Our path toward sustainability

The idea for the solar sauna was then put into practice in a very short time. It could be shown that no hot air was created during the HEF, but that it should only be created inside a concrete project implementation of the solar sauna and then only with a sustainable effect. For the first prototype, an old sauna barrel and a lot of old wood from an old barn in the Heubergen were recycled and transformed into a small solar sauna prototype. Using sunlight captured and concentrated with mirrors, the first sauna stones were heated, previously attached as needed using chicken fencing and wire mesh. In this way, Urs and Eerik produced the first steam in the sauna in February. This allowed the innovation team to demonstrate that the sauna, with the mirrors of the Lytefire technology developed by Urs and Eerik, could be operated. The technology, originally developed as an alternative to firewood stoves for developing countries to reduce the need for wood from increasingly scarce forests, has now been used for the first time in the wellness sector. Of course, the sauna with improvised fence mesh was not to be the end of the story, and an upgrade was needed immediately. In cooperation with the local wood and steel construction companies Georg Auer from Fideris and Markus Patt from TERNO in Küblis, the next version of the solar sauna was developed. This was tested during the lockdown phase in the untouched snowy landscape of the Fideris Heuberge. The pictures of the first steaming solar sauna at 2000 meters above sea level, lonely in the middle of the Swiss Alps, then attracted the attention not only of the international sauna association, but also of the Finnish press from Helsingin Sanomat.