Why real fire, and never an electric heater?
Because the steam comes off a heavy mass of stone that has been heated for hours, and an electric element cannot hold heat the way a fired stove does.
Steam in a banya is not made by a machine. It is made by a ladle of water thrown onto stones. What matters is the mass of that stone and how hot it is: hot enough to flash the water instantly into a fine steam that feels dry on the skin, and heavy enough to do it again a minute later without going cold.
The heaters in most gyms and hotels hold a fraction of that stone and run cooler. Water on them gives a damp, heavy cloud instead of a burst — when it is permitted at all, which in American gyms it often is not, for liability reasons. This is the single biggest reason a gym sauna and a banya are not the same experience, and why people who have only met the former have no useful reference for the latter.
A real fire adds the rest of it: the sound, the smell in the room, and a heat curve that rises and falls instead of sitting on a thermostat setting. Working with that curve rather than against it is part of the craft.
Updated 2026-09-02