[fsloth]

There is a sauna in nearly every house in Finland, and if not, then municipal swimming halls offer an affordable alternative which everyone can afford. No need to join it with heavy exercise. Also, going to a sauna does not signal a socioeconomic status.

[pbhjpbhj]

Is there no charge for municipal facilities?

It's amazing if Finland has solved poverty to the level that every household can afford to set aside the space for a sauna and costs of running it.

In the UK heat poverty is a widespread problem due to the costs of heating fuels. Presumably saunas are being run from geothermal sources to make it cheap enough??

I'm assuming saunas are cupboard sized, is that accurate or are all these homes dedicating a full room of space?

[dharma1]

The prevalence of saunas in Finland is mainly because it has been a part of the Finnish way of life for thousands of years, not an exotic luxury in the way it might be perceived in some other countries.

Municipal facilities (swimming halls with saunas etc) are charged, probably about 4 euros per visit, with discounts for students and elderly.

The saunas people have in their homes these days are typically electric. Electricity prices are roughly the same, perhaps a bit less than UK - an hour of sauna with 4kw stove would probably cost around 0.5 euros in electricity. Some apartment blocks have shared saunas you can book for free, some have small saunas in each apartment. In detached houses you typically get a bit larger saunas.

In general access to saunas is widely available for everyone regardless of socioeconomic status, and there is less economic inequality in general compared to the UK.

Heating is a separate topic but I'll reply briefly - majority of housing in Finland is heated with district heating, rather than individual gas boilers in each house, like in the UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating#Finland

As a result, heating tends to be cheaper for consumers compared to the UK. Also, Finnish housing tends to be much better insulated than housing in the UK (because of colder winters).

Outside cities, where population is sparse, people heat their houses with electricity/wood/oil/geothermal - with many new builds now opting for geothermal.

[ptaipale]

Just a note about district heating: it's not majority of all housing (market share somewhere around 45 %), but it is majority of new housing (around 60 %).

See http://energia.fi/files/799/Lu_Kostama_Mikkeli.pdf slide 10.

And saunas are heated with electricity in towns, although a few old public facilities still run on wood stoves, as well as private saunas of those who like the "pure" feeling (such as myself).

[pbhjpbhj]

Thanks for a complete and interesting response.

[beefield]

> In the UK heat poverty is a widespread problem due to the costs of heating fuels.

I would imagine that he cost of the heating fuels is pretty much the same all over Europe. I think the difference is that in the Nordic countries people seem to insulate their houses better, like using double or even triple glasses in windows to reduce heat waste.

[distances]

Yes, triple glass has been the norm for decades. You of course don't open the windows during the winter, and ventilation is almost always mechanical so that it can include heat recovery from the outbound air flow, allowing further savings in heating cost and emissions.

[jodrellblank]

I would imagine that he cost of the heating fuels is pretty much the same all over Europe.

UK has 3.16 million hectares of woodland[1], Finland has 23 million hectares[2] of forest. UK population is 65 million, Finland has 5 million. [Wikipedia]

With 7 times more trees potentially providing fuel for 1/13th as many people, shouldn't it work out noticably cheaper?

[1] http://www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/infd-7aqknx

[2] http://www.metla.fi/metinfo/sustainability/finnish.htm

[beefield]

I do not know, but if wood (or biomass) was noticeably cheaper than fossil fuels, I would think there was no need for climate agreements and there would be a large industry shipping wood from Canada and Siberia to use as a fuel.

[Symbiote]

Wood is rarely used as a fuel.

Gas, oil, electricity, district heating or geothermal heat are used. Prices will be roughly similar, where the supply exists.

[jodrellblank]

Wikipedia says "The wood stove sauna is the most common type of sauna [in Finland] outside of the city areas".

In the context of "It's amazing if Finland has solved poverty to the level that every household can afford to set aside the space for a sauna and costs of running it.", and rural areas tend to be poorer than city areas, discussing wood as fuel for said saunas seems relevant.

[vidarh]

The UK and Finland have very similar GDP per capita, but the UK is far more right wing than the Nordic countries have traditionally been, and as a result have a far less well developed benefits system and far larger salary differences. It's not that the Nordic countries have no poverty, but certainly the proportion of people who are absolutely destitute is much, lower.

Couple that with the higher housing costs associated with far higher population density (16 per km^2 in Finland vs. 255 per km^2 in the UK) and it seems less weird.

[hx87]

> It's amazing if Finland has solved poverty to the level that every household can afford to set aside the space for a sauna and costs of running it.

If you live in an apartment building, not every unit has a sauna--there is one shared across several units. If you live in a detached house, having a small sauna doesn't take up much space, and since it's so small and only used for an hour a day (if that), it's cheap to heat.

> In the UK heat poverty is a widespread problem due to the costs of heating fuels.

Based on my experiences in the UK, it's not heating fuel costs that's the problem, it's the sheer ubiquity of poorly insulated and air-sealed brick (and in Scotland, stone) houses with leaky single-pane sash windows.