Pete, on the two options that did not fit.
Pete wanted a sauna in his backyard, and spent a while discovering that the market mostly offers two answers. The first is a pallet of lumber and a weekend — several weekends, in practice, ending with a heater you hope your electrician can wire correctly.
The second is a finished cabin that arrives on a flatbed and gets set down by a crane, priced to match. Handsome, and more sauna than his yard or his budget was asking for.
Vesta is the middle of those two. Thermally modified Nordic spruce, built on site by our own crew in about a day. Pete's goes in later this month.
What that Vesta install looks like on the day: a crew arrives in the morning, the sauna goes up on the crushed stone pad Pete had made and leveled beforehand, with the electrical run brought out to a disconnect on the wall. The bench, backrest and floorboards go in as the sauna shell closes up. Our installers apply the finishing touches - a non-toxic exterior UV protecting stain, and sweat and water wicking finish wax to the interior benches, backrests & floorboards. No pallet sitting in the driveway for weeks waiting to be assembled, no neighbors watching a crane swing over the fence.
The part Pete asked about most was the wood. Thermally modified Nordic spruce is baked rather than treated, which is what keeps it dimensionally stable through a Wasatch winter and stops it going rough and grey the way untreated cedar does after a few seasons in the Utah summer sun. It's a centerpiece for your backyard for years to come, so it is a fair thing to ask about.
Most Utah yards sit somewhere between a weekend project and a crane. That middle is the whole reason we build the way we do — and the showroom in Heber City exists so you can sit in one before you decide which end of it you are on.
