A traditional sauna heats a room and a bed of rocks to a high temperature, and you can ladle water over those rocks whenever you want steam. It is the Finnish original, and it is what most people picture when they think of a sauna. The heat can come from an electric heater or a wood-burning stove. Both are traditional saunas.
The stove heats a pile of stones. Those stones hold a great deal of heat, and they heat the air in the room. You sit in dry heat, commonly somewhere between 70 and 90 degrees Celsius. When you want humidity, you pour a ladle of water over the hot stones and it flashes to steam. In Finnish that burst is called loyly. Between splashes the room dries back out. That control over humidity, from bone dry to briefly steamy, is the heart of the traditional sauna.
People often ask which they should buy, a dry sauna or a wet sauna. They are the same room. Run it without water and it is a dry sauna. Add water to the rocks and it is a wet sauna for a minute. See wet vs dry sauna.
An infrared cabin is a different product. It has no rocks and no steam, and it warms your body with panels at a much lower air temperature. It cannot be run as a traditional sauna. The comparison is in traditional sauna vs infrared sauna.
Electric is the easy everyday choice and the most common in home saunas. Wood-burning needs no power and gives you a real fire, which suits off-grid sites. Both heat rocks you can pour water on. See traditional, electric and wood-burning saunas.
Procraft makes four CSA-approved electric sauna heaters. Every one includes 50 lbs of rocks, an integrated thermostat that heats to 110 degrees Celsius, a built-in 3-hour timer and a 5-year limited warranty.
Compare them all on the sauna heaters page.
We build them, just not on this site. Procraft's handcrafted Western red cedar saunas are at procraftsauna.ca. This store is the heaters.