Overview
Sauna Dekor is a Turkish sauna and hammam manufacturer that also acts as turnkey contractor for the wet areas it builds. Founded in 1987 and in its 40th year, the company produces in its own İkitelli, Istanbul facility and has delivered thermal installations in more than 35 countries.
This project is a private sauna inside a residence at Pelikan Hill, Istanbul. The owner isnot named; the page records the development, the property type and the work. The zone listedfor the project is a sauna.
Scope of work
A single dry-heat cabin built into a home: the insulated cabin structure, internal liningsand benching, the heater and its control, glazing, lighting, and the ventilation and electricalinterfaces with the residence. Made and dry-assembled in our Istanbul workshop, then numbered,delivered and installed.
Heater class and what glazing costs
For a private cabin we normally specify an electric stone heater rather than an infraredemitter, unless the client specifically wants the lower-temperature infrared experience — astone heater takes water, which is what most people mean by a sauna. General practice sizes thecabin at roughly a kilowatt of output per cubic metre of volume, then adds for every squaremetre of glazing and for any masonry surface inside the envelope. Glazing is the additionpeople underestimate: a glass front is a large, continuous, poorly insulated surface, and acabin designed for a view needs an output that reflects it. Ignoring that produces a beautifulroom that never reaches temperature at the top bench. Seesauna heater types andinfrared sauna.
Ventilation in a home without an external wall
Most residential cabins sit in a basement, a spare room or a converted area with no externalwall available. That works, but only with a real air path: supply low, near or under theheater, extract low on the opposite side, ducted somewhere that can accept warm moist airrather than vented into the next room. Without it the cabin stratifies — hot at head height,cold at the ankles — and the timber never dries between sessions. An adjustable extract isworth having, because a household that uses plenty of water needs a different setting from onethat runs the room dry. More atsauna ventilation.
Cabin build-up and materials
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 barrier is thecomponent that decides whether the surrounding structure survives; a cabin lined straight ontomasonry drives moisture into the building each time it is used. Linings and benching arekiln-dried, low-resin timber with concealed fixings so nothing hot meets skin, and bench topslift out for cleaning. Over a timber floor, load and heater clearances are confirmed beforeanything is ordered. Seeluxury home sauna.
What we solved on site
The controlling dimension was internal height. In a converted room the cabin ceiling sitsbelow the existing one and the insulated floor build-up raises the deck, so the useful heightis what remains after both — and because the heat a bather feels is in the top third of thecabin, that height had to be protected before anything else was set. Bench levels, heaterposition and the glazed front were all worked back from it. The cabin was dry-assembled in ourIstanbul workshop, numbered and shipped, soinstallation in an occupied home took days rather than weeks.
