How a sauna or cold plunge project runs, survey to handover

What the survey actually measures

The room or the plot, obviously — measured by us on site, or by you on a guided video call where the site is remote — but also the things that decide the price and the programme. Where the board is and what is on it. Whether the changeover feeds the circuits we need. The route from the nearest point a vehicle reaches to where the cabin will stand, photographed at every turn and measured at the tightest one. The ground, because a plinth pinned into rock and a raft on soft sand are different buildings. The water, where a steam room is involved, because borehole chemistry decides a generator's descaling interval.

On a commercial job it also measures the peak: how many people want the room in the busiest ninety minutes. Almost every gym and hotel underestimates this, and it is far cheaper to fix on a drawing than in year two.

What a quote from us shows

Every position itemised, in USD or EUR, with a reply within one business day of the survey data. The heater size and the calculation behind it, including any altitude correction. The chiller capacity sized for the air temperature we expect on your site, or a plain statement that you can do without one. The exposure package for your climate. Freight, the Incoterm and the last leg to site as their own lines. The services — drain, extract, cable, circuits. And the service interval, quoted with the installation rather than sold afterwards.

A rival quote that leaves those out is not cheaper, just vaguer, and the missing items tend to come back later as extras.

What happens while you wait

Long-lead items are ordered the day the drawing is signed, and then two things run in parallel. In Istanbul the room is built, assembled once for inspection, photographed and packed. On your site, your builder prepares the base, the drain and the first-fix wiring to our drawing.

Then door-to-door export with customs handled, cleared at your country's port: Tanger Med or Casablanca, Alexandria, Durban, Port Louis, Mombasa, Dar es Salaam, Port Victoria or Apapa. Assembly on site takes days rather than weeks, because the factory has already put the whole room together once.

How long it takes

From the day you approve the drawing to the day we commission, a single sauna or steam room takes six to ten weeks; the sea voyage is added to that. Twelve to sixteen weeks for a complete villa spa package. Hotels follow the construction programme, and we plan deliveries into it rather than around it.

Islands and fly-in camps add a transhipment or an air leg. The survey tells us how long that is, and the quote says so in writing rather than leaving it to a phone call later.

Handover, and the months after it

Commissioning with a thermometer and a stopwatch, not a handshake: the cabin is run up to temperature and timed, the chiller is run to setpoint, the cut-outs are tested and the water is tested.

For hotels, clubs and camps our crew spends two days with the staff on running the rooms, cleaning chemicals, water tests and keeping the log, and we come back after six months to read that log. Staff move on, and a spa run by people nobody trained rarely reaches its third year in good order. Everything we install carries a 24-month warranty, and a maintenance contract can be agreed at the same time.