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 spa thermal areas built for the Wyndham hotel in Istanbul. The zoneslisted for the project are Turkish bath, hammam, steam rooms, pools and sauna.
Scope of work
A hotel wet circuit with a marble hammam at its centre, steam rooms and a sauna alongside,and the pool hall completing the sequence. Our photographic record covers all four zones. Thework was taken as one wet-area package — falls and tanking, marble and mosaic, cabins,generators and heaters, ventilation terminals, drainage and commissioning — rather than as asupply-only contract.
The hammam as a slab, not a room
A marble hammam is really a heated slab with walls around it. The navel stone and thebenches are warmed from below; air temperature stays moderate and humidity is held high enoughthat the skin does not dry. That makes thermal mass the governing property: the room takes along soak to reach working surface temperature and should be brought on well before the spaopens. It also makes the kurna positions the first thing to be set, because the washing pointsfix bench lengths, the position of the navel stone and the direction of every drainage fall.Our what is a Turkish bath pageexplains the room type in more detail.
Steam generators, sauna heaters and recovery
General practice sizes a dry cabin at roughly a kilowatt of stone-heater output per cubicmetre of volume, with additions for glazing and for masonry surfaces inside the envelope, andsizes a steam enclosure on volume with a correction for the finish material. Mosaic laid on amasonry backing is a large thermal mass and needs a proportionally bigger generator than thesame volume built over insulated board. Then comes the hotel factor: headroom for dooropenings. A generator that satisfies the volume calculation but has no reserve will feel weakexactly when the spa is busiest, and that is the only time guests form an opinion of it.
Pool hall, tanking and grout
The pool hall carries the building risk. Vapour from the water condenses on the coldestsurface it can find, so the hall needs dehumidified supply, extract enough to hold it slightlynegative against the dry side of the hotel, and warm air moved across the glazing. Wet roomswere tanked before finishes: bonded membrane over the screed, reinforcing tape into corners,movement joints and penetrations, dressed into the gullies, carried up past splash height, withfalls formed in the screed. Epoxy grout in the permanently wet rooms — cement grout in avapour-loaded room breaks down and then telegraphs every joint. Product pages:hammam,steam room andpools.
What we solved on site
The recurring conflict in a marble hammam is between drainage geometry and stone layout.Falls have to run from every washing point and from beneath the navel stone to the gullies,while the marble wants to be laid in whole, book-matched pieces without awkward cuts. Those tworequirements cannot both be resolved with a diamond blade in a finished room. We set gully andkurna positions first, worked the falls from them, and cut the slabs in ourIstanbul workshop against the drainage drawing,so the stone arrived on site already reconciled with the falls. See alsoour services.
