Undoubtedly, having your own sauna on the site is great, but a steam room attached to the house is even better! Indeed, in winter, having a good steam bath, you do not need to run home through the entire area and carry firewood and towels around the yard. However, an attached bathhouse to the house is not only an opportunity to have fun without leaving your home, but also an increased fire hazard. How to carry out construction taking into account all the norms? Types of building materials, advantages and disadvantages.
Varieties of baths
The projects of baths attached to the house differ depending on the type of steam room:
- Russian banya with its classic attributes - a stone stove, wet steam, brooms and a font.
- Finnish sauna, in which, thanks to dry steam, you can stay even at a temperature of 100 degrees, but in this casethe use of brooms is strictly prohibited, as they can cause burns.
- Turkish hammam with an air temperature of about 60 degrees. In such a steam room, you can spend a lot of time without harm to he alth.
The choice of a bathhouse for construction depends on the personal preferences of the owner of the site.
How to attach a bath?
Is it possible to attach a bath to the house? From the side of the legislation, there are no prohibitions, in addition, there are rules that regulate the construction of extensions of this type. There are several options on how to combine a steam room with a living space:
- Using an existing wall at home. This method is the most economical, as the costs are reduced for the construction of one bath wall. However, the savings will have to be invested in high-quality vapor barrier and waterproofing, as well as on fire safety methods. It is especially important to comply with all fire safety rules if the house to which the steam room is attached is wooden.
- A bath attachment to the house. In this case, the attached bathhouse to the house has its own wall, which is built right next to the wall of the dwelling. The advantage of such construction is the absence of the need to make a vapor barrier. In this case, the doorway connecting the two buildings is quite wide, so it makes sense to install two doors instead of one and make the one closer to the house fireproof.
- Connecting the house and the bathhouse with a short transition. In this situation, the bath does not come into direct contact with the dwelling, howeverit is easy to carry out all the necessary communications through the existing corridor.
The choice of method depends on the planned construction budget, personal preferences and the type of house to which the steam room is attached.
Advantages and disadvantages
The pros and cons of a bath attached to the house give a person the opportunity to think about his decision about future construction. Benefits include:
- the opportunity to visit your own steam room without leaving your home;
- reducing the cost of a separate water supply, as communications are carried out from home;
- no need to go outside and be exposed to sudden temperature changes during the cold season.
However, when trying to make a bath attached to the house, a person may encounter such a number of difficulties:
- compliance with all SNiPs that regulate high-quality waterproofing, vapor barrier and fire safety standards;
- engineering communications require careful calculations, as in the case of self-construction;
- need for regular treatment of premises with antiseptics.
Disadvantages for the most part are rather conditional, since the construction of a free-standing bath would have to comply with all the same established standards.
General recommendations
Professional builders recommend following these tips:
- Properly made waterproofing will help to significantly extend the life of the bathhouse and home.
- Optimalan option is the arrangement of the furnace, which is designed not only for a bath, but also for a house. Thus, in the summer it is possible to dry the premises by heating, and in the winter the bathhouse will heat the house with its warmth.
- It is better to attach a bath from profiled timber to a wooden house.
In general, it is recommended to build an extension in the form of a bath from the material from which the residential building is built.
Bath from a bar
Attaching a bath from a bar to the house is allowed if the entire dwelling is built of wood. To implement plans, you will need to choose the right building material. It is recommended to use a bar with a section of 150 x 150 mm. It can be made of linden, larch, cedar. Coniferous trees are not recommended, as they may release some resin when heated.
Beam can be of the following types:
- Profiled is convenient to use during installation, the canvas in this case is smooth and without gaps. The disadvantages of the material include the need for additional heat-insulating sheathing after some time of operation of the building.
- Glued laminated timber is often used in finished bath projects. It provides quick installation, and the foundation can be lightweight. The disadvantage is the fact that in some cases the adhesive may contain formaldehyde.
- Ordinary timber has a relatively low cost, but may shrink and deform when dry.
When purchasing material, it is important to take a little for stock, as somepart of the beams will definitely deteriorate during the construction process.
How to attach a bath to a wooden house? To do this, you can use the following instruction:
- lightweight foundation is suitable for construction - tape or pile-screw;
- mastic and two layers of roofing material are used as waterproofing of the base;
- for laying floors, you must first assemble the logs;
- construction of walls is not difficult, especially if you use profiled or glued beams, in which case the materials simply stack on top of each other;
- doors and windows are sawn out after full shrinkage of the timber, which can take several months;
- before the end of shrinkage, a rough roof is made, after the expiration of the prescribed period, it is replaced by a permanent metal tile.
A bath from a bar turns out to be the most environmentally friendly steam room, since no harmful substances are released when wood is heated.
Frame bath
Designs of this type have recently come into use, but managed to earn full confidence among experienced builders. The indisputable advantage of a frame bath - attached to a brick or wood house - is the absence of the need to create complex drawings, because the building is assembled easily and simply, like a designer. In this case, the lightest and simplest foundation on piles is required. Frame baths have the following advantages:
- light design;
- no shrinkage;
- easy installation;
- thermal insulation,which is not inferior in quality to brick buildings;
- low cost building materials.
