A wellness oasis made entirely of salt
In Trinwillershagen, not far from the Baltic coast, Karin and Axel Günther have built a wellness oasis made entirely of salt. A salt crystal was the model for the 16-cornered ground plan of the Salztürme (salt towers), covering an area of about 100 m2. They had 38 tonnes of salt imported from Pakistan for the interior covering. 32 tonnes were installed as tiles, blocks and bricks. On the ground floor and the first floor, salt slabs with a red sheen and irregular quarry stone masonry were to cover the walls and floors. For the massage and wellness area on the second floor, the owners opted for translucent, almost white halite salt.

The processing of these natural stone materials represented a real challenge, especially as the wall covering was to be backlit. The team of owners, contractor and PCI advisers could not call upon a great deal of experience with the laying of salt slabs. Like the acrylic glass substrate, the tile adhesive needed to be transparent at the same time as offering considerable adhesive strength and being inert to the chlorides in the natural salt. Conventional tile adhesives could therefore not be used. With the expert support of PCI adviser Götz Hirseland and PCI application technician Andreas Albert, the project was realized as follows.

On the plinth, the Himalaya salt was installed as quarry stone masonry with the epoxy binder PCI Bauharz, mixed with silica sand. For the walls, the contractor initially positioned wooden laths as a substructure and integrated the lighting system with a total of 19,995 lamps. The acrylic glass cladding provided a strong, transparent substrate for the salt slabs. With a density of about 2.1 g/cm³, the salt material is sufficiently compact to allow wet cutting and drilling. The covering was anchored to the load-bearing substrate at certain points. The Himalaya salt material from Pakistan was laid in various different sizes. The halite salt tiles had a size of about 24 x 12 x 5 cm. In order to ensure optimum curing times for construction progress, PCI Epoxigrund Rapid was used as a fast-curing binder. For the non-sag installation of the salt slabs, the adhesive was mixed with PCI Stellmittel. Using this non-sag floating agent, the salt slabs could be rapidly installed on the substrate without any problems and without impairing the transparency of the covering.

Date

30.10.2012

Task

Installation of natural salt slabs with backlighting

City

Trinwillershagen

Completion

2012

Size

Wall surfaces: approx. 150 m2

Specialist advice

PCI specialist adviser Götz Hirseland PCI application technician Andreas Albert

Owner

Karin und Axel Günther

Company

Uwe Kremien Bauunternehmen

Architect

Dipl.-Ing. Rolf Günther, Büro für Architektur und Stadtplanung

Your contact for inquiries:

PCI Augsburg GmbH
Piccardstraße 11, 86159 Augsburg
Telefon: 0821 5901-0
Telefax: 0821 5901-416
E-Mail: pci-info@pci-group.eu
www.pci-augsburg.de

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