Overview
This is a Sauna Dekor project. We are a manufacturer first and a turnkey wet-area contractor second: cabins, benching, marble and mosaic are made in our own Istanbul workshop, then installed by our own crews. Founded 1987, 40th year, work delivered in more than 35 countries.
This project is a steam room built into a private residence in Bern, Switzerland. The owneris not named; the page records the city, the property type and the work. The zone listed forthe project is a steam room.
Scope of work
A single sealed wet room: the enclosure build-up and tanking, the finishes, moulded seating,the generator and steam head, lighting, ventilation and drainage, and commissioning.Manufactured and prepared in our Istanbul workshop, then delivered, installed and commissioned.
Vapour tightness is the whole product
A steam room is the hardest wet room in a building to get right, because it is loaded withvapour rather than splashed with water. Pressure drives moisture into every joint andpenetration, so the enclosure is tanked as a complete envelope: bonded membrane over the screedand across walls and ceiling, reinforcing tape worked into every internal corner, movementjoint and service penetration, dressed into the gully, with epoxy grout above and falls formedin the screed rather than in the adhesive bed. Any penetration that is added later — a fitting,a fixing, a shelf — is a breach of that envelope, which is why fittings are planned into thebuild rather than added afterwards. Seesteam room andsteam room design.
Sizing the generator
General practice sizes a generator on the volume of the enclosure, applies a correction forthe finish material and for any glazing, then adds headroom for how often the door will beopened. The finish correction is the part most often skipped: stone or mosaic on a masonrybacking is a substantial thermal mass that has to be brought up to temperature before the roomwill hold steam at all, so the same volume can need very different outputs depending on how itis lined. Undersizing shows up as a room that takes too long and collapses when someone walksin; oversizing as scalding bursts and a short-cycling generator.
Seat geometry, steam head and light
Comfort in a steam room is mostly geometry. Seats are moulded with a fall so water runs offrather than pooling under the bather, backs are raked, and front edges are radiused because asquare edge is unpleasant against the back of the knee in a hot wet room. The steam head sitslow, away from the seats, discharging into open floor where nobody can brush past it. Theceiling is coved or pitched — even a modest fall moves condensate to the perimeter instead ofdropping it on the person below — and light fittings are rated for the condition and set flushso they do not become drip points.
What we solved on site
Swiss construction tolerances are tight and the room was an existing one, so the enclosurehad to be built to the structure rather than the structure adjusted to it. We surveyed theopening, prefabricated to the measured dimensions in ourIstanbul workshop and delivered a set that fittedwithout site modification. Commissioning covered the drying-down routine as well as operation:a steam room shut up wet loses its grout, seals and lining years earlier than one that is driedafter use. See private spa andsteam shower versus sauna.
