A sauna and cold plunge pool on Mallorca: stone, olive terraces and an island's logistics

The safareig, the cistern and the stone you already have

The best plunge pools on the island may already be there. The safareig (the alberca of Andalusia), the stone irrigation tank beside many fincas, can be the right size and shape for a long plunge pool: about 1.0 × 3.0 m, steps at one end, a coping of the same honey-coloured marès. A cistern or a walled cellar can hold a glass cabin. We draw from what the property already has before we add anything new.

Palma patios and the neighbour's window

In the old town and the Eixample of Palma the plot is a patio, the walls are tall and everything echoes. A two-seat cabin and a round pool of 1.4 m fit in a patio of about 4 × 4 m; the chiller hums, so it goes away from bedroom windows and on anti-vibration feet. The crates arrive through a door, so we measure the door.

Rural land: a conversation before a drawing

On rural land (suelo rústico) the rules on new structures, pools and even decking can be stricter than in town. Ask the town hall (ayuntamiento), and the technical office of the Consell where the plot is rural, whether a sauna cabin or a pool is allowed and in what size. Ask whether the plot is rural, protected or both, and what the existing buildings are registered as.

Water, in an island that counts it

Drought has made water a live issue in the Balearics. A plunge pool is a small closed circuit of about 1,100 litres: filled once, filtered, topped up. Ask your town hall whether any restriction on filling pools applies to a first fill, and when. We list the litres and the refill schedule in the layout, so the answer is a number, not an argument.

Palma Puerto, in the WMO climate normals for 1991–2020 that Spain submitted: a mean daily maximum of 29.9 °C in July and 30.4 °C in August, a January mean minimum of 8.9 °C and 468 mm of rain a year. The airport at Son Sant Joan, out on the plain, reads hotter by day and colder at night (31.6 and 31.8 °C, and 4.7 °C in January), which is the difference between a terrace by the harbour and a finca inland.

Freight and the crane day

Everything arrives by sea. Crates land at Palma and travel by road to the finca, often along a single lane between stone walls. Allow time for the crossing, plan the delivery window with the port and the driver, and tell us the width of the gate and the lane. Delivery is quoted in the layout, and the installation week is planned around the ferry, not the other way round.

Tramuntana wind and the north coast

The north and west of the island sit under the Serra de Tramuntana, and in winter the north wind arrives with real force. An outdoor cabin on that coast turns its glass away from the wind, takes a membrane roof with proper falls and uses 316 stainless on everything that can be touched by salt. In the sheltered south and in the interior around the Pla, the question is sun more than wind: shade for the glass, and a chiller that does not sit against a hot south wall.

Hotels and agroturismos

Small hotels in converted farmhouses suit the courtyard formula: a limestone yard, two glass cabins, a long cold pool with a seat edge and a plant room in an old outbuilding. The outbuilding can be the hardest part to approve and the easiest to use, because it already has walls, a door and a drain. The Algarve profile is a composite of that scheme.

A finca among the olives, in numbers

What an island teaches you about ordering

• The order before the permission. Crates bought for a plot that turns out to be rural, protected or both. Ask the ayuntamiento first, order second.
• A lane narrower than the lorry. Stone walls do not move. A delivery planned from a map rather than from a photograph ends with a driver and a wall.
• The chiller against a hot stone wall. The corner of a sun-baked terrace breathes its own heat. Put the machine where the air moves.
• The summer-only plan. A plunge pool that is perfect in August and empty in November is half a design. The cabin and the warm side are for the other months.

The island rewards patience. A project drawn in autumn, with the town hall's answer in hand, built in the workshop through winter and installed in spring tends to be calmer than one rushed into June.

The finca sample uses the six-seat cabin and the long-pool lines of the price list; the kit builder lets you swap them for a smaller pair.

Related pages: private homes and fincas, garden saunas and Ibiza and Menorca.