Or notes on the construction of a stove for a bath from rims by Alexander Ivanov
My sauna serves as a living existing example of a sauna with a rim stove.
I hope that these comments can help people who decide to make a home-made sauna stove from wheel disks with their own hands and avoid possible mistakes, and my sauna stove and its photo will show one of the possible options for implementing a stove from car disks., writes Alexander Ivanov.
Of course, such a stove can be used not only in the bath. With minimal modifications and alterations (or without them) to suit your needs, it can be used as a garage or workshop oven. From the disks of cars, you can make a good oven for a cauldron, a smokehouse oven, a small potbelly stove.
Such stoves, as a rule, are made portable, without a brick firebox.
Where to begin. Three times I tried to write an article, everything somehow did not stick. There is no clear step-by-step presentation plan in my head. Therefore, I will tell without much structuring. Whatever I remember, I will write. I apologize in advance to possible readers for the chaotic narration.
If you carefully read a magazine article on how to make a simple and effective stove for a bath from car rims from ZIL-130 and looked at the drawings of a bath stove, you probably realized that locksmith skills and a good welder are needed to make this stove.
Wheels (KAMAZ, from ZIL-130 or others) and the desire to make a good, solid and simple stove for a bath are also required. The article provides detailed drawings, diagrams, plans and a description of the furnace from discs that allow this to be done.
Once again I want to emphasize an important point: in order to weld a stove for a bath from rims, you need a good welder. With a hatred and a swoop, like the fact that I myself with a mustache and weld the stove without problems, and even with some kind of household welding machine or home-made, do not flatter yourself. This is just the case when you need to resort to the help of a professional.
I’ll make a reservation right away: everything that the author of the above article described is reliable. A combined (both brick and metal) stove made of car rims is quite economical, the bath warms up quickly, does not cool down for a long time, and dries well.
The latter advantage is very important for sufficiently spacious baths, since purely metal sauna stoves cannot ensure normal drying of the bath without additional heating or effective forced ventilation.
The steam in the bath is amazing, hot water is left for the wife to wash the next day (after washing 5-6 people). It is worth saying that the author’s hot water tank or boiler is also made of a rim and holds 40 liters of water, in my stove the hot water tank (boiler) is made of used stainless steel and holds 80 liters of water, which is enough for washing 10 people .
If you also need more hot water, then you can weld a boiler (tank) from two disks, if there is a desire and a sufficient height of the bath. Now there are many domestic and foreign metal stoves for baths (quite expensive).
Many of my neighbors, who built baths with such metal stoves later than me, note with chagrin that their stoves are oh so far from mine. T
The heat in baths with such stoves is retained worse and such baths also dry out worse, since there is no heat accumulator in the form of brickwork (even a small one). Such stoves can be described in one word - potbelly stoves.
The heat in the baths with such stoves is kept until the stove is heated.
I will say a few words about the modes of soaring or about the types of baths. Different sources give slightly different characteristics, but the essence is as follows.
- Finnish sauna: temperature 100-120°C, relative humidity 10% or less
- Hot Russian bath: temperature 70-85°C, relative humidity 25-40%
- Russian bath classic: temperature 55-65°C, relative humidity 60-70%
The wheel sauna stove provides all these modes sequentially from a higher temperature to a lower one (at least in my sauna). I've been taking a steam bath since I was seven years old and I prefer Russian hot bath. I'll tell you why.
I like to take a steam bath, that is, whip myself on sinful bodies with a good broom. In the sauna, this action is not a priori. A broom dries instantly at this temperature and humidity. The pleasure of steaming with such a broom is below average. As the steamers say - broom does not fit to the body.
Some bathers dip a broom into the water, but this is no longer a sauna. Humidity rises, the constant dipping of the broom distracts from the process of soaring. And the sauna itself does not involve the use of a broom. The process of inactive monotonous sitting or lying in the sauna, waiting for sweating and the moment of truth does not appeal to me.
As one good friend of mine says, you sit like a dormant chicken on a perch.
A hot Russian banya is a completely different matter: sweating starts faster, the broom does not dry out, you can steam both overlapping with or without a guy, or by pressing and blowing. The steam is dry, you don’t need to wear a mitten, you breathe freely.
