A Finnish sauna cabin for the Lavanda Hotel on the Black Sea coast
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 sauna built for the Lavanda Hotel at Sile, on the Black Sea coastoutside Istanbul. The zone listed for the project is a sauna.
Scope of work: the Finnish sauna cabin, heater, control and building interfaces
A single dry-heat cabin for a coastal hotel: the insulated cabin build-up, internal liningsand benching, the heater and its control, glazing, lighting, and the ventilation and electricalinterfaces with the building. Manufactured and dry-assembled in our Istanbul workshop, thennumbered, delivered and installed.
Sizing a Finnish sauna cabin for hotel use
Even a single cabin in a small hotel has to be specified for commercial duty. It will be onfrom opening to closing, used by guests who do not know how it works, and cleaned by staff whoneed to reach every surface. That drives three decisions. The heater is a commercial unit withserviceable elements, sized by the general rule of roughly a kilowatt of output per cubic metreof cabin volume with additions for glazing and for any masonry surface inside the envelope. Thecontrol sits outside the cabin, on a timer with a maximum setpoint, so it cannot be left runningat full output. And the benching is built in liftable sections, so a damaged bench top is areplacement rather than a rebuild. SeeFinnish sauna andsauna heater types.
Coastal air and Finnish sauna timber choice
A Black Sea coastal site is humid for most of the year and salt-laden air reaches anythingventilated from outside. Two consequences follow. First, timber has to be genuinely kiln-driedand low in resin, and the cabin build-up has to let the back of the lining breathe, or theboards will move with the seasons regardless of how well they were made. Second, exposedmetalwork — fixings, grilles, heater guards, door furniture — is selected for the environmentrather than by catalogue default, because on the coast the cheap item is the one that has to bereplaced. Where the building is conditioned, make-up air is better taken from inside than froma humid outdoor wall.
Finnish sauna cabin build-up and ventilation
The cabin is an insulated box built inside the room: insulation, a continuous foil vapourbarrier with taped laps, a ventilated cavity, then the internal lining. The vapour barrier iswhat protects the hotel’s structure — a cabin lined straight onto masonry pushes moisture intothe building every time it runs. Air comes in low, near or under the heater, and leaves low onthe opposite side, so it crosses the benches instead of short-circuiting to the ceiling; theextract is ducted into the building’s system rather than dumped into the corridor. More atsauna ventilation.
What we solved on site
The practical problem in a small coastal hotel is that there is no plant room to spare andno obvious duct route. Rather than force an external air path through a wall that faces saltspray, we took supply from the conditioned interior and ran the extract back into the building,which keeps the timber stable and the cabin genuinely dry between sessions. The cabin itself wasmade and dry-assembled in our Istanbul workshop,then numbered and delivered, so installation took days rather than weeks. See alsohotel and gym sauna andservices.
