ABOUT US
Our Story
Hi there, we are Bran and Matt. We love spending as much time as possible in the outdoors exploring what North Wales has to offer. The outdoor sauna experience had certainly added to our enjoyment.
Our sauna story starts with lockdown. Bran, a Welsh/Canadian, was not able to travel back to visit her family in Canada where a sauna and a swim are a daily routine.
So, a stack of Welsh Red Cedar, a disused mobile home and a lockdown made the perfect ingredients to design and build a cozy sauna.
It quickly became our ‘lockdown project’ AND then it became ‘survive the Welsh winter’ strategy. What we didn’t anticipate was how beneficial it would be as therapy after Matt’s hip replacement.
What a transformation it has brought to our weekly routine, our friends and family included. We find it has an incredible capacity to interrupt the daily grind – you enter into a warm, fragrant space where there is time to sit and relax, connect and revive”.
Now we are eager to take our mobile, woodfired sauna on the road and out into the local community! There is a huge wave spreading through the country of sauna excitement. Cedar Hut is keen to join in bringing health, relaxation and wellbeing to both seasoned sauna users and those who have yet to try the experience.
Our Sauna
Our sauna has been handmade by Matt, who is a skilled craftsman by trade. He used as many materials to hand as possible, including the interior wood (Welsh western red cedar) and the exterior cladding (the panels from a static caravan). Upcycling at its best!
The very tree from which our sauna is made from was a Western Red Cedar, grown and managed sustainably from a UK certified forest within Wales. It was processed by local sawmill in Dyffryn Ogwen.
A Natural Medicine
Cedar is a powerful antimicrobial. Reflect on where it lives – cool wet forests where fungi and molds thrive. When you scratch cedar leaves or cut the wood, strong essential oils are released. These oils are cedar’s medicine to repel insects, molds, fungi, bacteria, and viruses.
Western Red Cedar has an extensive history of use by the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. The wood has been used for constructing housing, totem poles, and crafted into many objects, including masks, utensils, boxes, boards, instruments, canoes, vessels, and ceremonial objects. Tales say that a person could receive its strength just by standing with their back to the tree. Let’s hope that extends to sitting on it in a sauna!
