Five Tips for More Eco-Friendly Sauna Bathing
The color of the smoke from the sauna's chimney indicates whether you are heating the sauna correctly. If the smoke is dark or brown, the emissions are high. Helsinki Region Environmental Services HSY provides five tips for heating the sauna with fewer emissions. The goal is to make the smoke colorless.
Colorless Smoke Indicates Clean Combustion
Burning wood always produces harmful particles and carcinogenic PAH compounds that can penetrate deep into the lungs. When the wood burns poorly, harmful emissions are produced many times more than when it burns well. The color of the smoke from the chimney can reveal how cleanly the wood is burning. The darker the smoke puffing out of the chimney, the more harmful it is. The goal is to make the smoke from the sauna's chimney colorless. This way, the sauna heats up with as few emissions as possible.
- You can influence the amount of emissions with your own sauna heating methods. When you learn to light your wood-burning sauna correctly, the emissions are significantly reduced. The emissions from the same wood-burning sauna can be many times higher depending on the combustion methods, says HSY's air quality expert Nelli Kaski.
Poor combustion also produces a lot of black carbon, i.e., soot, which is transported from Finland's latitudes to the Arctic regions and accelerates ice melting.
Burn Only Dry Wood, Not Trash
It is essential what you put in the sauna's firebox when heating the sauna.
- It is important to burn only dry wood. Trash should not be burned. Burning trash produces a lot of particles, carbon monoxide, and PAH compounds, all of which are harmful to health. Burning trash can also deteriorate the condition of the sauna, says Kaski.
Saunas are the most emission-intensive fireplaces. About half of Finland's fine particle emissions come from household wood burning, and saunas account for a significant portion of these emissions.
- New wood-burning saunas are usually less emission-intensive than old ones, says Kaski.
Five Tips for More Eco-Friendly Sauna Bathing
Kaski provides five tips for heating the sauna with as few emissions as possible:
- Remove old ashes first.
- Use small pieces of wood first so that the wood ignites quickly. Good kindling materials are wood sticks, a small amount of birch bark, and wood-based fire starters.
- Burn only dry wood. Never throw trash into the firebox, such as sausage packages, milk cartons, or disposable items.
- Burn the wood in several batches. Do not fill the firebox completely. Add wood only when the flames start to fade.
- Good combustion requires enough air. The combustion should be even, not smoldering, which means the combustion gets too little air. The combustion should also not be too strong and roaring. Adjust the air according to your sauna's user manual.
More information:
- more tips for wood burning at hsy.fi/en/burn-wood-cleanly/.