What a sauna and cold plunge actually cost in the Seychelles

The four things that set the price

Cabin volume first, because it drives timber, insulation and heater together. A two-person cabin is roughly a third of the material of a six-person one and about half the heater. Most households overestimate how many people will actually sit in it at once by two seats; most resorts underestimate it by four.

Glass second. Every square metre of glazing means a heavier frame, more careful sealing and around 0.4 kW of extra heater to cover the loss. Facing a granite boulder and a strip of turquoise it is worth every rupee. Facing a boundary wall it is not, and we will say so.

Access third, and this is the Seychellois line. On a level Eden Island terrace materials arrive on a trolley. On a Glacis or Bel Ombre hillside they go down forty steps between boulders on shoulders, and the cabin has to be built in smaller sections to get there at all.

Services fourth and most often forgotten: the cable run from the board, a drain with a proper fall, cut-off drainage above a hillside platform, and a structural check for anything holding water on a suspended slab.

The access line, which nobody else quotes

Before we price anything we walk the route from the nearest point a vehicle can reach to where the cabin will stand, photograph every constraint and measure the tightest gap. Panels are then designed to pass it — the same cabin that ships as three sections on flat ground ships as six on a hillside, with the joints engineered rather than improvised.

We price that carry as its own line. On a typical Glacis plot it is a meaningful part of the total and several days of programme, and hiding it inside 'materials' helps nobody: you cannot compare two quotes when one of them has buried it.

The same logic covers slope work generally. A pinned granite plinth or a galvanised steel sub-frame with an engineer's sizing is what makes a steep site permanent, and cut-off drains above the platform are what stop a heavy shower finding the back of your terrace. Both are cheap compared with fixing the consequences.

The crossing line, for anywhere that is not Mahé

Everything imported lands at Victoria. Mahé is then a drive; Praslin and La Digue are a barge or ferry on a schedule; a private or outer island is a boat with a timetable measured in days.

So for anything off Mahé we consolidate the whole installation into a single load, pack it against a written checklist, and include a deliberate margin of fixings and consumables. Every cabin is dry-assembled in full at Providence first, photographed and numbered, then taken down — so nothing is discovered for the first time on an island where nothing can be bought.

That is also why we leave a spares kit with part numbers: an element, a thermostat, a cartridge, hose seals and a handful of A4 stainless fixings. On Mahé that box is a convenience. On La Digue it is the difference between a ten-minute repair and a fortnight.

What there is no line for: altitude

Unlike our sites in the highlands of East Africa, nothing here is high enough to change a heater calculation. Every plot in these islands is effectively at sea level, so the standard sizing applies and the heater in your quote is the heater the room needs.

That is genuinely good news, and it is the only easy variable in a Seychellois quote.

Where the money goes in a mid-range project

Take a four-person cabin with one glass wall plus an insulated plunge with a chiller, on a hillside plot above Beau Vallon. Roughly, in descending order: timber and insulation form the largest block; glass and frame come next; the chiller, circulation and filtration together form a block of their own that surprises most clients; then the access and substructure; then the heater and controls and the electrical run.

Two things about that list matter. First, the cold side is not a cheap add-on — a properly insulated tub with a correctly sized chiller, filtration and an ozone stage costs real money, and saving there produces green water within a month in this climate. Second, access and substructure are the lines clients try to cut and the lines we refuse to cut, because everything above them depends on them.

A carved granite basin instead of a clad tub moves the number up substantially and is, to be blunt, the reason many people call us in the first place. It is also the item most likely to need an engineer before we can quote it.

What it costs to run

A domestic sauna session costs roughly the heater rating multiplied by about an hour and a half including heat-up. A 6 kW heater used four times a week is a predictable monthly figure and we calculate it on the PUC tariff rather than leaving you to guess.

The chiller is the bigger conversation. There is no month in these islands when a plunge holds temperature on its own, so a chiller here is a steady year-round cost rather than a seasonal one. The three levers on that number are shade, insulation and the lid, in that order, and the lid is the cheapest item in the entire project.

We give you the monthly figure before you commit. It is not a small number, and a client who discovers it in month two rather than at quotation stage is a client who feels misled, quite reasonably.

Payment, warranty and what a quote should contain

We work to 40% on order, 40% before shipping and 20% on handover, which is standard for this kind of work and protects both sides.

Our quotes state the heater size and the calculation behind it, the chiller capacity against the ambient we expect at your site, the marine specification, the access and carry line, the crossing where there is one, and the service interval. If a competing quote does not state those, it is not cheaper — it is less specific, and the difference will appear later.

Timber, joinery and workmanship carry our warranty; heaters, generators and chillers carry the manufacturer's and we register them for you. In this climate that warranty depends on the service schedule being kept, which is why we quote the schedule with the installation rather than selling it afterwards.

The honest summary

A compact infrared cabin for an Eden Island apartment is the cheapest real answer and a good one. A four-person cabin with a chilled plunge on a Mahé hillside is the common mid-range project. A resort thermal suite on Praslin with duplicated plant and spares held on the island is an order of magnitude above that, and it is a commercial investment with a measurable return rather than a purchase.

What we will not do is quote a national figure and then discover your site. Tell us where it is, how far a vehicle gets, what the ground is made of and how many people will use it at once, and the number we give you is the number you pay.