Infrared warms your skin with panels while the air stays cool. Wood-fired heats everything, the air, the timber, the bench beneath you, so the warmth wraps right around you. Ours sits between 80 and 100 degrees, that proper deep heat, and we throw water on the rocks for the wave of steam that catches your breath. It's the heat the old Finnish saunas were built on, the kind the long-running sauna studies were built around. Crackling fire, soft woody scent, heat you feel in your chest. A box of panels can't give you that.

Plenty of saunas are western red cedar and still hide glue, sealants and treated timber that off-gas the moment it heats up. We didn't want a bar of it. Ours is built with solid cedar, no toxic glue, a no synthetic materials baking into the air.

It's a communal sauna, up to six of you on the bench at once. Shared heat has a way of dropping the small talk and the armour with it. Some sessions stay quiet, everyone in their own world. Some you leave having met someone. The faces start to feel familiar. You’ll come for the sauna and find your people.

The heat helps your muscles recover, gets your circulation moving, eases a sore body after a run or a surf, softens a stressed head, and tends to bring a deeper sleep that night.