Furnaces for baths are full of variety - steel and cast iron, stone and brick, gas, wood, electric. Most light steam enthusiasts will use wood stoves with a steam generator and convection. And some may opt for an electric stove.
Two undoubted leaders in the production of bath furnaces have been identified on the Russian market - the Finnish company Harvia and the Russian Teplodar. Harvia produces stoves for dry-air baths and saunas, and Teplodar makes high-quality wood-burning stoves that fit any budget.
When choosing a furnace, one should be guided by such criteria as the calculated volume of the steam room, the desired steam quality, the presence or absence of convection and the combustion tunnel.
What kind of light steam is it?
Quality steam in the bath is light. The air in the steam room should not overheat. Therefore, the furnace must generate superheated fine steam, which is obtained only if the stones are heated to at least 500 degrees. But here another danger lies in wait - at such a temperature of the stones the air in the steam room will heat up above 100 degrees and the steam will be hard. Wood stoves equipped with a steam generator help to cope with this problem. The steam generator is a metal chamber mounted next to the furnace. It heats faster than stones and provides the same light steam in the steam room.
With or without convection?
The next criterion is the presence of convection. In a general sense, convection is the movement of air in a steam room when the cooled air goes down and enters from below under the oven, where it again heats up and goes up. This is the process of mixing layers of hot and cold air in the steam room, so that the bath heats up faster. An oven without convection should warm up for several hours. Convection ovens between the furnace and stones have a gap through which air flows, which allows you to warm the bath much faster.