Unfortunately, frame structures are not without flaws, but they are an order of magnitude smaller than the positive sides:
- increased fire hazard;
- relative fragility of the structure;
- need for interior and exterior finishing.
It is also important to pay great attention to vapor barrier, as the materials from which the frame is made can quickly deteriorate from high humidity and temperature changes inside and outside the building. An attached frame bath to a brick house can look like a single unit with a residential building if its exterior finish is made using brick-like tiles.
Construction stages
How to attach a bath to the house? A simple rustic Russian bath can be made on your own if you know some basics of construction. The following stages of building construction should be followed:
- Laying the foundation is where any construction begins. It is recommended to install it taking into account the severity of the structure and the characteristics of the soil. So, for example, on moving lands it is recommended to use a pile foundation, and for the construction of a capital brick bath - a concrete, strip, reinforced foundation.
- Installation of the floor. Since ancient times, the floors in the bath are made of wood. This material, although less durable than concrete, is more environmentally friendly, resistant to hightemperatures. In addition, you can walk freely on the wooden floor without fear of getting burned. But builders recommend building logs for laying the floor from asbestos-cement pipes, as they are much more durable and do not rot over time.
- The walls of the bath complex can be log, brick, and also made of sandwich panels. It all depends on the financial capabilities of the developer, as well as on personal wishes. It should be noted that brick buildings will cost much more than similar sandwich panels.
- Metal tiles are traditionally used for roofing. This is a modern eco-friendly material that meets all safety standards.
- The last step is the interior and exterior decoration. Outside, the bath is sheathed with siding, a slab that imitates a log house, wild stone, tiles imitating bricks. The interior decoration should be wooden - for this purpose, linden and larch wood is used.
All stages must go sequentially, since only in this way can you end up with a quality building.
Drainage Equipment
When designing and building a bath attached to a house, it is important to take care of the plumbing and drainage. The advantage of such a bath is that all the necessary communications can be carried out from a residential building. Most often, water pipes are laid from the central water supply, but there may be several options for water disposal:
- Drainage pit is considered one of the easiest and cheapest options. In that case, you needjust dig a hole of the appropriate size, overlay its inner walls with bricks or concrete rings. For cleaning as it is filled, a cesspool machine is used.
- Sump with filtration system is the most expensive and labor intensive option. The system consists of a filter made of shells, crushed stone or gravel, the upper part is filled with river silt, which is supposed to clean the wastewater.
- A septic tank is a variant of a drain pit, where a plastic container for wastewater is used instead of a well. Purification can take place with the help of a cesspool machine, or a water filtration system can be installed, after which the liquid is drained into the ground.
If there is a central sewerage system at the construction site of the bathhouse, then sewage pipes can be connected to it.
In addition, the floors of the bath should be equipped with drains. It can be a leaky floor in a steam room, where water passes through the gaps between the boards and collects in a tank under the floor, or concrete structures that are equipped at an angle.
Roof Features
A frame, log or brick bath attached to the house must have a roof that will meet all the necessary requirements. Its peculiarity is that it should not let moisture through, which will accumulate in the steam room, as it can destroy not only the bath building, but also a residential building. To prevent condensation, it is necessary to carefully insulate the roof, this can be done in several ways:
- fixing insulation directlyunder the rafters;
- mounting material on rafters.
Under the roofing material it is also important to lay a layer of material to waterproof the room. To prevent wood decay, all elements must be treated with resin or paint.
Interior fittings
It is not enough to know how to attach a bathhouse to a brick house, it is also important to take care of the interior decoration. The main aspects of the interior equipment are as follows:
- Doors and windows are deliberately set smaller than the standard size - this way you can keep the temperature inside the room.
- To ensure fire safety, all doors and windows should open outward only.
- Door handles are allowed only made of wood, as metal can burn.
- For reasons of heat conservation, the windows are not vertical, but horizontal.
- All wiring in the bath should be covered with a fire casing, and if it is located inside the walls, it should be placed in metal pipes.
- Shelves and wall decoration must be made from tree species such as linden, aspen or poplar. This material dries quickly and does not emit resin when heated.
- It is important not to use paints and varnishes inside the bath, as they can release toxic substances when heated.
Bath attached to the house, from a block or other material, should be as comfortable as possible for those people who are going to heruse.
Bath accessories
It's hard to imagine a steam room without traditional accessories - brooms, buckets, buckets for water. It is also important to follow safety precautions. Buckets and buckets should only be made of wood so as not to get burned when using them. But brooms can be anything - juniper, oak, birch, linden, maple, alder, herbal (mint, nettle, wormwood).
Conclusion
How to properly attach a bath to the house, described in detail above, it is quite simple with some special knowledge. However, if there is the slightest doubt about the result, it is recommended to involve specialists who will help to do everything in accordance with the current rules and regulations.
