How to Create a Home Spa
If you're building from scratch - or even just doing a major redevelopment of an existing property - you've got the perfect opportunity to incorporate the greatest of all luxuries: a home spa.
By Mark Ramuz
You needn't devote lots of space and budget to the most basic of spas, but if you've got both, why not go the whole hog and include a sauna, hot tub and swimming pool?
The Finns have been using saunas to relax for centuries and it's not surprising this deep cleansing treatment has become a health club essential. To recreate this sense of well-being in an existing home, you'll need a spare bedroom, basement, loft, garage or garden cabin, although small two-person sauna cabins are only 1.2m square, so you could even fit one in a large bathroom.
Installing the cabin should only take a couple of days but you'll also need a qualified electrician and plumber to handle the rest of the fitting. Ideally, there should be a shower enclosure close to your sauna so that people can go from one to the other in the same room.
If you want the traditional steam or wet sauna, you'll need a stove unit that heats the basket of stones ready for dousing with water to create the steam. Most companies offer a range of heaters from 4kW for the compact sauna to an 8kW for a large 12 cubic metre room. The controls can either be on the stove or wired to the cabin wall's exterior so that you can set the heat ready for use. A stove will need up to an hour to reach the correct temperature (between 60-90 degrees C).
If you don't want the traditional steam heat, dry heat saunas use infrared heaters that warm up in a few minutes. The temperature is more controllable and running costs are lower. You don't need a water supply to the cabin.
A 1.2m square self-assembly cabin with small stove and controller starts at around £1,200, but larger, professionally-installed cabins will be at least £4,000.
