Saunas and hammams in Casablanca, Rabat, Tangier and Fès

Buildings and briefs in the north

In Casablanca the work splits between infrared and compact saunas for flats in Anfa, Gauthier and Californie, and recovery rooms for clubs — Padel Maps lists more than thirty padel clubs in the city. Rabat asks for complete indoor suites laid along one drainage line, with plant that cannot be heard. Tangier is villas in Malabata and on the Old Mountain, plus riads in the kasbah. Fès is almost entirely hammams in old dars, with zellige chosen close to where it is cut.

Flats run on 220 V single phase; villas and clubs usually have 380/400 V three phase. Along the coast humidity is the constant enemy, so every wet room gets ducted extract on a run-on timer and every fixing near the sea is stainless.

Indicative budget in the northern cities

Indicative, supplied and installed, and fixed after a survey.

Port, road and programme

For Casablanca and Rabat the crates can land at the port of Casablanca; for Tangier and Fès, Tanger Med is the obvious gate, with fast-track clearance of six to twenty-four hours (AJ Logistics). Each room takes 6–10 weeks from drawing approval to commissioning, and our own crew installs it. Message us with the room dimensions and a photo; a project manager replies within one business day with a first budget.

Casablanca & Anfa

Casablanca is the commercial city, and most of what we build here is either an apartment room or a club recovery zone. Both are constrained by the building rather than the ground.

Atlantic humidity indoors

Casablanca is humid most of the year, which sounds harmless and is not. A wet room in a humid climate needs mechanical extract with a run-on timer, ducted out, or it never dries and starts to smell within a season. A window is not ventilation.

Timber choices follow: thermo-treated rather than untreated, stainless rather than plated fixings, and a deeper ventilated cavity behind any external cladding.

Clubs and offices

Corporate gyms and private clubs in Anfa and Californie are where the demand is growing fastest. The brief is throughput and durability rather than beauty: porcelain floors, benches that unbolt for deep cleaning, a channel drain that can be rodded, and finishes that survive daily chlorine.

Deliveries and service in Casablanca

Crates for Casablanca can come straight into the city's port, and service visits are grouped with installations in the same week so the travel is shared rather than billed twice.

Aïn Diab

On the corniche the Atlantic is thirty metres away and the wind carries salt onto everything. A cabin built here the way we build one inland will look tired in two years.

Salt, and what it eats first

Fixings, first and always. Plated screws bleed rust down pale cladding within a season on this coast, so everything is A4 stainless, including the ones nobody sees. Then it takes glazing hardware, then any untreated timber end grain.

We specify a deeper ventilated cavity behind cladding, seal every end grain, and set plant back from the sea face wherever the layout allows.

Wind is a design constraint

The afternoon wind is constant and it strips heat from glass. We put the glass at right angles to the prevailing wind rather than facing it, shelter the plunge and the bench, and accept a smaller window in exchange for a room that is usable in the evening.

Beach clubs and hotels

The corniche is beach clubs and hotels, where the product is the photograph as much as the session. A sauna and plunge on a deck with the Atlantic behind sells a membership; it also has to survive a winter of storms, which is the part that is not in the photograph.

Rabat & Souissi

Souissi is embassies, ministries and large quiet villas, and the work here is almost always indoors, complete, and discreet.

The suite along one wall

Our standard indoor layout is a short corridor with the hammam door, the sauna door and the plunge basin opening off one wall and a bench opposite. One drainage line, one plant access panel, three steps from hot to cold.

Three services decide whether this is a finishing job or a demolition job: a drain with a fall, a ducted mechanical extract, and a cable run back to the board. Get them in the build drawing and the rest is materials.

Discretion

Diplomatic and official households want plant that cannot be heard and contractors who are not memorable. We site machinery internally, work to agreed hours, and provide the documentation and named contacts a facilities team needs.

Lease and ownership

Where the residence is held on a lease we build a demountable specification — bolted frame, single service connection point, no chasing into the structure — so the room can be removed at the end without making good.

Tangier

Tangier is where our European equipment lands. Tanger Med handles eleven million containers a year and clears in six to twenty-four hours on the fast-track scheme — which makes lead times here the shortest in Morocco.

The port advantage, made concrete

A Finnish heater ordered for a Tangier project can be on site within days of the vessel berthing. Inland, add the road leg; in a landlocked country, add weeks. We pass that through as a shorter programme rather than a lower price, because the price is what it is.

Every room is crated with a spares allowance, and a replacement part ordered later follows the same short route through the port rather than a long overland one.

Mediterranean rather than Atlantic

Tangier's salt load is real but gentler than the Atlantic corniche, and the wind is less relentless. We still specify stainless throughout and a ventilated cavity, but glass can face the water here in a way it cannot at Aïn Diab.

Old town and new town

The Tangier medina has the same hand-access constraints as Marrakech's, on steeper ground. Malabata and the newer developments are ordinary vehicle-access sites with modern slabs, and the two are priced completely differently.

Fès

Fès is where zellige comes from, and working here means working next door to the people who cut it. It is also the most difficult medina in Morocco to get anything into.

Zellige at source

Fès is where zellige is cut. For a Fès project you can visit the cutters' yards, watch a piece being chipped to shape, and choose the glaze from what is being fired rather than from a sample board; we then specify the pattern and approve the pieces with you.

It also means shorter lead times on the one component that usually sets the pace of a hammam.

The tightest access in the country

Fès el-Bali is almost entirely pedestrian and parts of it are stepped. Donkeys and handcarts are the delivery method, not a picturesque detail. We size panels to the route, deliver at dawn, and build in more on-site assembly than we would anywhere else.

That is a labour line and a schedule line. We put both in the quote rather than discovering them in week two.

Old buildings, unknown interiors

Dars here are centuries old and nothing inside a wall is certain. We open up, look, and price the drawing afterwards. A hammam quoted from a floor plan alone in Fès is a quote that will change.