There is no such pleasure and activity in the sauna by definition. The Russian classical bath is also not bad, but the humidity is already higher, you can’t take a steam bath without a mitten, and the personal belongings are already burning when steam is supplied. At any bath, a hat on the head is a mandatory attribute.
To achieve the sauna temperature, and most importantly - the absence of humidity, it is not necessary to fill the tank with water. There are practically no sauna lovers among my friends. The usual process of soaring in my bath is as follows:
- Heating the bath to a temperature of 90-95 °
- Bathing up to a temperature of 75-80 °
- Three visits to the men's steam room
- One-time washing of men (the bath after that turns into a classic one)
- Entry of women, their soaring and washing - in accordance with their capabilities and passions
Something got me carried away, distracted from the topic.
Photo 1 - Entrance to the steam room
I have already mentioned that I built this bathhouse and, accordingly, the stove with my own hands fifteen years ago. About four years ago, the brick part of the furnace was shifted.
The main reason for the re-laying was the beginning of brick chipping along the perimeter of the furnace door. The thing was that I used to have a high door, a brick higher than the current one, and above it there was only one row of brickwork.
According to all stove canons, there should be at least two rows of bricks above the door, I draw the attention of potential developers to this. In addition, the dimensions of the oven and the standard width of the door with its location in the middle of the oven dictated special masonry conditions.
Near the door, literally quarters of bricks had to be laid, which is highly discouraged. The door on the first oven was located in the middle, and not like in the pictures in the magazine. Therefore, it is desirable to position the furnace door so as to use not quarters, but halves of bricks.
The second reason was the poor quality of the brick. This refers to its shape and geometry. Some bricks, due to their concavity-convexity, unevenness, and other things, had to be finished on a large sandpaper or recoup on the thickness of the seams.
And the seams should be the minimum possible thickness (3, many 5 mm). Any good stove maker will tell you that the less clay in the stove, the better. At the time when the bathhouse was being built, finding a good oven brick was a problem of problems.
Now there is a very good oven (I emphasize, oven) brick, for example, Kostroma. If you look closely at the photo of the stove, you can see that the bottom two rows of bricks at the level of the blower door remained from the original red brick.
I did not replace them. The rest of the brick type fireclay. Its shape and dimensions are perfect. It comes in two sizes. The first is the size of an ordinary oven brick, the second is a little smaller in size.
Photo 2 - General view of the disc oven
The walls behind the stove, like those of the author of the article, are protected by edge-on brickwork. This was done to ensure fire safety in the bath and is especially important for wooden baths. A small sheet of stainless steel is placed on the floor near the furnace for the duration of the furnace, also for fire safety.
The fire-fighting transition of the chimney through the ceiling is made differently for me. The author of the article has a chimney with a brick passage through the ceiling resting with all its weight on the stove (on the bottom of the water tank).
In my design, the pipe with a small gap enters the pipe coming out of the water tank. The chimney is made from the remains of pipes for a well with a diameter of 133mm. In common speech - one hundred and thirty-third trumpet.
The branch pipe coming out of the water tank has a height exceeding the ceiling level by 150-200 millimeters. That is, rises above the level thermal insulation ceiling by 150 millimeters. Its diameter is about 140 millimeters. The gap between the pipes is sealed with asbestos cord and clay.
To prevent the chimney from falling into the pipe of the water tank-boiler, two corners 1.2 meters long are welded to it perpendicularly.
They rest on floor beams, which I have in 1 meter increments. It turns out such an inverted T-shaped design. The corners rest on the beams through heat-insulating pads (rockwool, clay, brick). Fire crossing through the ceiling is done like this:
- The hole in the ceiling for the passage of the chimney is square or round with a side size or diameter of about 600mm - this is done to ensure a fire gap between the pipe and the ceiling boards.
- The transition is carried out through a pallet (baking tray) made of stainless steel - its dimensions are along the contour of the oven masonry (approximately 700x700mm). Flanging of the pallet is about 10-15mm (a little more will be better). The diameter of the hole for the pipe is such that it passes through the pallet with a small gap to compensate for the thermal expansion of the pipe.
