Overview
Sauna Dekor builds thermal areas end to end — design, manufacture, installation and commissioning under one contract. The company started in 1987, is in its 40th year, manufactures in İkitelli, Istanbul, and has completed projects in over 35 countries.
This page records the beachfront black sauna built for the Day One club at Kilyos, on theBlack Sea coast of Istanbul. The zone listed for the project is a sauna.
Scope of work
An outdoor, dark-finished sauna cabin on a beach club site, used by members between seaswims. The package covered the cabin structure and its insulated build-up, the externalcladding and its finish, internal linings and benching, glazing to the sea, the heater andcontrol, lighting, and the connection of services from the club building.
An outdoor cabin is a building, not a box
Once a sauna leaves the inside of a building it stops being joinery and becomes a smallstructure with a roof, a facade and a foundation. It has to shed rain, resist wind uplift, siton something that will not move with the sand and the water table, and keep its insulation dryfor years in the open. The build-up follows: a ventilated rainscreen behind the externalcladding so wind-driven rain can drain and dry, then the insulation, then a continuous foilvapour barrier with taped laps on the warm side, then a ventilated cavity, then the internallining. The vapour barrier goes on the inside because the cabin is hot inside and cold outside— reversing that sequence traps moisture in the insulation and destroys it. Seeour outdoor sauna guide.
Black finish, salt air and glazing
A dark external finish absorbs solar gain and moves more than a pale one, so cladding boardsare detailed with generous fixing tolerance and open joints rather than tight, sealed ones. Ona Black Sea beach the air is salt-laden year-round, which decides the ironmongery: fixings,brackets, hinges, the heater guard and any external fastening are selected for a marineenvironment, because on a beach the cheap fitting is the one replaced first. Glazing facing thesea is the other exposure — a large glass panel is both a heat loss and a wind load, so it isspecified for the wind pressure of an open coast and its heat loss is added to the heatercalculation rather than ignored.
Heat load, ventilation and drainage
General practice sizes a cabin at roughly a kilowatt of stone-heater output per cubic metreof volume; an outdoor cabin then adds for glazing and for the fact that every surface facesoutdoor air rather than a heated room, which is a substantially larger addition than an indoorcabin needs. Air is supplied low near the heater and extracted low on the opposite side.Drainage matters more outdoors than in: the deck around the cabin has to shed water away fromthe structure, and the ground beneath has to drain, or the base of a beachfront cabin sits wetfor half the year. Related: sauna andsauna and cold plunge.
What we solved on site
Beach sites offer no cover and short weather windows, so the cabin was built anddry-assembled in our Istanbul workshop, takenapart, numbered and delivered ready to erect, with the external envelope closed early in theinstall sequence so the insulation was never left open to the weather. Foundations and deckfalls were set before the cabin arrived rather than adjusted around it. See alsoFinnish sauna andoutdoor sauna kits.
