About Us

About Berkeley Sauna

Who We Are

Berkeley Sauna is a small contracting outfit that builds heat rooms and very little else. We work from Berkeley across the East Bay, and our jobs run from a plug-in infrared cabinet in a rented flat to an engineered cabin hanging off a Kensington slope. What ties them together is the part of the trade clients rarely see: the load calculation, the vapor barrier, the placement of the fresh-air inlet. Those details decide whether a room is still pleasant ten years on.

How long we have been at it

Our carpenters have been building saunas for more than ten years, and most of them spent years in cabinet shops and finish carpentry before that. Over that time Berkeley housing has taught us plenty: crawlspaces that flood in February, 1920s panels with two spare breaker slots, hillside lots where the only way in is a public footpath. We plan for all of it at the first visit.

The story behind the company

The business began with a sauna one of us built in a North Berkeley backyard, from a kit, over a long weekend. It heated slowly, the door warped by spring, and the bench boards cupped because nobody had left them room to move. Taking it apart and rebuilding it properly taught us more than the kit instructions ever did, and friends started asking for rooms of their own. The company grew from those requests, and the lessons from that first failure still set the order in which we build.

The team

We are a handful of carpenters trained in Finnish building methods and in the California codes that govern heaters and wet rooms. Nobody on the crew is a salesperson. The person who sketches your room is on site when it is framed, and the joinery on our benches reflects years at a cabinet bench: hidden screws, rounded edges, gaps sized for seasonal movement. Several of us bike to Tilden or climb at Indian Rock and finish the day in a sauna, so we have strong opinions about bench depth and where the ladle hangs.

Brands we work with

We install electric and wood-burning stoves from Harvia, Huum, Saunum, Tylo and Finnleo, infrared emitters from the established cabin makers, and steam generators from Mr. Steam and ThermaSol. For cold water we fit chillers and filters we can get parts for locally. Our preference goes to heaters with heavy stone loads, good controls and a parts supply we trust, which is the same test we apply on any sauna installation. We also handle sauna repair on units somebody else put in, including older heaters that need a replacement contactor or element.

Why we love it

The good part comes at the end. We load the stones, switch the heater on, and half an hour later the owner sits down on a bench that did not exist a month earlier. Everything before that, the permit counter, the stair carries, the conduit trenched around an oak, is in service of that moment. You can see the range of what that looks like across our Berkeley sauna builds, from indoor saunas tucked into a garage to cedar tub installs on a terrace, and each one began as a conversation in an empty space.

Our mission

To build saunas, tubs and plunges that people in Berkeley reach for through fog season and winter rain alike, and that still work well long after the warranty ends.

What we value

• Measure twice, and open the electrical panel before promising anything.
• Sustainably sourced wood and low-VOC finishes that stay inert at high heat.
• Honest advice, even when the right answer is a smaller job.
• A single contact person for your project from start to finish.