We are a local Iowa family whose love for sauna bathing took us on a path to building our own rental mobile sauna
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About the name: Cedar Sauna Cloud
The name comes from the cedar interior & the concept of löyly.
Löyly is Finnish for the steam clouds rising from the sauna stove.
Our sauna has cedar, löyly and is mobile so it travels to as easily as a cloud.
Welcome,
We are Jessica and Nate Moore. We live in rural Iowa just south of Iowa City. We are married with 3 children, 3 dogs, 3 chickens and 1 cat. We both grew up in Iowa and love the peace of its natural beauty.
The idea to build Cedar Sauna Cloud was an evolution in our collective idea of access for our family to an outdoor sauna at our home where we enjoy spending time outdoors.
My husband Nate and I came to appreciate thermaculture's benefits in different ways.
Nate began regularly using traditional heat saunas because of his lifetime involvement with the sport of wrestling. He began to sauna bathe as a young wrestler because it helped relieve the stresses the sport put on his body. He likes to tell stories about enjoying sauning with wrestlers from many different cultures and how saunaing even without a shared language can create a meaningful cross cultural connection.
My introduction into thermaculture came at a Bikram yoga class in Chicago in my mid 20s. After my first class I felt light, more flexible and cleansed when I walked out the door onto a cold winter street. Hot yoga and my pop up infrared sauna became my connection and inspiration.
This winter Nate and I began experimenting with a cold plunge via a livestock trough in our backyard. Together we made a thirty day challenge to plunge with a small group of friends. We realized that this common wellness focused activity brought us closer together- which was needed to reconnect given busy schedules and three children.
At the end of the thirty days we asked ourselves, “How can we continue this positive activity and even augment it together?” There the idea of building a freestanding outdoor home sauna grew from there.
Out of practicality I first wanted a simple barrel electric sauna. Nate started off wanting an authentic wood burning sauna because he had actually experienced these and had fond memories. In our online browsing we realized many sauna kits were on backorder and more expensive than we realized.
I don't quite remember how the idea came to us but we all of a sudden decided to build our own sauna at our industrial shop space. We realized we were lucky to have people around us who were skilled enough to help and we also had rebate money from a store where we could buy the majority of the material.
I eventually accepted the idea of a wood burning sauna stove because the idea of a mobile sauna was so appealing to me. I've had an interest in converting school buses into tiny homes and tiny homes in general for years so I decided the work I would have to do to learn about wood stoves was worth having a fun custom designed mobile sauna.
In our research building our sauna I wanted to test one out to see what made a nice mobile sauna. I could not find any mobile sauna or rentals with a sauna anywhere near us! We luckily stumbled upon a pop sauna village event at Malcolm Yards in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We were lucky to leave the kids with grandparents and drove the 5 hours to spend a weekend there to learn about mobile saunas and enjoy ourselves. After that trip I realized I wanted to bring some of that Minnesota sauna culture back to Iowa not only for myself but also for others to enjoy.
When we got back I dove deep into the Finnish Sauna society's website and read “The Secrets of Finnish Sauna Design: A Handbook for Holistic Finnish Sauna Design” by Lassi Liikkanen. Together we designed a mobile sauna up on an old power washing trailer our business was no longer using. I made the initial floor plan with the concepts from "The Secrets of Finnish Sauna Design" in mind with bench height, the roof slant and of course “Löyly”- the heat/steam cloud one desires to float just right in a good sauna.
With Cedar Sauna Cloud we hope to bring sauna bathing access to Iowans via renting out our mobile sauna and creating special events. We hope to keep learning about sauna culture as our Cedar Sauna Cloud floats its way around town.
Thank you,
Jessica & Nate Moore