Bath with your own hands. Part 3

Recommendation points

• Steam room insulation
• Wiring
• Tile. Warm floor
• Underfloor heating installation
• Laying tiles in the dressing room
• Selection and installation of window and door blocks
• Sun loungers
• Lining
• Small things

Finally, the construction of the bathhouse on its own is coming to an end. In the previous parts, we talked about how to choose the right place for the steam room, how to make a foundation and drive out an aerated concrete box. Today we will talk about the interior decoration of your sauna. What material to take for her and how to work with it.

Steam room insulation

Despite the fact that the walls of our bath are made of aerated concrete, it will not be superfluous to insulate the steam room itself. It is dangerous to use expanded polystyrene for these purposes, after all, heated to 120 ° C, it is not so harmless and environmentally friendly. Mineral wool in the steam room is also used only as a last resort. It is ideal if the insulation is made of wood, but, firstly, it is very expensive, and secondly, it is uneconomical in relation to space. Against this background, the use of foamed glass can be considered a good option..

The thermal insulation properties of this material differ little from the properties of expanded polystyrene, but unlike the latter, glass insulation is not susceptible to high temperatures.

Foam glass slabs can be glued to aerated concrete walls with ordinary tile glue (the manufacturer advises to nail it with fungi for reliability, but this advice can be ignored), we will also make a light putty of the material with it. We putty without fanaticism, just to close the pores and protect the insulation from crumbling. All the same, everything will be closed with clapboard.

Wiring

Before starting the finishing work, it is necessary to carry out the wiring. The plan of the latter must already be indicated in advance in the project documentation. In general, the speed and quality of all work performed directly depends on how well the project is drawn up. A person who does not have to invent and invent anything in the course of construction processes works an order of magnitude more productive.

Recommendations for working with wiring:

1. In the work, the cheapest way, of course, is to use a corrugated NYM electric cable, but firefighters prescribe wiring in the bath only in metal pipes. And, in truth, it is very difficult to argue with them, because, among other things, mechanical damage to an unhidden NYM power cable (for example, mice) is possible, which will nullify all reliable German technology. So if you want to play it safe and protect yourself from fire, it is better to lay the wiring through metal pipes.
2. To find the wiring after a few years, you need to lay it in the walls at a distance of 150 mm from the level of the final ceiling, and all descents are made strictly perpendicular to the floor.
3. Even before the creation of the project, it was necessary to calculate with a margin all the load carried out on the wiring. And, based on these data, select the required cross-section of electrically conductive conductors. So when installing, check with the project and lay cables only of the required cross-section..
4. All non-sleeve wire connections are soldered.
5. Do not forget about such an important point as grounding. When operating modern electrical appliances, it is mandatory.
6. When lighting the steam room itself, it is necessary to use step-down transformers.

Of course, with a flawless installation, standard 220V is also quite safe. But the cost of human life is too high to be put on the same scale with a random error..

Tile. Warm floor

After the installation of the electrical wiring, you can proceed to the finishing work. For example, such as laying tiles. Enough has been written about this seemingly simple, at first glance, work on the site, therefore, in order not to repeat ourselves, let us recall only some important aspects in our case:

1. Before installing the floor tiles in the steam room and shower room, drain drains must be installed first. Ladders in irregularly heated rooms must be “dry”.
2. For a steam room, you can take the cheapest floor tiles. Its main purpose is to ensure the proper sanitary and technical condition of the room, and not beauty (anyway, the tiles will be covered with wooden ladders).
3. When laying tiles along inclined drains, it is necessary to carefully monitor the resulting plane, the formation of counter-slopes is unacceptable.
4. Don’t skimp on grouting. There is an expanded clay pad under the tiles and screed, so that the tile joints should not allow moisture to pass through.
5. Under no circumstances should the tiles be laid on the bloopers. In intermittently heated rooms underneath it, moisture must condense and accumulate, which will tear off the tile at the first frost.

