Hammam, sauna, steam rooms and treatment rooms at Copthorne Hotel Baranan
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 spa thermal areas at Copthorne Hotel Baranan in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq.The zones listed for the project are sauna, massage rooms, steam rooms, spa hot tub and ahammam.
Scope of work: a marble hammam with kurna, sauna cabins, steam rooms and treatment rooms
This is a hotel spa laid out as a circuit rather than a room-by-room list: a marble hammamwith kurna washing points, timber sauna cabins, steam rooms, a spa hot tub and a run oftreatment rooms alongside. Our photographic record covers all of it, with the treatment roomsparticularly well documented. The work was taken as one wet-area package — falls and tanking,marble and mosaic, cabins and benching, generators and heaters, ventilation terminals,drainage and commissioning — rather than as an equipment supply.
Sauna heater and steam generator selection for hotel duty
Hotel duty is the governing factor. A sauna heater in a hotel is on for the whole openingday, so we specify commercial-rated stone heaters with an accessible element and a controlthat sits outside the cabin, timed and setpoint-limited so a guest cannot leave it running atmaximum. Steam generators are chosen on recovery: the general rule is to size on room volumeand surface losses, then add headroom for how often the door opens, and in a hotel the dooropens far more than any calculation based on volume would suggest. The hammam is a slabproblem, not an air problem — the navel stone and benches are warmed from below, they take along soak to reach working surface temperature, and they need to be brought on before the spaopens.
Ventilation and drying down: sauna, steam room, hammam and treatment rooms
Each thermal room gets its own air strategy. Sauna: supply low at the heater, extract low anddiagonally opposite, so air crosses the benches. Steam and hammam: continuous extract runningpast closing so the rooms dry down overnight, which keeps grout, joinery and ceilings alive. The spa hot tub needsextract above it for the same reason. The treatment rooms next door are the oppositerequirement — they must stay quiet and dry, so they are kept slightly positive against thewet circuit and acoustically separated from the plant, otherwise the noise and the humidityof the thermal side migrate into the part of the spa the guest is paying most for.
Tanking, marble kurna and hammam finishes
All wet rooms were tanked before any finish was laid: bonded membrane over the screed,reinforcing tape into corners, movement joints and every penetration, dressed into thegullies and carried up past splash height. Falls set in the screed rather than made up in theadhesive. Epoxy grout in the permanently wet rooms. Marble kurna basins and their supplypoints are set out first, because in a hammam the washing points fix the whole geometry —bench lengths, the position of the navel stone and the drainage falls all follow from them.Cabin timber is kiln-dried and low in resin, with concealed fixings. See ourTurkish bath,steam room andmassage room pages.
What we solved on site
The practical constraint was distance. Sulaymaniyah is far enough from our plant that amissing bracket is a two-week problem, so the whole package was dry-assembled and numberedin Istanbul, shipped as a sequenced load with its own spares allowance, and installed by ourown crew rather than handed to a local subcontractor. The second constraint was the interfacebetween the wet circuit and the treatment wing: getting the pressure regime right — wet sidenegative, dry side positive — is a coordination task with the hotel’s own ventilationcontractor, and it has to be resolved on paper before any ceiling closes. More on how werun this at hotel spa design,services andhydrotherapy pool.
