Provision one — power: a DC 12V low-voltage point at each mounting position. Vaayu draws DC 12V / 1A at 5W; Aangan draws DC 12V at 14W. Trivial loads, but a real point on the electrical layout rather than a socket found later.
Provision two — position: the mounting position is chosen on the airflow path, not the sightline. The best position in most club lobbies is an HVAC return. The worst is behind the reception desk, which is out of the moving air and surrounded by the one group of people who have stopped smelling it.
Provision three — access at the air handling unit: if the HVAC route is wanted, the drawing has to give physical access and a mounting face at the AHU, with the unit’s 284 × 125 × 246 mm metal body and 3.9 kg allowed for.
Provision four — the written decisions: zone boundaries follow closed doors, and the unscented list — dining, bar counters, spa treatment rooms, the gym floor, boardrooms, a heritage library — goes on the drawing as a written note, because a room with no provision drawn is a room nobody can quietly scent two years later.
The honest gaps: the air handling connection is a mechanical integration. No digital integration of any kind is offered on any SOSA machine, so there is nothing for a services consultant to schedule, address or commission on a network. And no purchasable refill oil is published for the waterless commercial machines — the fragrance is specified and quoted per property through the contact page.
2. A DC 12V low-voltage point at each mounting position. Vaayu runs on DC 12V / 1A at 5W. Aangan runs on DC 12V at 14W. As loads these are beneath notice, and that is exactly why they get forgotten: nobody allows for a fourteen-watt device the way they allow for a chiller. What matters is not the watts but the position — the supply has to arrive where the machine is going, which may be inside a ceiling void, behind a return grille or on a face of the air handling unit, and not at the nearest convenient skirting socket four metres away.
3. A mounting position chosen on the airflow path rather than the sightline. This is the decision an architect is uniquely well placed to get right and uniquely likely to get wrong, because the instinct of a good designer is to conceal the object, and concealment and airflow are different problems. The mounting options published for these machines are freestanding, wall-mounted, or into an HVAC return, and the third is almost always the best one in a club lobby. The fragrance is carried by the air the building is already moving, so the question is never “where will this look least obtrusive” but “where does the air go from here”.
4. Physical access and a mounting face at the AHU, if you want the HVAC route. Aangan is rated to up to 3,000 m³ — roughly 8,000–10,000 sq ft — when it is connected into the HVAC or air handling unit, and that rating depends entirely on the connection being physically possible. It is a metal body of 3.9 kg measuring 284 × 125 × 246 mm, so it needs somewhere to sit, something to fasten to, a low-voltage supply, and a human being able to reach it with a refill bottle without a ladder and a permit. Plant-room access is the single most common thing a renovation drawing omits, and the one that cannot be fixed with a cable.
5. Zone boundaries and the unscented list, written on the drawing. A closed door is a real boundary for fragrance and an open plan is one volume however irregular its shape, so the zoning diagram is a door diagram, not a room-naming exercise. Mark it. Then mark the rooms that are to remain unscented — dining rooms, private dining, bar counters, spa treatment rooms, the gym floor, boardrooms and a heritage library — because a room with no provision drawn is a room nobody can quietly add a machine to in two years when a new manager arrives with an opinion. Everything SOSA makes is alcohol-free, phthalate-free, paraben-free, IFRA-compliant and 0 ppm formaldehyde, composed in Pune, and a portion of every order supports girl-child education through Nanhi Kali.
The three drawing-stage decisions
I have been into clubs a year after a refurbishment and been shown, with some pride, a beautifully detailed reception joinery run with a scent machine sitting on top of it because that was the only place with a socket. The machine was working perfectly. The lobby was barely scented and the two receptionists had a headache by four o’clock. Nothing had gone wrong with the purchase; the position had been chosen by the availability of electricity, which is the same thing as choosing it at random. Each of the three decisions below is made on a drawing, in an afternoon, by someone who is already drawing something else. Each of them is a week of chasing, lifting and making good if it is made after handover.