But in the dressing room, you will have to lay floor tiles on heating mats. In general, the heating of the dressing room is a rather controversial topic. Many people assign this function to the heat that enters the room from the steam room, others argue that the body heated in the steam room is not afraid of frost.

The whole truth is that in this state of affairs, a person runs out of the steam room directly onto the cold floor. And our feet react very sharply to such temperature changes..

In such a situation, heating the dressing room with an electric warm floor is a rather reasonable solution. And the heat comes directly from the floor, and nothing will freeze until the bath is operated.

Underfloor heating installation

Installation of underfloor heating is simple in itself, but, like any other work, it requires some knowledge. Work order:

1. This construction process was no exception and, like most similar works, it must be started with a marking. You need to plan a floor for laying heating mats and a strobe for a temperature sensor. For a note: thermoelements do not fit in the places where furniture is installed, closer than 50 mm from the walls, as well as in the immediate vicinity of other heating elements (in our case, the furnace of the heater, which is often brought out to the dressing room). You, according to the project, pulled up the power supply to the junction box in advance.
2. Further, the strobe itself is made in the floor. There, in a specially designed and tightly sealed tube, a temperature sensor is placed, the wire from which is pulled to the location of the thermostat. After which the strobe is again sealed with sand-cement mortar.
3. After that, we clean the area, and also prime the floor surface with a deep penetration primer.
4. Now the heating mats are laid out according to the markings. If in the process it is necessary to make a turn, the mat can be partially cut without damaging the heating cable.
5. Then the system is connected to the thermostat and checked for operability by temporarily connecting to the mains.
6. As soon as the health of the heating system is checked, you can proceed directly to laying the tiles in the dressing room.

Laying tiles in the dressing room

The technology for laying tiles in a waiting room on a warm floor is somewhat different from the usual technology for laying tiles. This is primarily due to the thickness of the applied layer of the adhesive mixture. When laying tiles on a heating mat, this value is about 10 mm, that is, you cannot apply it with a comb “on a sdir”, which means that you will need to lay the tiles carefully, carefully checking each tile. It will not be superfluous to recall that such a layer of glue will dry several times longer than the usual 3-4 mm..

Selection and installation of window and door blocks

The choice and installation of door and window blocks for the dressing room will rarely differ from the choice of similar elements for any other irregularly heated room, a steam room is another matter. Here you have to try. You make a door out of pine, and it will all go out with rosin, out of oak – it will be scary to touch, it warms up no worse than iron. Therefore, linden is considered an ideal material for making a door block. You can read more about making a door for a steam room in the article “How to make a door for a bath with your own hands”.

As for the window, in the steam room it primarily performs the function of an exhaust hood, and the value of the latter is generally difficult to overestimate. It is needed both simply for airing the steam room, and for regulating humidity and temperature during the bath process. Based on this, it follows that it is simply inexpedient to make a “wood grouse” for a bath. On the other hand, a hinged window requires a very high quality and in no case iron, corrosive fittings. The most successful material for this is copper. Instead of ordinary glass, you will need a tempered glass unit, and you will have to look for window handles made of wood..

With the installation of door and window blocks, everything is also not easy. Traditionally used in such cases, polyurethane foam is not practiced by real “bathhouse attendants”. Jute and tow is used instead. Of course, this greatly complicates the workflow, but as a result, everything turns out to be environmentally friendly and without problems with high temperatures..

Sun loungers

Now it’s the turn to equip sunbeds. To make them from sawn timber you will need: oak timber 60×50 mm and planed lime board 40–45 mm thick.

First of all, according to the drawing, load-bearing trusses are made. Two of them are rigidly anchored to the opposite walls of the bath.

The rest are installed between them with a pitch of 600-700 mm and screwed to the floor and back wall.

