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 the Yelken Hotel in Awaza, Turkmenistan. The zoneslisted for the project are Turkish bath, hammam, sauna and steam rooms; the photographic recordalso shows a mosaic-lined pool.
Scope of work
A hotel thermal suite with a marble hammam at its centre, a sauna and steam rooms alongside,and a mosaic-lined pool completing the circuit. The package covered room build-up and tanking,the marble and the mosaic including the pool lining, the heating circuits, the cabin with itsheater and control, generators, ventilation terminals, drainage and commissioning.
Lining a pool in mosaic
A mosaic pool is the least forgiving finish in a spa. The tesserae are small, so the eyereads every deviation in the substrate; the joints are numerous, so the grout does most of thewaterproofing work at the surface; and the vessel moves, so the build-up has to accommodatethat movement without cracking the bed. The sequence that works is a true, cured substratefirst, then the tanking, then a full adhesive bed applied so no voids are left behind thetesserae — a void is where a tile detaches — then epoxy grout. Movement joints are designedinto the tile grid at the vessel’s own joints rather than cut in afterwards. Doing this in theright order is slower and is the only way a mosaic pool survives. Product pages:pools andindoor swimmingpool.
Heated marble and dry heat
The hammam is heated through its slab — navel stone and benches warmed from below at amoderate air temperature — with slab thickness and circuit spacing set together on the shopdrawings, and a soak period before the spa opens. The sauna is sized by general practice atroughly a kilowatt of stone-heater output per cubic metre of volume with additions for glazingand masonry, specified for hotel duty: commercial heater, serviceable elements, externalcontrol on a timer and setpoint limit, benching in liftable sections. Steam enclosures aresized on volume corrected for the finish, with reserve for door openings. SeeTurkish bath.
Air and tanking
Sauna: supply low at the heater, extract low diagonally opposite. Hammam and steam rooms:continuous extract running past closing so the rooms dry down overnight. The pool hall needsdehumidified supply and enough extract to stay slightly negative against the dry side of thehotel, with warm air moved across the glazing. Every wet room was tanked before finishes:bonded membrane over the screed, reinforcing tape into corners, movement joints andpenetrations, dressed into the gullies, falls formed in the screed, epoxy grout above.
What we solved on site
Awaza sits on the Caspian, so salt-laden air reaches anything ventilated from outside andthe ironmongery was selected for a marine environment rather than by catalogue default; make-upair for the thermal rooms was drawn from the conditioned interior. The distance from our plantmade completeness the priority: the whole package was dry-assembled, checked and numbered inour Istanbul workshop, then shipped as onesequenced load with fixings, seals and spares in the same delivery. Seeservices.