Vaayu₹11,999The load is almost comically small — DC 12V / 1A at 5W for the zone unit, DC 12V at 14W for the HVAC unit — and that is the trap. An electrical consultant allocating capacity for a club renovation is thinking about kitchens, lifts, chillers and lighting circuits, and a five-watt device does not register as a service at all. It registers as an appliance, and appliances get sockets. But the machine is not going where a socket would sensibly go. It is going into a ceiling void, behind a return air grille, on the face of an air handling unit or high on a wall above a door head, and in every one of those positions a visible lead to a visible socket is either ugly or impossible. Ask for the point to be shown on the layout at the mounting position itself, with a note of the voltage and the wattage so that the adaptor is allowed for rather than discovered.
Meenar₹38,500A waterless nebuliser does not fill a room the way a heater warms one. It shatters undiluted oil into a dry nano-mist and then relies on the room’s own air movement to distribute it, which means the position is not a cosmetic decision but the whole of the specification. Put it in the airflow path. In a lobby with central air conditioning that usually means at or into a return, where the air is already travelling and where the machine is invisible without being hidden from the air. It is also why, in a well-scented building, a member can never find the diffuser: the fragrance is introduced into moving air upstream rather than released from an object on a console, so there is no gradient to walk up and no source to locate. The two positions to argue against are a feature wall chosen for symmetry and anywhere behind the reception desk — the first because symmetry has no relationship to air movement, the second because it surrounds the dial with the only people in the building who have stopped being able to smell it.
Aangan₹25,999If the club wants one identity carried evenly across a whole floor rather than a set of separately commissioned zones, the route is the air handling unit, and the published coverage of up to 3,000 m³ on the HVAC unit assumes that connection exists. What the drawing has to provide is unglamorous: somewhere for a 3.9 kg metal body of 284 × 125 × 246 mm to be fastened, a low-voltage supply at that point, and access. Access is the part that gets lost. A plant room that can be entered during a renovation is not the same as a plant room that can be entered on a Tuesday morning by the maintenance supervisor carrying a refill bottle, and if the only route is behind a locked riser door that the fire strategy keeps shut, the HVAC route quietly becomes a standalone wall-mount instead — which is a legitimate answer, but one you want to choose rather than inherit.
The two decisions that go on the drawing as words
The other two provisions are not objects, which is why they get left out of a services package and then argued about for years. The first is the zone boundary diagram, and the only rule it needs is that it follows doors rather than room names. A closed door is a genuine boundary for fragrance, and an open plan is a single volume however many names it has on the plan. That means two small meeting rooms off a corridor are two zones whatever their area, and that a lobby which flows into a stair hall which flows into a members’ lounge is one volume that will be scented as one whether you intended it or not. Mark the boundaries on the plan and the machine count stops being a guess, because the question becomes connected volume rather than floor area. Coverage for these machines is published in volume for exactly this reason: a double-height entrance hall or a galleried staircase consumes coverage that a square-foot figure hides entirely, and the renovation drawing is the only document in the club that actually knows the ceiling heights.
The second is the written unscented list, and I would put it on the drawing as a note rather than in the committee minutes, because drawings survive general managers. Dining rooms, private dining and bar counters stay neutral: ambient fragrance competes with the kitchen’s work and flattens wine, and it is the one intervention that a chef and a sommelier will both object to in the same meeting. Spa treatment rooms carry their own therapy oils. Gym floors need air change rather than perfume. Boardrooms and private meeting rooms are small closed volumes holding people who did not choose to be there for two hours. And in an older club, the library or card room that smells of paper, timber and old leather is not a defect to be corrected. Writing that down at drawing stage does two useful things: it stops a provision being put into those rooms “just in case”, and it means that when somebody later proposes scenting the dining room, the answer is already a drawn decision rather than one manager’s taste against another’s.
There is a third thing I would ask the architect to write on the drawing, though it is strictly an operational note: who owns the setting. A scheme is only a system once it is written down — fragrance, position, intensity, schedule, refill cadence, the unscented list, and one named person who owns it. The machines help here. The zone unit has a key-lock and auto-stop, so the commissioned intensity can be fixed and left; the HVAC unit runs from a programmable board with work and pause cycles and daily schedules, which means all-day evenness is a scheduling decision rather than an intensity one. Both of those are easier to hand over cleanly if the drawing says where the key lives.
