Saunas for Nyungwe forest lodges and Rusizi hotels

Designing against permanent damp

In a forest lodge, a cabin closed up after use is still damp the next morning. We fit a mechanical extract with a long run-on timer to every hot room, raise cabins clear of the ground over a ventilated void, and use charred or thermo-treated timber throughout — untreated softwood here has a short, unhappy life.

The vapour barrier runs unbroken on the warm face of the wall, and every cable, pipe and fixing that passes through it is sealed. Leave a gap in it and Nyungwe's damp collects inside the wall, which does more harm than having no barrier at all.

Working inside a protected landscape

Access, waste and noise are all constrained near the park. Our cabins are cut, fitted and dry-assembled in the factory before they ship, so the work on site is assembly rather than sawing. We take every offcut and all packaging away, and run generators only in the windows the lodge agrees.

What guests want after the canopy walk

Warm and dry, quickly. A steam room is a harder sell in a rainforest than a dry sauna — people have been damp all day. A hot dry cabin and a hot shower is the combination that gets used.

Where a lodge already has a steam room, a cold shower or a small plunge between the rooms completes the circuit, and in the forest's cool air that plunge needs very little chiller capacity. Rusizi's hotels on the southern tip of Lake Kivu, lower and warmer than the forest, suit a more conventional sauna-and-plunge pair.

Typical budget in Nyungwe

A four-person dry sauna with one glass wall facing the forest is 4.6 – 6.8 million RWF; a six-person lodge cabin with corner glazing is 6.9 – 9.5 million. A lodge adding a full suite with rest area and plant should plan on the 24 – 52 million band for a small suite. Service visits here carry the 0.2 – 0.6 million upcountry surcharge, and in this climate the extract fan and the barrier seals are checked every time.

Access and delivery

Nyungwe is most of a day's drive from Kigali: south to Huye, then west on the road that crosses the forest towards Rusizi. It is paved but long, winding and often wet, and lorries move slowly on it, so we plan one delivery per project rather than several. From the far side, Rusizi (Kamembe) has an airstrip with domestic flights — useful for a technician carrying a spare part, never for a crate.

Power at forest lodges is often limited, which is why the hotel and lodge spa page covers grid, generator and solar options room by room.