The Turkish Bath, Its Design and Construction

by Robert Owen Allsop

When the hot rooms are in a basement in the open, they may be top-lighted, and the ceiling above need not be a heavy fire-proof construction. A sufficient air space, however, must be provided between the ceiling and roof, to prevent irradiation of heat—a remark that applies also to anything in the shape of a window in the sudatorium. It must be double, or look into an area covered with pavement lights. In the case of a top-lighted room there must be a ceiling-light and a skylight.

Where the hot rooms are constructed quite above ground, consideration must be given to the prevention of loss of heat by radiation. This may be effected by providing thick hollow walls, the cavity being often usefully employed for the extraction of the vitiated air.

Heat permeating other apartments and neighbouring premises is a frequent source of trouble to the builder of a Turkish bath, but is always the result of want of study of the subject on the part of the designer. The evil may be successfully combated if it be resolved that no hot room, shampooing room, or lavatorium shall be constructed without a thick concrete floor above, and that the furnace chamber be perfectly and completely insulated. Should the walls of the hot rooms adjoin apartments to which it is urgently necessary that the heat should be prevented from being transmitted, they may be rendered heat-proof by building them hollow and filling the cavity with soot.

Double doors and lobbies must be employed to prevent the transmission of the heated air to rooms where its presence would be injurious. To keep the hot air of the bath-rooms from the cooling-rooms, &c., should be the great aim of the architect. Many baths are rendered quite repulsive by what I may perhaps term the "sudorific smell" that assails the nostrils of the visitor entering the vestibule.

The space allotted to the sudatory chambers may be divided into the various rooms, either by glazed brick walls or by framed and glazed partitions; or again, they may be formed by a combination of solid brickwork and glazed woodwork. Any piers in these rooms must be of brickwork, iron columns being inadmissible. Masonry, too, must be discarded throughout, or used with caution. Some stones—such as red Mansfield—become black with exposure to the heat, and others fare still worse. The employment of porous and absorbent materials must be guarded against throughout this portion of the bath, as it should be remembered that effete matters, particles of waste tissue, and possibly the germs of disease, are continually being given off by the perspiring bathers, and must be prevented from finding a lodgment.

The best woods for use in the hot rooms are close-grained and free from essential oils. Mahogany is excellently adapted for the purpose, and so, also, is teak. Pitch pine must be discarded altogether. Deal, when employed, should be perfectly seasoned, and may then give trouble from the exudation of turpentine.

The partitions, and the doorways in them, must be so placed as to govern the flow of hot air. So long as the main divisions be planned with this end in view, the separate rooms may be divided and broken up as the architect may fancy. But the constant flow of the heated air from the inlet in the hottest room towards the lavatorium must not be interfered with by recesses, nooks, and corners, or anything that would cause the current to stagnate. And here we may see the practical advantage possessed by a bath where the hot rooms are en suite, and in a line with one axis. For here the air sweeps uninterruptedly through the different chambers without eddying around corners and stagnating in recesses far out of the main stream.

The doorways in the partitions should not be too lofty. They should not be hung with doors, as anything necessary in this way will be amply supplied by depending curtains.

Glazing in the hot rooms requires care. The glass will expand considerably with the heat, and, what is more, if the furnace fire die out rapidly at any time, will contract and fracture. This difficulty, however, is the result of bad management, and does not concern the architect, unless, indeed, it be the result of improper fixing. Even moderate-sized sheets of glass should be carefully fixed in chamois leather with screwed beading, putty being wholly inadmissible. The sheets of glass should not be of too large dimensions. Rolled glass will be found the cheapest in the end, as inferior qualities, where homogeneity of texture is wanting, will crack and split in all directions. Lead glazing should be altogether discarded.

No provision for draining the hot rooms is necessary, as they must, when in use, be kept free from moisture. The floor may, however, if thought desirable, be laid with an imperceptible fall the way the water would be swept when cleansing—viz. towards the lavatorium.