- The pallet is stuffed with clay (naturally soaked, plastic) along the flanging and attached to the ceiling stainless (brass, bronze) bolt screws. In no case with self-tapping screws from black or galvanized (everything burns out instantly).
- Having fixed the pallet, add clay from the side of the attic to the cavity from the pipe to the ceiling boards, that is, fill the sawn hole completely flush with the boards.
- Next, install a frame (a box without a bottom and a tire) preferably wooden, 200-300 mm high), so that its upper level is at least 100 mm higher than the junction of the water tank pipe and the chimney.
- The frame must first be placed on the chimney, which is then installed on the beams. The frame should be provided with holes for the passage of corners (larger than the size of the corners), which are then covered with clay.
- Through a hole in the roof (with a diameter of 300-350 millimeters), a casing rolled from a galvanized sheet is put on the chimney, the space between the casing and the galvanization must be filled with non-combustible heat-insulating material (mineral wool), preferably Rockwool. They can wrap the pipe in advance and secure it with wire. At the transition point of the roof, the casing practically does not heat up and fire-prevention cutting can be omitted.
- Next, the frame is filled with expanded clay (you can also use sand, but it is much harder).
- Here, in fact, that's all. (You can see how the transition looks from the side of the attic in the second article at this link)
Why do I talk so long and tediously about fire safety in the bath. Yes, because this is far from an idle question - in my memory there are more than one burnt bathhouse in our summer cottage. After the fires, the neighbors came to me in a jamb to see how the fire-prevention cutting was done at my place.
Photo 3 - Another type of oven
The photographs and drawings show that the author of the article and I have tanks (boilers) in the hot water bath also made differently. His boiler for hot water is made of a rim. My tank is made of stainless steel. The tank cover is made of two segments.
The larger segment, including the pipe, is welded around the perimeter to the tank, the pipe is also welded around the circumference to the segment.
The smaller segment is a hinged lid that fits snugly against the tank. Where my tank rests on the disc is a clay packing. It is located by a roller along the flanging of the disk. This design of the sauna stove made of discs allowed me to easily and simply shift the stove
A clamp with long ears is put on the pipe of the water tank, which is jacked up on both sides, the tank rises, the sauna stove from the discs is moved to the side table and removed. You can work with the brickwork of the firebox.
Under the clamps for the duration of work for safety, you can and should install reliable supports. The clamp is made from a piece of 133 pipe, sawn lengthwise into two halves, to which mounting strips and ears are welded.
The stove has a safety fence so as not to get burned (in the bath you can slip and dizzy). The author of the article has a fence made of bricks on the edge, mine is made of bars.
In one remark, the concern was expressed that a spongy type of soot deposits would be deposited in the pipe passing through the water tank (the author apparently had a bad experience).
Yes, this is sometimes observed in samovar-type tanks, but only in the case of an incorrect furnace design. Before the construction of a bath and a stove from disks, I studied a lot of literature on this topic.
Two or three sources mentioned the correct design of the furnace, namely that there should be a distance of at least 40-60 cm (even more) from the grate to the first obstacle in the form of a vault or other furnace structure. This is necessary for the correct mode of burning firewood.
With this distance, soot is least formed, which can settle on the internal elements of the furnace. This is especially true for heaters, in which the stones are directly washed by hot gases (smoke) - closed heaters.
A living example: a neighbor built a luxurious sauna with a heater of this type. A month later, she was unrecognizable, the steam room was covered with soot.
When steam was supplied from the door, which closed the channel with stones for the duration of the furnace, a cloud of soot flew out, which covered everything and everything. The neighbor was forced to put a stretchable movie screen in front of the door, but this did little to help. After some time, he was forced to rebuild the stove.
Returning to my stove from rims, I can state with responsibility that the mode of burning firewood in it is the most optimal.
During the entire time of operation of the bath, I never had to clean the chimney, and during the aforementioned disassembly and re-laying of the stove, not the slightest hint of the formation of sooty spongy plaque was found. At the developer of the furnace, the whole design was thought out optimally.
In addition, it is necessary to insulate the chimney well and occasionally heat the stove with aspen wood.
