Timber-clad hot tub on a garden terrace with a step and screen

Residential · Kathmandu Valley · 2025

Private Himalayan Wellness Residence

Sauna, steam suite and cold plunge integrated into a south-facing terrace with a full valley view — designed around an existing structure, not a new one.

Location: Kathmandu Valley
Type: Residential
Area: 42 m²
Systems: Sauna, steam, cold plunge
Delivered: 2025

Challenge

The client wanted a full contrast circuit on a terrace that was built as a terrace: a 140 mm slab, no drainage, and a single-phase supply feeding the whole upper floor.

Adding a plunge pool and a steam room to that structure was not a matter of choosing equipment. It was a structural, electrical and drainage problem first.

Loungers on a timber deck beside a curved pool

Concept

We moved the wet elements to the structural line above the load-bearing wall and kept the sauna — the lightest element — at the cantilevered end. That single decision removed the need to strengthen the slab.

The supply was upgraded to three-phase for the house rather than the terrace, which cost less than staging the loads and gave the client headroom for later.

Timber sauna doors with turned wooden handles

Systems

A four-person cabin with a 6 kW heater, a tanked steam suite on a Vapor 9 generator, and an insulated plunge held at 9 °C. All three run from one Command Touch panel at the terrace door.

Execution

Eleven weeks on site, sequenced so the wet trades finished before the cabin arrived. Tanking was tested with a 24-hour flood test before any tile went down — the step most residential projects here skip, and the reason most of them leak.

Dark tiled wet room with twin stone basins and low wall lighting

Result

A contrast circuit that runs the way it was designed to: eight steps from heat to cold, with the valley in view from all three positions. Twelve months in, the plunge holds setpoint through the pre-monsoon peak.