Steam Shower Indulgence Pays Relaxation Dividends

October 12, 2015

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Steam Shower Benefits

Imagine, It’s the end of a long day. You’re tired, or achy, or just want to chase away the winter chill. So you step into your bathroom push a button in your new shower stall, plop yourself down on a bench, and melt into a soothing cloud of eucalyptus-scented steam. Twenty minutes later, you emerge feeling relaxed, renewed, and feeling great.

That kind of indulgence used to require a trip to a health spa. But more and more home owners are opting to recreate the spa experience at home by turning their ordinary shower stalls into warm, vaporous havens called steam showers.

Along with the benefits to your skin and sinuses, there’s no standing around waiting for a whirlpool tub to fill or a sauna to heat up—and when you’re done steaming, you just turn on the shower for a refreshing rinse. To summon the steam, you simply hit the digital controls on the wall inside the shower stall. That triggers an electric valve to fill the small steam generator with about a 2 litres of cold water.

Then, just like a plug-in tea kettle, the generator’s electric element brings the water to a boil, heating the water to a steamy boil that takes only seconds as the steam generator is mounted right on the back of the shower and applies steam on demand as called for by the programmable controls inside the shower. A pipe channels the hot vapor to the steam outlet port, which fills the shower stall with tropical moisture that never gets above a safe 50 degrees Celcius.

Enjoy your home spa as long as you want:
Steaming for 20 minutes consumes a mere two litres of water and only costs pennies to operate your luxury steam shower, but the benefits are priceless. By that reckoning, steam is a “green” way to bathe as even a water-saving shower head sprays about 50 gallons of water in the same period.

Steam units are sized based on the stall’s volume in cubic feet, its shape, and what it’s lined with. In a typical 4-by-5-by-8-foot stall (160 cubic feet) covered with ceramic tile requires at least a seven-kilowatt generator. For a stall tiled in stone, you’ll need twice as much steam-generating capacity. By comparison for a free standing self contained steam shower with tempered glass walls you will only need a 3-6kw steamer to do the same job as they work more efficiently and the steam generator is mounted closer to the steam outlet with the steamer mounted right on the back of the shower wall.

Installation and Costs:

Installing one of these free standing steam showers at home can seem undaunting, but while they look like something out of star trek they are surprisingly easy to install and an average handy man can tackle the task usually in less than a day.

First, you’ll need a dealer; you can find one locally or online. Some good companies to deal with are Beauty Saunas and Baths in Calgary, Alberta or online at www.perfectbath.com where you can have your new shower shipped right to your door and they give free technical support to guide you along the way for your installation of your steam shower. For about $3,000 to $5,000, you can get a stand-alone, steam-ready enclosure that just needs to have the wiring and plumbing hooked up. These futuristic looking steam showers will be the WoW factor in your newly renovated master bath.

Steam-shower makers are betting their products will eventually nudge out the bathtub as the preferred place to luxuriate in the Canadian and American bathroom. Experts predict steam showers will be in 40% of homes in the United States and Canada by 2020 because of the push towards modular steam showers from developers, remodelers and custom home builders installing them in the majority of new construction and remodeled homes.

– The Basics

•What it is: A moisture-sealed shower enclosure equipped to deliver clouds of steam before, during, or after your shower.

How it works: Cold water piped into a steam generator is heated to the boiling point and then sends fresh steam to an aperture in the shower stall. Digital controls inside the shower let the user adjust the steam’s temperature and duration and can even add piped-in aromas, lighting, and music.

What to look for: Delivery speed. Better models take less than a minute to build up a head of steam.
Remote controls – That way, you don’t even have to get up from your bench to adjust steam time or temperature.
Auto-flush – Reduces calcium deposits on the heating element and saves you from a manual flush-out every 50 uses.

Contributed By www.perfectbath.com