Aspen gives long flames that burn out soot well. This is a well known old village method.
It is unnecessary to say that coniferous firewood, old fences and other wooden rubbish should not be used to heat the bath. Do not skimp on birch, aspen, oak!!!, alder!!! firewood - a stove and a bath will repay you a hundredfold.
Photo 4 - View of the shelves
In the photo above, you can see that my bath is quite high. Its height is 225cm. I don’t suffer from claustrophobia, but in those small, low and small steam rooms where I happened to be, I feel uncomfortable, there’s nowhere even to swing a broom, and I don’t even talk about taking a steam bath together or three. The length of my bath-steam room is 3.5m, width is 3m. As you understand, the steam room and the washing department are combined for me. From the very beginning, the bath was conceived as a family bath, so I decided to make it like that. The bath is spacious and comfortable. I start to bathe from my feet (as they taught me from Kinders) lying on a shelf, resting my legs on the upper rail of the fence. Then I get up on the seat and without resting my head on the ceiling (height 180 cm) I continue to steam, steaming up to the waist. After that, I sit on the shelves and steam the upper half of the body (you can do this while standing). It’s more correct to bathe lying on a shelf, but you can’t do without an assistant-partner. I'm used to steaming as described. But some of my friends like to bathe in this way - with an assistant spacer, lying on a shelf and exhausted with pleasure. A not very wide seat, which does not interfere with the approach to the shelf, allows such aesthetes to hover with at least three brooms. The shelves and the home-made lime headrest and footboard are covered with a habesh sheet for the duration of the soaring, preferably a terry sheet. Despite a fairly decent cubic capacity, the bath quickly reaches the desired temperature and keeps heat well. We usually do two or three visits, then we begin to wash. If there are more than two bathers and bathers, I bring an additional two-meter bench into the bathhouse, on which you can not only sit, but also stand. Between visits we drink green tea with herbs or beer, whatever you like. If among the women who bathe and wash after men, there are extreme lovers (and they are) and they also need hot Russian bath, then I open the hood in the bath (to reduce humidity) and heat the stove to the desired temperature with the hood open. This takes about half an hour, then the hood closes. The temperature is adjusted to taste, the humidity is reduced, while the bath is dried to the state of a freshly heated bath. It would be nice to bring the firebox to the dressing room for this, like the author of the article. In general, the location of the stove in the bath is not such a simple matter. It is necessary to take into account many interrelated factors: the location of the door, shelf, benches, windows, the convenience of washing and moving in the bath, and other things (including the safety of the steam-washing action).
I will continue about the stove. The photo shows that the corners of the furnace are pulled together with metal bands, fastened to the corners located at the corners of the furnace (please forgive the tautology). Stove makers professionally call such edging screeds faience. Why dont know. The purpose of faience, I think, is clear. In the steam room and locker room there are hoods that are plugged with ordinary plugs with liners made of thick hard foam. The handle of the plug in the steam room is lined with wood, as well as the handles of the taps - you can get burned. You can come up with and make more modern hoods, but your hands do not reach
Photo 5 - View from the shelf
The bathhouse was built in those days when it was not possible to find a good lining, so it was sheathed with the usual small-town folding, however, I found Finnish galvanized nails (square section, hot-dip galvanized). For the ceiling above the shelf and seat, non-resinous boards with almost no knots were selected. I found lindens on the shelves. Despite a fairly long operation, the boards still exude resin. Every year (sometimes more often) at the end of the summer season (end of November), I scrape the boards from the resin that has come out (especially on the ceiling). Once every three to four years, I additionally treat the boards with bleach based on hypochlorite. After that, I thoroughly rinse, heat and dry the bath. Everything disappears very quickly and nothing is felt on New Year's Eve.
Probably the last thing I want to say.
During the re-laying of the furnace, the following was discovered: the lower divider from the temperature (it is the highest in this zone) led and twisted so that it broke off or broke three of the four struts. They were made of 20 rods for me (the author of the article had 10-12).
I foolishly cut off the fourth one and removed the splitter altogether. Previously, the lower furnace rim was heated almost to a scarlet heat (now it is red-hot), it was necessary to replace the lower bar of the fence every three years.
