Help! Questions about this stove for sauna

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martel

Member
Feb 9, 2006
213
Hey, folks. Haven't been in hear for years! But I'm back with a question. I'm doing a sauna build on my property, and I want to go with a wood stove (following all clearances) with a DIY rock basket on top and maybe around the sides. I'm looking to source a reasonably priced used stove for the project. Old circulators actually look like they could possibly be pretty ideal and there are a lot of Suburans on CL and Marketplace around here. The problem is, I don't know much about these kinds of stoves.

So a few questions:
I'm assuming I can take the skin off of it and use it for this application. I basically want the wood burner box inside to be able to use. Here's the idea of a DIY woodstove for a sauna (mine will be a bit less janky)
1670010060726.png

Do these circulators have air intakes on the sides/front?
Anything else you can tell me about these old dogs?
Thanks in advance. Below are some images of a random Suburban:

suburban 1.jpg
suburban 3.jpg
suburban 2.jpg
suburban 2.jpg
 
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I did just see that the dial opens and closes a front damper. I would need to build my rock basket around that. I think I could still utilize the dial somehow.
 
Welcome back!

The problem will be clearances to combustibles and firebox size unless the sauna is going to be for a very large room. The units are not tiny.