What are the rocks by the stove for? Absorbing heat?
Pouring water on iron or metal can crack it.
Oh yes the stone like masonry will store heat. Nice after the fire is out but not needed in a sauna after use.
It was interesting in Canada that most places I used to visit had a sauna.
While diet and individual matters , blackflies clouded us visitors while residents ignored them fir the most part.
We asked a guy one time (oh boy could he build , a gorgeous main lodge and he was building cabins all mostly log near it when I paid him several
dollars to pitch a tent and use his boat launch,showers and..sauna for a week) why the black flies were not attacking him.
He explained the sauna and shower use order and bug dope after.
Pretty much a matter of reducing skin exhaust fumes. We still exhale exhaust. But the type and amount ,(imagine hair scent ect.) matters.
Thus the sauna.
Woodsmoke helps ,or at least affects smell residues. A housewife didn't like coal smoke rolling through the house (no one did) but a whiff of wood smoke was not too bad.
If not to the point of coloring walls of course.
I had a habit of cracking the stove door after a fire was burning well. Not smoky , but a good whiff. L.o.l..
Heck , there were times I's sit in front of it with the door open.
Never built a sauna.
A guy I worked with (a runaway at age 13 and still a character) covered his stove in fieldstone and cement to retain heat while he was away.
When I was home shopping some years later a tired old farmhouse was in my budget.
Great rural setting , rough project type house view from the outside. Not having a realtor or anyone to let us in we wandered around the property..
I looked over the barn/garage built of salvaged mostly short boards....Hey wait a minute , that guy I worked with told me he built one out of scrap.
Found his last name crudely painted on the mailbox .. So I peeked in the livingroom window and there was so much stone cemented into an igloo shape , it's a wonder the floor held it.(!)