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 page records the spa thermal areas at Hilton Istanbul Maslak. The zones listed for theproject are Turkish bath, hammam, steam rooms, pools and sauna; our photographic record of thejob also covers a separate VIP hammam, heated beds and the pool hall.
Scope of work
A full city-hotel wet circuit rather than a single room: a main marble hammam with kurnawashing points, a smaller VIP hammam for private bookings, steam rooms, a timber sauna,heated stone loungers and the finishes around the pool hall. Our package covered the roombuild-up — screeds and falls, tanking, marble and mosaic — together with the cabins, theheating and generator equipment, ventilation terminals, drainage and commissioning.
Two hammams, one plant room
Running a main hammam and a VIP hammam in the same spa is a control problem before it is afinishes problem. The main room is on from opening to closing; the VIP room is used in blocksand stands idle between them. Heating them from a common source without separate control meansthe small room is either kept hot all day for nothing or arrives cold at a booking. The answeris independent zoning with its own control and its own soak schedule, so the VIP room can bebrought on ahead of a reservation while the main room runs continuously. Because a hammamstores heat in stone rather than in air, that lead time is real and has to be built intohousekeeping’s routine, not left to a thermostat. Read more on ourTurkish bath page.
Heated marble and heated loungers
The navel stone, the benching and the loungers are all warmed from beneath. The designvariables are slab thickness, circuit spacing and flow temperature, and they are chosentogether: circuits set too shallow give warm and cold stripes a guest can feel through atowel, circuits set too deep never bring the surface up. Heated loungers add a secondconstraint, because a body lying still on stone draws heat out of one patch continuously — thecircuit under a lounger has to be denser than the circuit under a walking surface. None ofthis is guesswork on site; it is set out on the shop drawings before the marble is cut.
Air, tanking and the pool hall
Each room gets its own air regime. Sauna: supply low at the heater, extract low anddiagonally opposite. Steam rooms and hammams: continuous extract that runs past closing so therooms dry down overnight. The pool hall is the largest risk in the building — evaporation fromthe water finds the coldest surface, normally the glazing, so the hall needs dehumidifiedsupply, enough extract to hold it slightly negative against the dry side of the hotel, and warmair washed across the glass. Every wet room was tanked before finishes: bonded membrane overthe screed, reinforcing tape into corners, movement joints and penetrations, falls formed inthe screed, epoxy grout in the permanently wet rooms. Seesteam room andindoor swimmingpool.
What we solved on site
City hotel spas are usually below ground: everything the wet areas need — fresh air,extract, drainage falls, plant access — competes for the same slab-to-slab height as thehotel’s own services. We fixed the finished floor levels and drainage falls first, then thewet-room ceiling heights, and only then let the duct routes be drawn, so the hammam dome andthe sauna’s top bench kept the height they needed. Marble and cabins were dry-assembled in ourIstanbul workshop and numbered before delivery.More on the approach athotel spa design.
