Hostel construction in Batumi: a building designed for beds

Hostel construction in Batumi from scratch is the choice when you have your own plot and the hostel has to run for years, not for a couple of seasons in a rented house. There are far more people per floor here than in a hotel of the same floor area, the bathrooms and kitchen are shared, and the guests don't know each other. A new building can be designed for this density from the start.

A new building or converting an existing one

A hostel is often opened in a house that has been bought or in a couple of combined apartments, and then the job comes down to renovation. How we do that is described on the page about hostel renovation. New construction has its own advantages: the showers are stacked one above another, the risers run straight, and the floor slabs and stairs are designed for the building's use from the very beginning.

If there are fewer than twenty beds and guests stay in separate rooms with their own bathrooms, in the way it is laid out this is closer to a guest house. If there will be a cafe or bar on the ground floor, open to the street, we design it as a separate part of the building with its own entrance, extraction and metering, to the same rules as a restaurant or cafe building. A hostel works better when the noisy zone is downstairs and the dorms start one floor up.

The number of beds sets the size of the building

At the concept stage we count people, not rooms. In a renovation the number of beds is fitted around the existing walls and risers, but in a new building it works the other way round: the number of beds at the peak of the season decides

• how many staircases are needed and how wide the corridors are, which is set by the fire safety design;
• the size of the bathroom block on each floor and the diameter of the risers;
• the volume of the hot water tanks and the floor area of the plant room that houses them;
• the size of the ventilation units and the storey height needed for the ducts;
• the electrical capacity, which we request from the network company while the design is still in progress.

We design dorms for 4–8 beds as a module: a rectangle with the window on the short side, bunk beds along the long walls, lockers by the entrance. The module repeats along the corridor, and the dorm partitions stand above the partitions of the floor below. Private rooms with their own bathrooms go by the risers, so that the drains don't run across the whole floor. The structural engineer designs the floor slabs for the building's use and for the dense arrangement of beds.

Bathroom blocks and hot water

In a new building we group the shared bathrooms into bathroom blocks, with showers, toilets and basins in one place on each floor, strictly one above another. We set the slab lower under the whole block when it is poured: the floor drains and falls fit within the floor build-up, there are no thresholds, and the whole block can be washed down with water, from the cubicles to the passage. In a renovation, getting the same fall usually means raising the floor by a step, while in a new building it can be done without one. We work out the number of cubicles and basins per floor from the number of beds and write it into the design.

In the morning and evening almost all the showers in a hostel are turned on at once, so the hot water is sized for this peak, not for the average daily consumption. We put storage tanks in the plant room, run a circulation loop to the showers, and give each floor its own circuit with a shut-off: a leak on one floor is fixed without turning off the others. If the boiler room runs on gas, the gas service lays the pipe to it and makes the connection; we don't touch it.

Ventilation sized for the number of people

The airflow for a dorm is calculated per person sleeping in it. That is why a hostel has larger ducts and ventilation units than a hotel of the same floor area, and space for them is allowed for in the storey height and in the plant room. In a new building we install supply and extract ventilation with heat recovery: supply air to the dorms, extraction from the toilets and showers. In winter it returns some of the heat from the outgoing air, so the incoming air doesn't chill the dorm.

We run the ducts above the corridor ceiling and take them into the dorms with short branches fitted with silencers: the hum of ventilation at night disturbs sleep as much as a neighbour does. The extraction from the shared kitchen is separate, discharging above the roof, so that the smell of frying doesn't get into the dorms. The laundry and drying room get their own extraction and a dehumidifier, otherwise in Batumi's humid air the washing takes a whole day and night to dry.

Fire safety built into the structure

At night dozens of people are asleep in a hostel, seeing the building for the first time. It is the stairs and corridors that will get them out, so we settle the escape routes at the concept stage, before the dorm layout: where the staircases go, how many exits there are to the street, how wide the corridors are and which way the doors open. The scope of the fire safety section for your building is determined by a fire safety specialist before the design. Among the documents against which this section is checked is the technical regulation “On Fire Safety Rules and Conditions”, approved by Government Resolution No. 370 of 23 July 2015.

For a hostel on several floors we propose a cast-in-place concrete frame: concrete floor slabs and stairwell walls don't burn and hold out against fire longer than lightweight structures. The doors to the staircase are fire doors with closers, so that they don't stay open. Detectors connected to a control panel with sounders go in every dorm, and their cables and the emergency lighting circuits are built into the walls and slabs at the first-fix stage.

The plot, the class of structure and the permit

For a hostel, people usually look for a plot near the centre, the station or the sea, and such plots are small. The zoning rules set the building footprint, the number of storeys and the setbacks, so we work out the hostel's capacity from the extract before the plot is bought, together with the architect and our partner lawyer.

We establish the class of structure at the concept stage with the architect: we look at the floor area, height and structural layout of the building, and the class decides the permit procedure. We have given guide figures for floor area and height on the page about commercial construction. A hostel with 60–80 beds is usually larger in floor area than a Class II private house, so from the start we prepare the scope of the design for whatever class the concept shows. How the permit procedure works is described on the page about construction in Batumi.

Finishes that withstand a flow of guests

In a new building, durability starts with the structure. We build the partitions between the dorms and the corridor from plastered blockwork, and keep plasterboard for where a light boxing is needed: a masonry wall won't be dented by a backpack or a bunk ladder. If a partition does have to be framed, we use two layers of board with mineral wool and take it up to the slab.

In the corridors and on the stairs we lay porcelain tiles, and in the dorms a hard floor covering on a sound-insulating underlay. We protect the corners with corner guards and the lower part of the corridor walls with panels: suitcases and the cleaning trolley knock against them.

How much hostel construction costs in Batumi

A turnkey hostel costs from 1,650 to 1,980 ₾ per m² of total floor area. This price includes the shell, windows, building services, the shared bathrooms and kitchen, hard-wearing finishes in the 4–8 bed dorms, the fire alarm and soundproofing between rooms. Beds and lockers are priced separately per bed space: fitting out one bed space costs from 1,320 ₾. The design and the plot are not included in the construction price.

For reference: the shell (black frame) of a masonry building costs from 690 ₾ per m², and white frame from 1,050 ₾. A framed partition with mineral wool and two layers of plasterboard costs from 160 ₾ per m² of wall, and a fire alarm, installed, from 17 ₾ per m² of floor area. If a suitable building already exists, renovating it as a hostel will cost from 840 ₾ per m², but then the layout is dictated by the existing walls and risers.

The price goes up with private rooms with their own bathrooms, a cafe on the ground floor, a lift and a sloping plot. It comes down with dorms of a single module and bathrooms grouped into one block on each floor. We send a preliminary estimate based on the plot extract and the number of beds within 24 hours on business days. The final cost is set on the basis of the design, after a visit to the plot and once the estimate is agreed.