Overview
Sauna Dekor has been building saunas, hammams, steam rooms and wet spa areas since 1987 — this is our 40th year. We manufacture in İkitelli, Istanbul and take single-point responsibility for design, production, installation and commissioning. More than 35 countries to date.
This page records the sauna and swimming pool areas built for Le Meridien in Batumi, Georgia.The zones listed for the project are sauna and swimming pool.
Scope of work
A hotel leisure package rather than a full thermal circuit: a timber sauna cabin and the wetfinishes and detailing around the indoor pool. Our contract covered the cabin with its heaterand control, the tanking and falls in the wet areas, the finishes, ventilation terminals andcommissioning.
The pool hall is the engineering problem
Batumi sits on the Black Sea in one of the wettest subtropical climates in the region, andthat makes an indoor pool hall harder rather than easier: the outside air is already close tosaturation for much of the year, so it cannot be used to dry the hall. The system therefore hasto dehumidify mechanically rather than dilute with fresh air, hold the hall slightly negativeagainst the dry side of the hotel so vapour does not migrate into corridors and guest floors,and wash warm air across the glazing so condensation does not form on the coldest surface inthe room. Getting this wrong is not a visible defect on handover; it is a slow failure insidethe building fabric. Seeindoor swimming pooland pools.
Sauna specification for hotel duty
The cabin is sized by general practice at roughly a kilowatt of stone-heater output percubic metre of volume, with additions for glazing and for masonry surfaces inside the envelope.For hotel duty the heater is a commercial unit with serviceable elements, the control sitsoutside the cabin on a timer with a maximum setpoint, and benching is built in liftablesections. Air comes in low near the heater and leaves low on the opposite side, ducted backinto the building rather than dumped into the changing room. Product page:sauna.
Materials for a permanently humid climate
In a climate this damp, timber selection and the cabin build-up matter more than they wouldinland. Boards are kiln-dried and low in resin, the cabin is built as an insulated box with acontinuous foil vapour barrier and taped laps, and a ventilated cavity sits behind the liningso the back of every board can dry between sessions. Exposed metalwork near the coast is chosenfor the environment. Wet areas were tanked before finishes: bonded membrane over the screed,reinforcing tape into corners, movement joints and penetrations, falls formed in the screed,epoxy grout where the surface is permanently wet.
What we solved on site
The decision that mattered most was where the cabin’s fresh air came from. In Batumi, airtaken straight from outside is close to saturation for much of the year, and a sauna ventilatedthat way never becomes genuinely dry — the timber stays damp and the room disappoints. We tooksupply from the conditioned interior instead and ducted the extract back into the hotel’ssystem. The cabin was manufactured and dry-assembled in ourIstanbul workshop, then numbered and shipped.More at hotel spa design.
