Overview
Sauna Dekor is a sauna, hammam and spa manufacturer and turnkey contractor. We have built thermal areas since 1987, we are in our 40th year, and our joinery, marble and cabin work is produced in our own workshop in İkitelli, Istanbul before it ships. Projects have been delivered in more than 35 countries.
This project is an Ottoman-style hammam suite built into a private villa estate near Bodrum.The owner is not named; the page records the region, the property type and the work. The zonelisted for the project is a hammam, and our photographic record of the job runs to eightframes.
Scope of work
A traditional hammam rather than a modern wet room: heated navel stone, heated marblebenching, kurna washing basins and a domed ceiling, with the associated rinse and drainageprovision. The package covered the room build-up and tanking, the marble, the domeconstruction and its finishes, the heating circuits and control, ventilation terminals,drainage and commissioning.
Why the dome is structural, not decorative
In a room held close to saturation, condensate forms on the ceiling continuously. A domed orvaulted soffit runs that water down the curve to the perimeter and into the drainage; a flatceiling collects it and drops it on the bathers. So the dome has three requirements that havenothing to do with style. Its geometry has to be true, because a flat spot in the curve becomesa drip point. It is tanked like any other wet surface, because it is permanently wet on theinside. And every penetration through it — light fittings above all — is set flush and sealedrather than surface-mounted. Where a full dome will not fit the height available, a shallowvault does the same work. SeeTurkish bath andthe history of the hammam.
Heated stone and the soak period
A hammam is a heated slab with walls around it. Air temperature stays moderate and the bodyis warmed by conduction from marble heated below, at a humidity high enough that the skin doesnot dry. Thermal mass is therefore the governing property: slab thickness and circuit spacingare set together on the shop drawings — circuits too shallow give warm and cold stripes abather feels through a towel, circuits too deep never bring the surface up — and the room needsa long soak before use. In a private house that means a timer that brings the room on ahead ofthe evening rather than a switch by the door.
Kurna basins, falls and tanking
The kurna is the marble basin a bather washes at, and its position sets bench lengths, theseated clearance needed to pour, the supply runs behind the wall and the direction of everyfloor fall. We fix kurna and gully positions first, work the falls from them, and cut the stoneto suit. The room was tanked before any marble was laid: bonded membrane over the screed and upthe walls, reinforcing tape into every corner, movement joint and penetration, dressed into thegully, with falls formed in the screed and epoxy grout above. Extract runs continuously andkeeps running after use so the room dries down. Product page:hammam.
What we solved on site
Two grids had to agree inside a fixed villa floor build-up: the drainage falls and thebook-matched marble layout. They pull against each other, and neither can be resolved with adiamond blade in a finished room. We set the gullies and kurna positions, worked the falls, andcut the slabs in our Istanbul workshop againstthe drainage drawing, so the stone arrived already reconciled with the falls. The Aegean coastalso decided the ironmongery — salt-laden air means fixings and fittings are chosen for amarine environment. See private spa.
