How to choose a stove for a bath? Criteria and calculations
To choose the right stove for a bath, it is not enough to focus on its cost, brand, and even power. There are a number of other criteria, if you miss them, you can face insurmountable difficulties in the future. For example, the stove will always work in a forced mode, which will quickly fail, it will be impossible to correctly connect the chimney, the steam is not enough, it is inconvenient to use, and so on.
Criteria for choosing a sauna stove
The choice of a stove for a bath is always individual. Therefore, before starting the search for a suitable model, it is advisable to first answer the following questions:
- How big is your steam room?
- What is the area of non-insulated walls and ceilings?
- Which door is installed?
- What type of fuel is most readily available?
- Will the chimney come out through the ceiling or through the wall?
- Will it be more convenient to throw firewood in a steam room or in a separate room?
- Do you need warm water heated by the stove?
If the bath has already been designed and built, then the stove will have to be selected for the existing conditions in accordance with the answers to the above questions. You can go in another way. If, for example, you give preference to any particular stove (you liked the same one from your friends, a lot of positive reviews), then you need to customize the steam room for it even at the design stage.
To get a more complete picture of the specified criteria, we will consider the key points in more detail.
Fuel type
Some have the opportunity to get firewood or fuel briquettes inexpensively, there is no gas in other areas, many have problems with the stability of the power supply. Someone does not want to bother with firewood, and someone is reluctant to pay large amounts for electricity. In general, you first need to determine for yourself on what energy the stove will work in your bath.
Wood stoves are the most common and economical to use. Firewood is several times cheaper than gas and electricity. However, they also have disadvantages. You will constantly have to fiddle with the preparation of dry firewood, equip a place for their storage, put it in the furnace during bath procedures (long), clean ash, and so on.
Electric ovens are not very expensive in themselves, but they consume not just a lot of electricity, but a lot. However, they are the most convenient to use – turned on, waited, steamed, turned off. No firewood, smoke, ash, soot. Everything is clean, tidy, compact and convenient.
Gas stoves in private baths are rare. In terms of operating cost, they are more expensive than wood-burning ones, although they are almost as convenient and neat as electric ones.
Power
The main nuance here is to take with a small margin. If you buy a bath stove end-to-end according to the calculations below, then it will always have to be kept in the “until red” mode. Such operation increases the time for heating the bath, complicates the maintenance of the optimal temperature regime, significantly reduces the service life of the product, and also significantly increases the risk of fire.
How to calculate the power of a steam room stove? The first reference point is the volume of the room. For each cubic meter of the steam room, 1 kW of power is taken. If the walls and ceilings are not insulated, we multiply the resulting figure by at least a factor of 1.5. If the door is glass or wooden, but not insulated, we multiply it every time, but already by 1.2. This will already be enough to select a stove with sufficient power for a particular pair. Do not forget about the stock.
Layout
This point concerns the question of which side it will be more convenient to put firewood in the stove. If the project provides for a separate boiler room with a place for storing firewood, then you must choose among the models with the appropriate location of the furnace door.
For many, it seems a more convenient option with the location of the door directly in the steam room. It may be convenient, but only during bath procedures (you don’t have to run anywhere to turn on the heat). The effect is especially enhanced if the door to the firebox is made of transparent fireproof glass. You can watch the fire burn, as they say, forever.
However, this layout also has its drawbacks. When warming up the steam room, you will have to go into it regularly to throw firewood. First, you will release stored heat every time. Secondly, it will be necessary to bring new portions of firewood into the steam room (a lot will not go there in any way). Thirdly, if you haven’t started steaming yet, being in a room with an air temperature of under a hundred degrees in clothes is not very pleasant.
Stones
By tradition, stones for the stove are counted according to the total volume of the steam room. For every cubic meter of the room – from 3 to 5 kilograms of stones will be more than enough. If it is less, it will not be possible to get a lot of steam, and it will also be more difficult to maintain a stable temperature in the steam room. If it is more, the bath will have to be heated up for a long time, wasting fuel senselessly.
Chimney
Here, too, everything is extremely simple, but many people forget about this moment. The smoke outlet from the stove can be arranged from the top, back or side. There are ovens with combined options. It is worth focusing on where it is more convenient and, most importantly, it will be safer to remove the pipe in a particular case.
Additional functions
There are sauna stoves on the market that provide additional functions. For example, there is a tank with water that heats up during the heating of the stove. There are also models that provide the ability to extract heat for heating the house. Whether such functions are needed is decided on an individual basis. Naturally, any addition costs money.
Outcome
Choosing a bath for the stove should be based on a number of criteria, and not just on price. Otherwise, you may encounter problems, which will be simply impossible to solve without buying a new oven.