Outdoor and rooftop saunas for Moroccan terraces and gardens

The roof question, answered before anything else

A four-person cabin is light; the water in a plunge tub next to it is not. Before we quote anything for a roof we want to know the structure — traditional riad roofs on timber joists and reed are a different conversation from a modern concrete slab, and in the medina the answer is often that the cabin is fine and the plunge goes downstairs.

We set cabins on galvanised steel feet that spread the load and lift the timber clear of standing water, and we keep the load path over walls rather than mid-span wherever the structure allows.

Sun, wind and the two climates

Inland — Marrakech, Fès, the Haouz plain — the enemy is sun. Cladding on the west face bleaches and dries out, so we specify charred timber or accept that pale timber will need re-oiling. On the Atlantic — Essaouira, Agadir, Taghazout, Dakhla — the enemy is salt-laden wind, so every fixing is stainless and the rainscreen cavity is deeper.

The same cabin built for both places is wrong in one of them. We build them differently and the quote says why.

Winter is the other surprise. Marrakech nights in January drop close to freezing and Atlas foothill houses see frost, so an outdoor cabin gets full insulation in walls, roof and floor, and the door seal matters as much as the heater size.

Getting it up there

In the medina, panels go by handcart through alleys and up a staircase built for people, not for four-metre boards. We size the panels to the narrowest point on the route, which we photograph during the survey, and the factory cuts the crates to match. Outside the walls, a truck and a hoist do in an hour what takes a day inside them.

Indicative bands run from 41 thousand MAD for a small terrace cabin to 130 thousand for a six-person cabin with a glass wall, with the medina carry priced as its own line. The cabin is dry-assembled in our Istanbul factory before it is crated, so on your roof it goes together without surprises. Send a photo of the roof and the stair on WhatsApp for a first figure.

In short

• Roof structure checked before we quote — riad roofs and concrete slabs are not the same
• Charred timber inland against the sun; stainless fixings and a deeper cavity on the coast
• Panels sized to the narrowest point of the access route, photographed during the survey
• Steel feet spread the load and keep timber clear of standing water