Who Are We?
Our story began when a carpenter combined his love for sauna and woodworking.
For years I have been enjoying the many benefits of the sauna. As any regular sauna user who happens to be a carpenter would, I quickly began planning the building of my own sauna. Here is the story of that journey;
I’ve been a carpenter for most of my life, as was my father, grandfather, and great grandfather. When I was 19 I left the laid-back lifestyle of the east coast and moved to Ontario in hopes of better work opportunities. I started my own construction company and soon learned the stresses of owning a business. I quickly burnt myself out both mentally and physically. Admittedly, this is very typical of new and unexperienced business owners.
I had heard about the benefits of sauna from interviews with avid sauna users like Rhonda Patrick and Laird Hamilton and decided to treat myself to a gym membership that featured a sauna.
I was instantly converted. I couldn’t believe the mental clarity that came from a good sauna session. The stress became manageable, the brain fog and inability to think and plan ahead seemed to clear away, and I could finally enjoy my life while still being productive.
Curious about how this could be I began to look into the research on people who use saunas regularly. I found some jaw dropping statistics. Sauna use is shown to cause lower risk of developing dementia, much lower risk of sudden cardiac death, antidepressant effects from a single sauna session, increased levels of human growth hormone, faster recovery times post workout, etc...
Dr. Rhonda Patrick covers all of these topics in depth on her website.
I then decided to combine my love of sauna and carpentry. Something that is responsible for such an amazing increase in both health and life enjoyment deserves to be designed and built with the highest level of craftsmanship. The same level of craftsmanship I inherited while building timber frame homes and cottages in Ontario's prestigious Muskoka.
Most people don’t have the space to build a sauna inside their home, so I decided to design a sauna that would be ideal for the outdoors. The barrel sauna design seemed to be the best option. It was portable, affordable, and had a unique shape. But there were two unforgivable flaws;
- No waterproof roof. Nobody wants to have water dripping from the ceiling while inside their sauna. And those that do offer a “roof” simply offer a glorified tarp made of plastic, rubber, and asphalt that sits directly on the roof with no ventilation, trapping moisture and ensuring your sauna ceiling will rot within 10 years.
- Claustrophobic on the inside. Most barrel saunas simply have a 6’ diameter front and back wall. Once you put in a flat floor your left with headroom of 5’-9” or less. The circular shape means very uncomfortably arched backs while sitting on the benches and no upper bench for more intense heat.
With these flaws in mind and the invaluable help and expertise of Jaclyn on my side, we set out to improve the barrel design.
Our combined carpentry and design experience enabled us to design, build, and patent a fully ventilated, waterproof roof system with overhangs that will enable our sauna to outlast all other barrel saunas.
We also wanted to tweak the shape of the barrel to make more usable space. The result of this being a much less claustrophobic feel while inside, full length, two-tiered bench system, and an ergonomic backrest on the lower bench.
We finally set our dreams into motion when we moved back to Atlantic Canada. We settled into a small town on the edge of the Long-Range mountains and White Bay. Surrounded by the abundant, hearty, and slow growing stands of spruce, fir, aspen, and juniper, we had all the ingredients we needed to put our dream of making a sustainably and locally built sauna into reality.
To our happy surprise, our story and iconic saunas have captured the hearts of folks from Newfoundland and beyond. The orders came in such waves that we‘ve had to sell our on-site sauna multiple times, leaving us with no sauna to show potential customers, and worse yet, no sauna for us to use! A great problem to have for an up and coming small business.
The climate and beautiful scenery of Newfoundland resembles that of the Scandinavian countries so it’s no surprise that sauna culture would catch on here. We are so happy to be apart of it’s rise in popularity here in Eastern Canada.
I thank you for taking the time to read our story and learn about our passion.
Sincerely,
Josh Lyons
A Carpenter