Saunas and plunges on steep Mahé plots and boulder sites

The route decides the panel size

The survey starts at the kerb: we follow the path down or up to the chosen spot with a camera and a tape, noting every stair, gate and squeeze between boulders. That dimension sets the size of every panel. A cabin that would travel as three sections to a flat plot may travel as six here, each joint designed in the factory rather than improvised on the slope.

The carry then appears as its own line on the quote; on a typical Glacis or Bel Ombre plot it is a real part of the cost.

Leave the boulders where they are

Breaking granite here is expensive, noisy, often not permitted and rarely needed. We design with the rock: as one wall of the enclosure, as the view from the glass, as shade for the plunge. If a design truly needs rock removed, you hear it at survey stage.

Pinned plinths and steel frames

Where bedrock is close to the surface, a split-granite plinth pinned into it is the cheapest permanent base. Where it is too steep or too deep, a galvanised steel frame on pad footings is sized by an engineer. Uneven settlement on a slope pulls joints apart, and humid air then gets into the timber.

Storm water, the real enemy

Salt is constant, but the damage on steep plots is usually rain: a tropical downpour running down the hillside into the back of a terrace. A cut-off drain above the platform, a fall away from the cabin, a ventilated void beneath it and a plant cupboard never placed at the bottom of a slope solve it — invisibly, when they are drawn in from the start.

Hillside jobs take a little longer on site than flat ones because every panel is smaller and every trip up the path is on foot; we say so in the programme rather than apologising for it later. Send a few photos of the path from the road and the spot you have in mind, and we will tell you what the carry involves before anything is drawn.

In short

• Carry route surveyed and photographed before a price is given
• Panels sized to the tightest gap on the actual path
• Boulders designed with, not removed
• Cut-off drainage above every sloping platform