Sauna and cold plunge suites, specified for the consultant's drawing set

Specifiers often meet saunas late: a line on a hotel brief, a room labelled "wellness" on a tower plan, a villa client who has seen one abroad. The consultant then has to guess power, water, heat load and heights before any supplier has committed. This page is the guess made unnecessary. Where a figure below depends on the product or the site, it says so, and the layout confirms it.

Electrical loads for the cabin

Currents assume a resistive heater at unity power factor on a 230/400 V supply. The international standard for electric sauna heating appliances, IEC 60335-2-53, covers rated inputs up to 20 kW (IEC 60335-2-53:2011, adopted as EN 60335-2-53 with amendments to 2023), so a cabin that needs more, like our 12-seat size, is heated by two 12 kW heaters rather than one large one. Existing installations in Saudi Arabia may still run the older 127/220 V system, Qatar and Oman specify 415/240 V ±6% and Bahrain 400/230 V (Kahramaa, 2016; OES-4, 2019; Electricity and Water Authority), so the same heater draws a little less current there. The supply is confirmed at survey and the table is recalculated. Frequency does not change a resistive load; it does change pumps, fans and chillers, which must be ordered as 60 Hz machines for Saudi Arabia (see heaters and chillers on 60 Hz).

The cold side

• Water. A round plunge is about 1,100 L, a square one about the same; a hot and cold pair adds a warm pool of roughly 1,300 L (see hot and cold pool pairs). Fill and drain connections are shown on the layout.
• Weight. 1,100 L is 1.1 t of water over about 1.5 m², roughly 700 kg/m² before shell and bathers. Flag roof and podium slabs for the structural engineer.
• Chiller plant. One chiller per cold pool by the nominal table (1 HP up to 260 L, 2 HP up to 570 L, 4 HP up to 1,200 L), with a margin outdoors in Gulf conditions (the next size, or a second machine in parallel above 1,200 L). Electrical load about 0.9, 1.8 and 3.6 kW respectively while the compressor runs.
• Plant position. A ventilated niche or plant room in shade, with a clear path for air and access for service; see chillers built for heat.

Room, heights and ventilation

• Cabin height 2.0–2.3 m inside; the room needs clear height above it for the roof panel and the ventilation outlet.
• A low air inlet and a high outlet to a ventilated void or duct; the cabin must not be sealed against the room.
• A floor drain or a fall to one, and a continuous vapour barrier on the closed faces of a cabin in an air-conditioned room.
• Glass fronts add heat loss: the air-conditioning engineer needs the cabin's surface area and temperature (see glass-front saunas in desert heat).

What you get from us, and what we need from you

The layout comes as drawings and a table. Ask for the file formats your team uses and we will say what we can supply; the first layout is free and arrives within five working days.

What goes into the drawing set, stage by stage

Coordination clashes we see coming

• Plant niche on the sunny side of a podium, with no airflow.
• A floor finish laid before the pool recess is signed off.
• Ceiling services running through the cabin's ventilation void.
• A glass front planned onto a corridor that should have been private.
• Electrical room sized for a 4.5 kW cabin and then asked to feed a 15 kW one.

Our sector pages show how the same logic works for hotels and resorts, fitness and padel clubs, clinics and developers. For a worked hotel example, read the hot-cold circuit spec sheet.