Sauna construction in Batumi: Finnish sauna, Russian banya, hammam

Sauna construction in Batumi starts with the question of what kind of heat you want. The answer decides the stove, the finish of the steam room, the ventilation and even the foundations: a dry Finnish sauna, a humid Russian banya and a hammam with steam from a generator are built differently. We put up a bathhouse as a separate building on the plot or build it into a house, new or existing.

Sauna, Russian banya or hammam

The table shows typical conditions; the exact ones are set by the stove or steam generator you choose.

We almost always build a hammam inside the house, next to a bathroom or the pool: it needs water, a drain and a plant room for the generator. A sauna with an electric heater can go either in the house or in a separate building, while a Russian banya with a wood-burning stove is better placed out on the plot.

Sauna construction in Batumi: a separate building or inside the house

A separate bathhouse needs its own foundations, water, drain and a cable from the house. In return, the smoke, heat and damp stay outside, and a timber building warms up faster than a masonry house. We take the distances to the house, to the neighbour's boundary and to trees from the design and the zoning rules for the plot, and for a bathhouse with a wood-burning stove we allow a generous margin.

A sauna in the house costs less: a 2–4 m² sauna room is built on a frame next to the bathroom, and the heater is electric. It needs its own extraction to the outside, a waterproofed floor and a door that opens outwards. If the house is still at the sketch stage, we plan the space for the sauna, the circuit and the ventilation duct from the start, and we design a spa area by the water together with the pool shell and its plant room.

Whether a separate bathhouse needs only a notification or a full permit depends on its class of structure. How the classes relate to the approval procedure is explained on the page about house construction in Batumi.

Vapour barrier and ventilation in the steam room

Steam in a steam room is always looking for a way into the wall. If there is a break in the vapour barrier, moisture settles in the insulation, and within a couple of seasons the lining boards darken and a damp smell comes from behind them. That is why we cover the walls and ceiling of the steam room on the inside with a foil layer, tape the joints with aluminium tape, and leave a ventilation gap on battens between the foil and the lining.

The insulation is non-combustible stone wool. We don't put polystyrene in a steam room: it softens in the heat and can give off smoke. We design the ventilation together with the stove. The air inlet usually goes low down, by the stove, and the extract higher up on another wall, with a damper that is partly closed while people are bathing. Afterwards the dampers and the door are opened, and the steam room dries out before the next session.

Stove, chimney and fire safety

We set a wood-burning stove on a non-combustible base and cover the nearby walls with a shield of brick or heat-resistant board. We take the clearances to the timber walls and benches from the stove's data sheet and the design, and we don't cut them down on site. We often surround a metal stove with brick: it then gives off a gentler heat and holds it for longer.

The chimney is built from insulated stainless steel twin-wall flue pipes. Where the flue passes through the ceiling and the roof, we fit non-combustible fire-stopping with a heat-resistant seal, and put a spark arrester on the chimney top: trees usually grow near a bathhouse, and dry leaves on the roof can catch fire from a spark. An electric heater has its own rules: a guard around the casing, a temperature sensor in the steam room and the control panel outside. In every bathhouse we fit a fire extinguisher and a smoke detector in the relaxation room.

Electrics in a wet area

An electric sauna heater needs its own circuit from the consumer unit: we size the circuit breaker and the cable cross-section to the heater's power, and fit residual current protection as the heater's data sheet requires. All the other bathhouse circuits go through an RCD. In a separate bathhouse, the cable comes from the house in a trench, in protective conduit, and a small consumer unit receives it there. You can see how we assemble a consumer unit and label the circuits on the page about consumer unit assembly.

There are no sockets or switches in the steam room; all the switches are in the relaxation room. The cable inside is heat-resistant, and the only light fittings are those rated for steam room temperatures. In the shower room the lights are moisture-protected or run at safe extra-low voltage, and the metal pipes and the shower column are connected to the equipotential bonding.

Foundations, floor and drain

A bathhouse of solid timber or with a timber frame weighs little, and piles or a strip foundation with a ventilated underfloor space are usually enough. A brick stove, on the other hand, is heavy and bears on a small area, so we give it a separate base that isn't tied to the bathhouse foundations. The stove and the walls settle differently, and on a shared structure a crack would open along that line. The structural engineer decides which foundation your ground needs, based on the ground survey.

We pour the shower room floor with a fall towards the floor drain and waterproof it under the tiles, carrying the waterproofing up onto the walls. Water from the drain goes into the house sewer or a septic tank, and if there are no services nearby, the choice of treatment is covered in our comparison of a septic tank vs mains sewer. We don't recommend draining bathhouse water straight into the ground: on a clay plot it stands under the building and washes out the base.

What we build a bathhouse from

Kiln-dried profiled timber still settles for the first year or two: the gaps between the courses are caulked again, and doors and windows go into settling frames with room for shrinkage. A bathhouse like this suits a place where someone lives nearby and can inspect it after the winter. Glulam settles less but costs more. A timber frame bathhouse is cheaper and quicker to build, and the same vapour barrier protects its walls from damp. How these options differ in the local climate is covered in our comparison of a log house vs timber frame house.

A bathhouse is built of aerated concrete or brick when it adjoins the house or the pool and has to look of a piece with them. Inside, we insulate it in the same way and line it with timber, otherwise the masonry wall takes hours to warm up. A hammam is not lined with timber: the walls and benches are built of brick or block, or from moisture-resistant building boards made to take tiles. We waterproof the whole chamber, finish it with mosaic set in adhesive rated for constant moisture or with marble, and make the ceiling vaulted so that condensation runs down the walls instead of dripping onto the benches.

How much it costs to build a sauna or bathhouse in Batumi

A turnkey 4×5 m bathhouse costs from 51,000 to 66,000 ₾. The price includes the foundations, walls and roof, the steam room with insulation, lining and benches, the stove with chimney, a shower room, a relaxation room, and the electrics and ventilation inside the bathhouse. The water supply from the house, the drain to a septic tank or sewer and the cable from the house consumer unit are not included: we price them separately, according to the length of the run.

A larger bathhouse, from 6×6 m with a spacious relaxation room, is priced by floor area: 2,400–3,120 ₾ per m². A sauna in the house with a 2–4 m² sauna room and an electric heater costs from 11,900 ₾, and a 6–10 m² hammam with waterproofing, marble or mosaic and a steam generator from 42,000 to 60,000 ₾. A wood-burning stove with chimney and fire-stopping costs 6,600–9,600 ₾ on its own, and an electric heater with a control panel and a circuit from the consumer unit 3,600–5,400 ₾.

The total goes up with glulam, a brick stove on a separate base, a sloping plot and a long run from the house, and comes down with a simple timber frame and an electric heater. We send a preliminary estimate from photos of the plot and a sketch 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.