for the temperature control further upstream. This will prevent the system from boiling dry, as it will throttle the gas flame when the water starts getting hot upstream, and then allow it to do its thing when the heat exchangerget more and cooler water in it.

Vent the exhaust to a chimney, and allow the steam to enter the rooom.

Of course, it's up to you to make this stuff all safe, and I doubt that such a contraption would pass a building inspection, though with the right parts, it could.

I had a Russian acquaintance that made his own Russian Banya. He was only an acquaintance and I've since lost contact, but I found a informative website. Of course, the Banya uses wood walls, like a sauna, but it might provide you with info on steam:

http://www.plentyofsteam.com/russian-banya/

http://www.rusbanya.com/eng.htm

Thanks for some really informative responses! I'm considering building it like a small shed outside, perhaps with a glass side to enjoy the great view here, and maybe right next to the big wood-heated tub, for some interchanging. The rest of your concept is genious, SupraGuy, but we don't use gas as much in Norway, so I would prefer something powered by electricity. Would the heating element from an electrically powered warm water tank work, or wouldn't it be able to boil the water? I actually have a few lying around, cause we're going to use them as filter tanks for our pond.. Though I don't know if the elements work though.. Any other possible bases for approach?

If your looking to have some fun and save some cash. Woodstoves can often be retrofitted to heat water inside of steamrooms. I made a small wood fired water heater for a hot tub project and it turned out to be a pretty nice steam generator. All it was, was a an old cast iron steam heater which we put inside the stove. When we wanted steam we would just trickle a little water into it from the top and we got good steam out of the other vent. Which we faced away from us of course.
One of the advantages we found with the woodstove was that after we had a steam, we would just let it die out. We used a fairly inefficient model and regulated the temp by a simple damper that was temp controled by a spring. But the best part was after wards. In the process of letting it die down we would stop introducing steam and the inside of the sauna would dry out nicely. Never had any mildew problems.

If you want to just try that part, just about any elcosure will do as long as its properly vented. I ran that thing under plastic cover and bent PVC pipes for a few years...

SJ

Ah. Well, I wans't aware of your geographical location.

The element from a hot water tank isn't going to provide as much heat as the gas fired one will, and the same kind of heat exchanger is going to be hard to come across.

If, however, you're doing this as a separate building, building a wood-fired heat exchanger isn't that difficult, if you've got some welding skills available. Some thing that's automatic would be nicer, since the effort of building a fire is sometimes unwelcome if you want to relax.

On a related note, my grandfather built a bathhouse behind his home, and it was wood-fired. A very simple affair, the bath itself was wooden with a steel floor. A wooden slat was affixed above that so that you wouldn't burn yourself in it. Underneath the bath was a fireplace. We used to burn old railroad ties in it. It was JUST the thing after a hard day's work (Though more often, when I was a kid, it was a hard day's play.)

Ever since then, I've known that one day I'll have my own Japanese bath. So I can definitely understand wanting to build a steam room.

Hm. The wood heated concept is nice actually. I suppose you mean oven, as in closed fireplace? Or old kitchen stove? If I used one of those, I could weld (I'm fair at welding, but my father is an expert) a small compartment that I place in it, with an inlet and and outlet pipe, and with some testing I could adjust the pressure from a pump to deliver exactly what the oven is capable of heating into steam. With a practical switch nearby..

If I managed to explain myself clearly there, and my interpretation of the idea is practical, I think we're on to something here..

We have a sauna in our house, but it's not good enough ventilated to be able to fully steam in there.. Though we put water on the stove, the humidity isn't as intense, and risky for the room..

Thanks a lot for your thoughts!

Could you get a hold of an electric oven element? Those get plenty hot enough to boil water, and run on electricity.

Like these(the site is only to illustrate what part I mean): http://www.cheapapplianceparts.com/oven_ra...n-range-ge.html

Not sure how to power them though. I don't think it is as simple as plugging them into the wall.

I still think that what you want is to control flow of water into basically a pan over your heat source.

Click to view attachment

So here, what we have is a water tank, which keeps the water level at a specific, and somewhat controllable level. At that level, we siphon off water into a boiler. The boiler shouldn't be deep, but shoud ave a large surface area at the bottom. The water pipe will be a pipe, so that it can't deliver too much water, which would overcool the boiler, making it difficult to keep it steaming. You'd have to find the sweet spot where the amount of energy in the heat source can keep the influx of water boiling.

The nice thing with this setup is that the water control is fully automatic, and once the flow rate is properly set up, it's completely self-regulating. If the heat source is variable, (Say like a flame) and it starts to cool, the water may cease boiling, but it won't spill over, since the float valve will shut it off as soon as it reaches the maximum level in the tank. If on the other hand, the heat source is hotter, then the valve will allow more water into the tank, and thus into the boiler.

What SupraGuy described above is the just of what I was trying to describe last post, added the toilet float valve.

The water tank and valve would prevent the steam from flowing back to the tank right? Then I would just need a pipe to bring the steam to its destination. Insulated pipe maybe?

I would simply leave the top of the water pan open to the steam room, perhaps with a protective gaurd to keep from cooking any fingers (or other body parts )

The steam could go back towards the water tank, but it's easy enough to ensure that the only thing that it could do there would be to condense back into the water.

But if I wanted to have the oven outside of the room, wouldn't a pipe from the boiler work?

Sure, but you have to be sure to supply both an intake and outlet for the air. The intake should be low, and the outlet high, so that the steam will convect out of the boiler and into the room. A bit of help in the way of a bathroom vent fan wouldn't hurt either.