During the installation of the frame, it is necessary to ensure that similar elements of the support trusses are in the same planes. The resulting wooden frame is sheathed with a linden board. In this case, the boards of the horizontal planes of the lounger must first be planed in a thicknessing tool to one thickness, and the joints of the boards must be processed with a special cutter.

Vertical planes are hammered in such a way that there are 3–5 cm ventilation slots between the boards. We also remember that there should always be space between the floor tiles and the first lowest board. Moisture must drain freely into the drain.

For all the self-tapping screws used in the installation process, pre-drilled “pots” with a depth of about 10 mm, which are then closed with wooden plugs.

After assembly, the entire lounger is sanded with sandpaper.

This is the design of the simplest bunk lounger. Perhaps someone will not like it. But you can always design the most suitable one for yourself. You just need to follow some rules:

1. The horizontal plane intended for steaming with brooms must be at least 750 mm wide and at a height of at least 800 mm.
2. There must be good access to the lounger on which the brooms are steamed so that the attendant can easily do his job..
3. Inside, the structural space of the sun loungers must be well ventilated in order to avoid the accumulation of moisture and the formation of mold..
4. The distance from the upper shelf of the lounger to the ceiling must be at least one meter.
5. All metal parts or fastening elements of the structure must be safely hidden so that it is impossible to touch them even by accident.
6. The entire structure of the sunbed must be rigid and reliable enough to withstand the weight of all soaring people with a margin.

Lining

All walls and ceilings in the dressing room and steam room are traditionally sheathed with clapboard. At the same time, for a steam room, the lining should be aspen, alder or, best of all, linden. These tree species have a rather low density, which means that they do not heat up as much as oak or elm. In this article, we will not go into detail in all the intricacies and methods of editing this wonderful material. Those who are interested can read about it in detail in the article: “How to work with clapboard”. And we will focus only on those features of the installation of wooden panels, which will be important in our case..

The installation of the lining begins with the rejection of the material. Don’t be under the illusion that all lumber you buy or make yourself is perfect. There will definitely be defective elements (of greater thickness, width; with a cut groove, chips and fallen out knots). Being carried away by work, you may not pay attention to such a marriage, so it is better to start the culling process in advance.

Since the walls of the aerated concrete bath are quite flat, it makes sense to nail the support rails directly to the wall plane without using brackets (in this case, the dowel should be fixed in the wall material, and not in the sheet insulation).

Despite the fact that our ceiling is wooden, it is inappropriate to save on the frame and beat the lining directly to the existing plane. Lining is not a PVC panel; for its installation, the plane must be ideal.

The space under the lining should be well ventilated, which means:

1. The beams nailed directly to the wall should not form a closed ring. There must be gaps around the perimeter.
2. Ventilation openings must be made under the floor and ceiling in the lining.
3. The undercarriage space is best ventilated in a frame designed for horizontal lining.

In the steam room, it is recommended to mount the lining with the help of cleats. But in any case, the technology of mounting with a copper nail through the body is unacceptable. Even such small areas of copper can burn.

During installation, make sure that the kleimer sits tightly on the tree, the screws are tightened to the end and nothing clogs the groove. Having missed such moments, you can try for a long time to understand why another wooden panel does not want to lie down in its place..

Directly near the heater, the walls are not sheathed with clapboard; for this, tiles, natural stone or just brick are used.

In the steam room itself, unlike the dressing room, at the end of installation, the lining is only sanded, but in no case is it varnished (even despite the presence of modern heat-resistant paints and varnishes).

When installing a tree, do not forget about wiring. In the right places for switches, sockets and lighting, holes are made and wires are released.

Small things

After the installation of the lining, the matter, in fact, remains small. Nail platbands, plinths and various corners – strips. Supply sockets, boxes and switches. Finally connect the warm floor. And also to eliminate all those minor imperfections and flaws that were left for later. All these little things, at first glance, are insignificant, but they will surely take away more than one day of your time, and therefore, when doing work, strive to leave as little as possible for later.