Just wondering if anyone's every done anything like this using a steam generator. I don't know how practical it is to try and turn an entire bathroom into a steam room, but I live in an apartment and I have no room for any kind of steam shower. Am I dreaming?
Thanks...
- jd
You might use the existing shower. I made a steam generator to bend wood from a $20 1500 watt coffee urn, bypassing the thermostat and adding a tube to the top, with some gravel to make boiling less explositve. Autofill would be nice, eg a toilet or stock tank float valve on a cold water bucket that connects with a tube to the urn spigot.
Keeping a shower enclosure 120 F with a thermostat controlling the steam generator in a 70 F room with 1500x3.41 = 5.1K Btu/h makes the enclosure conductance 102 Btu/h-F max. If it's 2'x6'x8', its 152 ft^2 of surface needs an R152/102 = R1.5 R-value, not much. I'd go higher, eg R15, like
2" of foil-faced polyiso foamboard with fiberglass facing, to lower the average power to 150 watts, boiling about 1/2 pound of water per hour.Nick
And what do you think the effects of pumping all the steam into the bathroom will be on the bathroom walls, ceiling, etc, which were not designed to handle it? How long before you have paint, wallboard, damage and eventually even damage to the structure from all that moisture? Even if you try to limit it to the shower, most shower enclosures are open at the top.
Close the top :-)
Yeah, and it should be real comfy taking a schvitz in typical small apt shower stall.
well, ya gotta work with what you have...
I wonder if there's anyone around my area (LA) that would build such a thing for me...
- j
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