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 page records the steam room and hammam at the Eurasia Hotel in Istanbul. The zoneslisted for the project are steam room and hammam.
Scope of work
Two wet rooms rather than a full circuit — which is a common and sensible brief for a cityhotel where floor area is scarce. A marble hammam gives the slow, conductive part of the ritualand a steam enclosure gives the short, saturated part. The package covered room build-up andtanking, marble and mosaic, heating circuits, the generator and steam head, ventilationterminals, drainage and commissioning.
Two wet rooms, two different physics
People group hammams and steam rooms together because both are wet, but they work inopposite ways. A hammam holds a moderate air temperature and heats the body by conduction fromwarm stone over a long session; its governing property is thermal mass, and its governingdesign decision is slab thickness against circuit spacing. A steam room holds a saturatedatmosphere at a higher air temperature for a short session; its governing property is theenclosure’s vapour tightness, and its governing design decision is generator sizing againstdoor-opening frequency. Building one as though it were the other is the most common mistake weare asked to correct. Oursauna versus steam room comparisoncovers the same ground for dry heat.
Sizing the generator, sealing the enclosure
General practice sizes a steam generator on enclosure volume, applies a correction for thefinish material — mosaic on masonry is a large thermal mass and needs more than the same volumeover insulated board — and then adds headroom for how often the door will be opened. Theenclosure itself has to be genuinely vapour-tight: the room is under vapour pressure, somoisture is driven into every joint and penetration rather than merely splashed at them. Thesteam head goes low, away from seats, discharging into open floor where nobody can brush pastit, and the ceiling is pitched or coved so condensate runs to the perimeter. Detail onhow to build a steam room.
Tanking, falls and drying down
Both rooms were tanked before finishes: bonded membrane over the screed, walls and — in thesteam enclosure — the ceiling, with reinforcing tape into every corner, movement joint andservice penetration, dressed into the gully. Falls formed in the screed, never in the adhesivebed. Epoxy grout throughout the permanently wet zones. Extract runs continuously in both roomsand on past closing so they dry down overnight; a steam room sealed up wet at the end of theday will lose its grout, seals and lining years earlier than one that is dried. Product page:steam room.
What we solved on site
The constraint was retrofit. Both rooms went into an existing hotel where the drainagepositions were fixed and the slab could not be cut deeply, which limits how much screed depthis available for falls and for the hammam’s heating circuits at the same time. We resolved itby setting the finished floor level from the existing gullies, taking the falls from there, andadjusting the hammam build-up to the depth that remained rather than assuming a standard one.The marble was cut in our Istanbul workshop tothe resulting levels. See services.
