Guide to building your steam room

With more than 45 years of experience in the manufacture of sauna cabins, steam rooms, and all the relative equipment (sauna heaters, steam generator, accessories...), Oceanic Saunas offers its experience and knowledge so you can create your own steam room.

Following this guideline, you will then be able to fully enjoy your relaxation space without difficulty.

Remember: all our material has a 3 year warranty (read terms and conditions)

Structure

You can form your steam room cabin thanks to hard panels or from block work.

Oceanic Saunas also offers customers prefabricated cabins, with high quality materials and a finish worthy of the most prestigious spas on the planet:

- Roman steam room, made of acrylic panels

- If you have already created your own structure, then you will be interested in our complete material kits

Insulation

Never tile directly onto block work, always insulate block work. We advise using a foam cement board.

For domestic purposes 20mm of insulation is sufficient.

For commercial we advise going upto 70mm or more if possible.

This will reduce the running costs but will require good ventilation and airflow.

Roof

The ceiling has to be vaulted so that the drops of water, formed by the condensation of the steam, go running on the walls, and not falling on bathers.

Oceanic Saunas recommends having a height of 2200mm.

Door

The doors for steam baths have to present, in its lower part, a space for the fresh air to enter your cabin, renewing the air and forming white steam.

We recommend 6mm or 8mm thick tempered glass doors. Find all our steam doors here.

Floor

The floor will have to have a drain (identical to the drain of a shower), in order to evacuate condensed steam. It will also be very useful when cleaning the steam room.

Ventilation

Good airflow is crucial to maintaining fresh steam.

With a well insulated room once the steam room has reached the temperature set on the control the heating elements in the generator will switch off and only come on again once the temperature drops sufficiently. The due point of the room will also change when the walls and air heat up causing the steam to turn clear rather than white. The room is still at 100% humidity but the vapour has now dissipated. Similar to when breathing in the 
summer compared to the winter. Cool air flow will prevent the generator from switching off for long periods and create nice fresh white steam inside the room.

For domestic purposes this can be achieved by just using a static 4” vent (no fan), the duct can either run into a wet room such as a pool hall or bathroom which should have it’s own forced extraction(with fan) or run directly outside.

For commercial purposes you should install a variable speed fan blowing into the room at low level, you should then have a static vent running to outside at high level, this can be to a wet area but this area must have a powerful extraction system in place.

Tiles

We advise to not use any thicker than 10mm tiles. The thinner the better, if you are looking for a quick heat up time the thin tiles will obviously heat up the quickest, this also means you can use a smaller generator especially if you have insulated the room.

Heat Time

If you have built the room as described and used the correct size generator then the room should reach temperature within 20-40 minutes depending on the ambient room temperature (ie it may take longer during the winter).

Lighting

Different lighting systems can be installed inside your steam bath: starry ceiling with optical fiber, chromotherapy LED system, ...
We recommend always be low voltage lights, IP65.
In all these decorative lights, we recommend installing white light bulbs, useful when doing maintenance of your cabin.
You can control the lights with our steam generator control panels so you will need less electrical installation. Ask us for advice.

Steam Generator

What is the steam generator adapted to my project?

Our range of steam generators for steam room is divided into 3 types:

- OCA home steam generators
- OCA light duty commercial steam generators, with steam on-demand* device, for use up to 20h per week
- OCD heavy duty commercial steam generators with steam on-demand* device, 2 sessions and programmable descaling maintenance, for use up to 16 hours per day. 

How to select the right power ? 

1 - Calculate the volume of your steam bath (length * width * height = m³).
2 - Do not forget to remove at this volume the space occupied by benches, for example.
3 - Once the useful volume is known, if your bathroom is insulated according to the specifications above you will not need to calculate anything else

However, if your bath is not insulated you should follow the following instructions:

- Multiply by 1 the volume if the wall coating is acrylic to obtain the power kW.
- Multiply by 1.2 the volume if the wall covering is ceramic or granite to obtain the power kW.
- Multiply by 2 the volume if the wall covering is marble to obtain the power kW.

Oceanic Saunas is not responsible for the customer’s poor choice of generator.

Steam Outlet Location

Steam outlet is located 300mm above the floor. It is important position the steam outlet as far from a users feet as possible.

For domestic purposes you don’t have to have the steam nozzle guard as they can become quite obstructive in small steam room but you must make any user aware of where the outlet is before using the room. 

For commercial purposed the steam outlet should also be as far from the user as possible with a guard and also signage telling the users that the outlet is hot and not to touch it.

Plumbing

- Water supply: 15mm diameter flexible tube and pressure reducer (1bar max.)

- Drain: 15mm or 22mm tube, depending on model, made of copper, resistant to high temperatures (+80°C)

- Steam outlet: rigid copper tube, 15mm or 22mm, depending on model

Never reduce the diameter of the steam outlet pipe at any point. 

When to install the steam generator

You can place the steam generator anywhere, outside the steam room, in a space without humidity, ventilated, and easy to access to perform maintenance phases.
The steam outlet pipe will not be able to rise much. Prefer to install the generator level, or above the steam room. Rising steam through this tube could cause condensation and block the system.

Control Keypad

For domestic purposes you can locate the keypad inside or outside of the room. Obivously by putting it inside you can adjust the settings while in the room, but we find that once you’ve found what temperature works for you 
then you don’t touch the settings again as the keypad remembers the last setting for time and temperature so you just push the on button before you want to use the room.

Oceanic Saunas Commercial Steam Generator

* Steam On Demand

Our unique Steam On-Demand feature is perfect for users who want to save energy on a steam room that is not permanently occupied. 30 minutes of steam can be activated at a push of a button. The button can be located inside or outside the room.