Lamppa Manufacturing Inc.

1930s – Great Grandpa Richard Lamppa and his son Herbert Lamppa made saunas in Embarrass, Minnesota, for the people of Embarrass and surrounding areas.  Grandpa Richard was an expert welder.  He had honed his welding skills working for the Erie Mining Company and the Duluth shipyards.

Saunas were a family thing in the area, and everyone wanted one of Richard Lamppa’s because everyone knew they were the best.  

In 2015 Daryl Lamppa (Richard’s grandson) was asked if he’d be interested in an old sauna that a lady had at her Lake Vermillion home.  They further checked it out discovered that Daryl’s grandfather had made it back in the 1930s.  Mike Salo, of Vermillion, remembered the day Richard made this particular stove because Richard wrote the name “Steam King” across the front with a welding rod.  The name remains to this day.  It is believed that this is one of the very first Lamppa Saunas built.  Now back in possession of the Lamppa family.

Daryl Lamppa, the grandson of Richard Lamppa and the current owner/operator of Lamppa Manufacturing (3rd Generation), was too young to be involved with sauna production in Embarrass, Minnesota.

1972 – Daryl Lamppa’s first involvement with heating stoves started in 1972.  Daryl and his wife Cheryl decided to build a new house.  But Daryl tends to be a bit more hands-on than most of us.  Daryl, his father-in-law, and his father cut all the trees and took them to the sawmill to be cut into timbers. They poured all their own cement. Cheryl mixed all mortar, and Herbert (Daryl’s father) laid all the concrete blocks. The house construction was a family affair.  Daryl, Cheryl, Herbert, Eino (Cheryl’s father), Daryl’s brother Steve and his cousin Reed helped with the construction.  

As winter approached, there was no electricity or heat in the new home, so Daryl went to Embarrass and purchased a U.S. Steel Stove from his cousin’s General Store. Daryl said it was constructed of very thin steel.  He installed the stove in the basement of the house for heat during construction.  Every time he would light the stove, it would burn so hot that the entire top of the stove would glow red.  With all the effort and sweat equity that had gone into the house, poor Daryl wouldn’t dare leave the house until the fire would burn down for fear the house would catch fire.  He spent many long nights.

1974 – Once the house was completed, Daryl and his father, Herbert, decided to purchase better stoves made in Michigan called “Volcano.”  These stoves were better, but they burned the wood too quickly.  You had to re-light the fire quite often because the fire would burn out so quickly.  One cold winter morning, as Daryl went out the door to go to work, he noticed the snow around the house was all black.  He went back in and told his wife, Cheryl, that they had a chimney fire the previous night and didn’t even know it.  Daryl told his dad about the chimney fire, and they agreed that they shouldn’t burn wood for heat until they could find a much safer design. This was when they decided to design their own heating furnace.

1975 – Daryl and Herbert designed and produced the first Kuuma 1 furnace.  Their furnace took advantage of a concept found in several Scandinavian designs.  This made good sense to a couple of gentlemen of Finnish descent.  Instead of the fire burning from the bottom-up, their fire burned from the front of the furnace toward the rear. This allowed them to maintain a much more even heat release and much longer burn times on the same amount of wood. This also allows the wood to burn cleaner.

When they worked on the Kuuma 1 design, Daryl worked full-time for the Tower creamery delivering milk and going to school in Duluth at night to finish his degree. Daryl had over 300 milk customers that he delivered to.  He said back at that time, it was common to walk right into people’s homes and put the milk into their refrigerator, and sometimes while the people were still asleep.  Those were much more trusting times.  

To introduce the new furnace that Daryl and Herbert had developed in the garage – they printed up a flier.  Daryl delivered this flier to all 300 of his milk customers.  The flyer offered an “open garage” experience to see the new Kuuma 1 stove operating.  Everyone was fascinated with this new approach to a furnace, and long they would burn on a single load of wood.  They received several initial orders for new furnaces.  Daryl and Herbert repeated the “open garage” program for a couple of additional weekends.  News of the new furnace began to spread by word-of-mouth, and the orders continued to come in.  This was the beginning of regular production of Lamppa Kuuma 1 furnaces and helped promote interest in the Kuuma wood sauna stoves.  

As the 1970’s oil crisis gripped the nation and drove up gas, oil, and natural gas prices, many people decided to go back to burning wood for heat.  The oil crisis was a great boon to Kuuma 1 furnace sales.  Daryl was manufacturing Kuuma furnaces on 2 production shifts, and business was really humming.

The first Kuuma 1 stove ended up in Ely, Minnesota, at the home of Eino Lepisto, Cheryl’s father.  He ran that furnace until the day he died.  He loved his furnace.

The first 300 Kuuma furnaces produced didn’t have ash pans.  Customers would have to let the fire burn way down or even completely out in some cases so they could shovel the ashes out.  It was a dirty job, but the bigger issue was that it was a nuisance.  The 301st furnace produced had an ash pan installed.  Every furnace since has come with an ash clean-out and ash pan.