Looking for a Sauna Stove

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mattie5960

Member
Mar 28, 2022
49
PA, USA
My wife wants a sauna, and I'm trying to do it inexpensively. There are many sauna tent options out there, but they all have 3in flue holes, which is small for every woodstove that's not purpose-built for these sorts of applications.

The problems with the purpose-built stoves is that they can be expensive, and worse, they're all very light (25 to 40lbs), so, of course the reviews are riddled with overfire stories, warping, etc.

I can find used cheap, smallish, but real duty-built stoves for under $200, but they all have 6in exhausts. I have found 3in to 6in expander pipes specifically for adapting 3in pellet stove exhaust pipe to 6in pipe, but these are opposite in orientation to what I need. I'm fairly confident that the 6in side of these expanders will not fit inside the 6in exhaust. Maybe I could cut a slit and force it into the stove exhaust port, but I'm nervous it wouldn't produce a good seal and smoke would just vent into the sauna tent. I'd also have to also mangle the 3in side to fit the outside of the 3in pipe going up and out of the tent flue hole, so this plan seems a little jenky.

Are there other options I'm not considering short of building a whole sauna building to accommodate a real stove?
 
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3” exhaust will cause a regular woodstove to become a Smokey mess as the volume they put out will be too much for 3” pipe.

6”=28.27”sq
3”=7.07”sq

There’s 4x the area in a 6” pipe.

The reason many small tent stoves are lightly made is ease of moving them around, and speed that they heat up. It’ll take much longer to heat a 300lb hunk of steel vs a 40lb hunk of steel.
 
3” exhaust will cause a regular woodstove to become a Smokey mess as the volume they put out will be too much for 3” pipe.

6”=28.27”sq
3”=7.07”sq

There’s 4x the area in a 6” pipe.

The reason many small tent stoves are lightly made is ease of moving them around, and speed that they heat up. It’ll take much longer to heat a 300lb hunk of steel vs a 40lb hunk of steel.
This was another concern I had; I'm not sure a regular stove made for a 6" pipe would even have a strong enough draft to burn if I tried a 3" pipe.

Seems like I'm getting the heaviest tent stove I can find and sticking with factory design intentions.