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 a private sauna in a villa at St George’s Hill, the residential estate inSurrey outside London. The owner is not named; the page describes the location at estatelevel, the property type and the work.
Scope of work
The zone recorded for this project is a sauna — a single dry-heat cabin built into anexisting house rather than a full thermal suite. Cabins of this kind are the most commonprivate commission we take in the UK, and they are also the most frequently got wrong,because a sauna looks like joinery and is actually a small piece of building services. Ourpackage covered the cabin, its heater and controls, the internal linings and benching, theglazing, lighting, and the ventilation and electrical interfaces with the house.
Heater class and sizing
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 when they say sauna. The generalsizing rule is roughly one kilowatt of output per cubic metre of cabin volume, with anaddition for every square metre of glazing and for any surface that is masonry rather thaninsulated timber — a glass-fronted cabin against an external wall can need considerably morethan its volume alone suggests. The other half of the calculation is the house: a heater ofany size needs a dedicated circuit and, above a certain rating, a three-phase supply, and ina UK retrofit that is the constraint that most often sets the cabin size. Oursauna heater types page sets outthe classes; infrared saunacovers the alternative.
Ventilation without an external wall
Most retrofit cabins in British houses sit in a basement, a garage conversion or a spareroom, with no external wall available. That is workable, but only with a proper air path:supply low, near or under the heater, and extract low on the opposite side, ducted tosomewhere that can accept warm moist air rather than vented into the room next door. Withoutit the cabin stratifies — scalding at head height, cold at the ankles — and the timber neverdries between sessions. An adjustable extract is worth having in a private cabin, because ahousehold that uses the sauna with plenty of water needs a different setting from one thatruns it dry. More on this atsauna ventilation.
Cabin build-up and materials
The cabin is built as an insulated box inside the room: insulation, a continuous foilvapour barrier with taped laps, a ventilated cavity, then the lining. The vapour barrierdecides whether the surrounding structure survives; a cabin lined straight onto masonry pushesmoisture into the fabric of the house every time it runs. Linings and benching are kiln-dried,low-resin timber with concealed fixings, and bench tops lift out for cleaning. Over a timberfloor, load and heater clearances are checked before anything is ordered. Seeluxury home sauna andsauna.
What we solved on site
The controlling dimension was head height. In a converted room the cabin ceiling sits belowthe existing one and the insulated floor build-up raises the deck, so the useful internalheight is what is left after both. Because the heat a bather feels is in the top third of thecabin, that height had to be protected first — bench levels, heater position and the glazedfront were worked back from it. The cabin was dry-assembled in our Istanbul workshop, numberedand shipped, so installation took days rather than weeks. Seeprivate spa.
