Saunas for a country with three climates

Three climates, three specifications

Cape Town: wet, windy winters with driving rain off the Atlantic. Deep ventilated cavity, charred or thermo-treated cladding, stainless fixings, and drainage under the cabin because water will get everywhere.

The Highveld: dry, high, and hail in summer. Altitude matters — Johannesburg sits at about 1,750 m, so the heater is sized up the same way we do it in the East African highlands. Roofs and exposed cladding need to survive hail that dents cars.

KZN coast: humid subtropical, salt on the air, nothing dries on its own. Mechanical extract with a run-on timer on every enclosed room, marine-grade fixings, and timber that is thermo-treated rather than hoping.

The Cape winter is the best sales argument in Africa

Most of our markets have to justify a hot room in a hot climate. Here, from May to September, the Cape is genuinely cold and wet, and a sauna is the room the house revolves around.

It also means contrast therapy works without a chiller for half the year: municipal water in a Cape winter arrives cold enough that a shaded, insulated plunge sits in the low teens with no machine at all.

Sizing

0.85 kW per cubic metre of insulated cabin, plus roughly 0.42 kW per square metre of glazing. On the Highveld we add capacity for altitude; at the coast we do not.

Above 8 kW you want three-phase. South Africa supplies 230 V single phase and 400 V three phase at 50 Hz, and on most suburban properties the three-phase connection already exists or is straightforward.

In short

• A different specification for the Cape, the Highveld and the KZN coast — the quote says which
• Johannesburg at 1,750 m gets the same altitude correction we use in the East African highlands
• Cape winter is cold enough that a plunge often needs no chiller from May to September
• 230 V single phase, 400 V three phase above 8 kW