Stones of 60 kg (as much can easily fit in my stove made of disks) heated up better due to the flow of hot gases around the disk, a couple was enough for 10-12 people.
The water boiled only towards the end of the heating of the bath to the desired condition, which ensured optimal humidity. After removing the lower divider, the water began to heat up faster, the humidity became higher, the stones heat up a little worse.
I had to additionally put two diesel brake pads under the stones (they are cast iron and have a very high heat capacity). The whole design of the furnace from the author was optimal. My lower divider was made from a blank of an elliptical bottom for boiler-supervision vessels, at least 10 mm thick.
If he was thinner, he would not tear the struts, as it seems to me. The bath still functions normally and no one around notices the difference. But I want to restore the way it was.
I am thinking over options, either to remove the stove again, or to somehow get a reduced divider through the firebox and fix it on the masonry.
In connection with the deformation and breakage of the lower divider due to high temperature, I draw the attention of the possible builders of such a furnace to this fact. It seems to me that in order to prevent such cases, it is necessary to use low-carbon steel, and not a boiler room, as was the case in my case.
Probably, you need to choose the optimal thickness of the divider. So that, firstly, it simply does not burn out, and secondly, so that due to deformation (to some extent inevitable) it does not break the struts.
It may be necessary to use stainless steel, it may be to think over the floating (movable) design of the struts and the divider (which I want to do), maybe something else.
In this regard, I draw your attention to one more floating (moving) node. It is highlighted by me in the figure with a red circle. It must be done exactly as described in the article.
Everyone will have their own special stove. For example, I have a KAMAZ lower disk, which is very successful, you will have something of your own.
With a high degree of probability, both gas, and KAMAZ, and MAZ disks, disks from wheeled tractors and combines can be used for the furnace. In this case, the dimensions of the furnace and, accordingly, the brickwork may change.
It is not difficult to make new orders for laying the furnace with other disks. It seems to me that the article from the magazine and my additions cover in detail the question of how to make an oven from truck disks with your own hands.
A few words about stones. Now the stones have become more affordable, you can buy any that you like. I once bought a porphyrite. Three packages of 20 kg of different fractions, the total weight of the stones is 60 kg.
This is enough for my bath. If this is not enough for someone, you can carefully lay another 20-30 kilograms of stones and also carefully surround them with a metal (stainless) screen with a grid from the side of the shelf and fix it (the grid should be with the appropriate cell).
I am very pleased with my stones, the steam is good, the stones have not burst during all this time. Once every two or three years I boil and steam them in a container with trisodium phosphate and rinse well using a stiff brush.
It is even better to use SF-2U powder for boiling, which is used to decontaminate military equipment. Eats off all deposits accumulated on stones and metal for one or two. We used it in Chernobyl, even washed ourselves with a weak solution (unfortunately, the powder ended a long time ago, and I don’t recommend washing).
Many now buy jadeite (who has enough money). This semi-precious stone is very good, but many sources claim that it is impossible to heat it more than 400-500 °.
In my heater in the zone of maximum heating, the temperature is much higher, they checked it either with an industrial thermocouple, or with a pyrometer from a factory thermal (I don’t remember). For this reason, I did not change my stones.
Many of my friends use quartzite of different shades and gabbro diabase - everyone is happy. And from the use of talco chlorite reviews are negative. Just in case, let me remind you that the shelves should be located above the stones.
About essential oils. I am not a fan of the exotic, and the bath is not a SPA-salon or a hairdresser. Therefore, I use oils with native smells and in small quantities. And I don’t drip into the ladle and don’t splash on the stones, the effect of this is short-lived and the stones will inevitably become clogged from burnt oil.
I put an enamel mug with water and a few drops of oil directly on the stove five to ten minutes before the start of the bath procedure.
There should be enough water in the mug so that it does not boil away until the end of the bath session.
Even better, if possible, bring a bunch of fresh birch, pine, spruce branches, a bunch of mint or oregano to the steam room and put them on some metal sheet.
I won’t say anything about brooms, here everyone has their own preferences. http://a-v-i.ru/stove_sauna.html
Jan 27, 2016 Galinka
