Salt rooms are also called halochambers. The usefulness of salt procedures today is known to many people. Such preventive zones are often arranged in sanatoriums, in the offices of some companies, where a healthy lifestyle is welcomed, as well as in respectable restaurants, as an additional service. Firms specializing in the arrangement of such premises will also offer their services to residents of the private sector, who most often do not know how to make a salt room with their own hands.
There is only one significant hurdle. This is the commercial cost of building an exclusive building. The price of services exceeds all forecasts and expectations. However, you can try to get out of the situation on your own. For this purpose, it is recommended to know some useful tips on the acquisition of materials and the arrangement of this room. This knowledge will help answer the question of how to make a salt room with your own hands.
Room requirements
A salt room will require a closed room. Ideally, this should be an individual building, but any separate room will do. It should be suitable for the following conditions, prompting how to make a salt room:
- As they say in the reviews, it is best to use the basement. Semi-basement apartments are also a priority, and only in an exceptional case they choose a room on the ground floor.
- The room must be dry. It should not be installed water or sewer pipes, as well as electrical wiring.
- There must be a concrete base on the floor. The wooden flooring will have to be removed, and if necessary, cast the screed.
- The minimum height of such a room should be 2.4 meters, and ideally 3 meters.
If a room that meets the specified requirements is already available, then you can proceed with the procurement of material and organize preparatory work. In the case when a suitable separate room was not found, you will have to do an individual building.
Wall coating method
How to make a salt room with your own hands? Reviews say that in total two methods of applying salt to the wall can be applied. Firstly, it can be laid out in the form of salt blocks. The latter after installation will constitute a monolithic structure.
Secondly, salt can be applied to walls in the form of plaster. At first glance, the second method looks more attractive, explaining how to make the salt room at home cheaper.
However, it is worth considering that salt has a stickiness only in the wet state. Reviews say that when completely dried, it will certainly peel off and disappear as soon as possible. Thus, instead of the desired preventive zone, a territory of endless repair work will be obtained. For this reason, a more monumental option is proposed for consideration, providing a condition on how to make a salt room with your own hands for long-term use.
Material procurement
For the arrangement of salt rooms, Himalayan salt, which has a pink hue, is universally offered. However, in reality, this is only an aesthetic detail, which allowed to create a hyped brand. Still - the market value of one unit reaches 700 rubles, and given that the proposed technology requires the purchase of a special composition for a bunch of blocks, the total cost can reach hundreds of thousands of rubles, which certainly will not provide favorable conditions.
But in fact, the salt characteristics of the material of Himalayan origin are absolutely no different from all the others. For this reason, it is recommended to find a local producer whose raw materials will have a significantly lower cost.
The truth here is that you will have to find your own approach, since such a manufacturer is configured to implement carriage standards. So, a few tons will be more difficult to acquire. The composition of the material must be chosen differently, with a boulder width of 0.5 to 0.15 meters, plus small crumbs of a fraction of 1-2 mm. This will help to properly make the salt room itself.
Preparatory stage
How to make a salt room at home? The first step is to ensure that all materials from the previous interior decoration are removed from the walls. An exception can only be cement plaster, if it is in good condition. All windows should be laid, the height of the doorway should be 2.2 meters. In any case, this condition should be observed. Otherwise, the salt house built at home will not be functional enough.
Insufficient wall thickness must be compensated for by reliable thermal insulation. If such a need exists, then you need to isolate the outside of the walls, from the side of the street. Before you build a salt room with your own hands, the floor covering also needs to be removed. If there is no concrete base, it must be done.
Ventilation
In the salt room, a ventilation system must necessarily operate. For this purpose, special channels are laid out of brick in the corners of the room. In this case, in no case can you use different pipes made of metal. Salt very quickly reacts with them, which will only create unnecessary problems.
Ventilation windows must be arranged at a distance of one and a half meters from the floor level, and exhaust openings in the wall should be located as close to the ceiling as possible. This condition is important for maintaining the microclimate. You can not create a room without forced ventilation.
Waterproofing
How to build a salt room? During the waterproofing of the walls, special building mixtures with these characteristics are used. In stores specializing in the implementation of this group of products, consultants will easily help you find the right composition. In modern construction, such products are in demand, so finding the right mixture is not difficult.
To apply the insulation composition to the wall, it must be diluted with water to a thick paint state. Then, using a wide brush, apply successively to the wall. It is better to start from above, gradually dropping to the floor. Thus, the thickness of the insulating layer applied in this way should be about two millimeters. With such a small flow rate, a large amount of the mixture does not need to be purchased. Full solidification of the waterproofing layer will come in a week. After this work, you can continue.
Floor laying
The next step is to begin arranging the floor. For this purpose, salt lumps must be selected with a width of not more than 15 centimeters. If during the purchase it is not possible to load a multifractional composition, then preference should be given to larger components. Subsequently, large pieces can be divided using a turbine and a chisel. For salt cutting, concrete discs must be used.
The process of laying salt dies on the floor resembles the installation of paving slabs. A layer of moistened salt is laid on the floor. It should be compressed in a lump during compression, but not release water. Salt billets are subsequently laid out on the litter, which are compacted with a rubber hammer. The latter for this purpose is best purchased with white rubber, since it leaves no residue. The resulting cavities are also covered with a salt composition.
Walls
After the floor is finished, there is no need to withstand a technological pause. You can immediately cross to the laying of walls. They need to be stacked in a row. Start with the largest components that make up the first row. Before laying the block in its place, a layer of wetted salt is formed on the floor, forming a seat. Prepared salt is also used to bond the blocks together.
The next row is laid according to the same principle. On a seat of wet salt, one to one put proportionate blocks. It is important to consider that each next row should be slightly smaller in width than the previous one. It is necessary to calculate in such a way that the slope goes from floor to ceiling along the walls.
It is important to remember that every second row must be tied to the wall with wooden crutches. Moreover, it is necessary to fix not only horizontal seams, but also vertical ones. It is best to do this one at a time, maintaining a distance of one meter. It is worthwhile to ensure that all the seams between the blocks are filled with moistened salt. After a certain time, the wet material crystallizes, and the structure becomes monolithic.
The ceilings
In the process of laying walls under a slope, ventilation shafts will remain in the upper part. There is nothing to worry about. They do not have to try to close up with salt at all. For this purpose, sandstone may well be suitable, which will only give the interior an aesthetic appearance. Do not use salt plaster on the ceiling. She will fall away anyway. For the ceiling surface, it is recommended to use a wooden lining, which will have to be fixed with copper nails.
Commissioning
At the last stage, it is necessary to install exhaust and exhaust ventilation in the ventilation openings of the walls for the artificial ventilation of the room, in order to maintain the necessary microclimate. A layer of salt is poured on the floor with a thickness of three to five centimeters and loungers are set to your liking. It is important to remember that during procedures, exhaust ventilation must be turned off. Full ventilation of the room should be carried out only in the absence of people.
During the finishing work, it is necessary to ensure that the room temperature remains in the range from 26 to 28 degrees. These are the optimal conditions under which salt crystallizes. If this temperature regime is not established naturally, it is worth using a heater or other heating device.