Which provision belongs on which drawing
This is the table I would email to an architect, a services consultant and a project manager in one message. It is deliberately organised by drawing rather than by machine, because that is how a renovation is actually coordinated, and because the failures almost all happen in the gaps between two drawings rather than inside one of them. The last two rows are the ones that have no object attached, and they are the two most often missing.
| Provision | Which drawing | The figure to show | Cost if it is designed in | Cost if it is retrofitted |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low-voltage point at each mounting position ★ | Electrical layout, coordinated with the ceiling plan | DC 12V / 1A, 5W (zone) · DC 12V, 14W (HVAC unit) | A point on a layout | A chased wall, a lifted ceiling, making good |
| Mounting position on the airflow path | Reflected ceiling plan with the HVAC grilles shown | Freestanding, wall-mounted, or into an HVAC return | A coordination note | A machine standing on joinery with a visible lead |
| Mounting face and access at the AHU | Mechanical drawing and plant-room access plan | 284 × 125 × 246 mm, 3.9 kg, low-voltage supply at the face | A bracket and a door that opens | Often unachievable; the HVAC route is abandoned |
| Zone boundaries | General arrangement plan, marked on doors not room names | Connected volume and ceiling heights, not floor area | Half an hour with the plan | Machines bought for rooms rather than volumes |
| The written unscented list | A drawing note, repeated in the handover file | Dining, private dining, bar counters, spa treatment, gym floor, boardrooms, heritage library | One line of text | An argument at committee, and a chef who stops cooperating |
Zone · 5W point₹11,999See it → AHU face · 14W point₹25,999See it → Larger property · on enquiry₹38,500See it →
Mechanical integration, and the digital one that does not exist
This distinction saves more time in a specification meeting than anything else on this page, and it is worth getting onto the drawing in plain words. The connection to an air handling unit is a real mechanical integration. The machine introduces its dry mist into the air the building is already moving, which is why a single unit at the AHU can be rated for a volume no unit standing in a corner could serve, and why the published figure of up to 3,000 m³ on the HVAC unit is conditional on that connection actually being made. It is plumbing and bracketry, in the broad sense: a face, a fastening, a supply, and air travelling past.
It is not a digital integration, and no digital integration is offered on any SOSA machine. There is no Wi-Fi, no building management interface, no automation or lighting protocol, no wired control input and no software connection of any kind — nothing for a services consultant to address, schedule or commission on a network, and nothing a controls contractor needs to allow for. I would rather an architect heard that from me in the first meeting than discovered it at commissioning, because the assumption runs the other way by default: a modern club renovation has a controls package, and anything described as a machine with a schedule tends to get swept into it. The honest position is that scheduling happens on the devices themselves. The zone unit carries a Bluetooth app and onboard buttons, with run windows of 1h, 4h, 8h or 24h, a choice of days and an adjustable intensity, plus auto-stop and a key-lock. Aangan is a programmable board with work and pause cycles, daily schedules and an intensity setting — not a phone, which in a club is usually an advantage, because a setting held on a board does not travel home in a departing manager’s pocket.
Two further clarifications belong in the same note. First, certification: CE, RoHS and SGS are published for Vaayu only. No certifications are published for the larger two units, and if your consultant needs documentation for a submittal, ask for it specifically rather than assuming it transfers across the range. Second, fragrance: no purchasable refill oil is listed for the waterless commercial machines at all. The fragrance for those machines is specified and quoted per property through the contact page, which is the normal arrangement in commercial scenting rather than an evasion — but it does mean the renovation budget can carry an exact capital figure and only an estimated consumable one. The water-based Hotel Collection oils are a separate system entirely: they go into an ultrasonic machine, three to six drops into the water tank, and they are not for reed diffusers or for neat waterless nebulising at all.
The drawing-stage checklist, and the gaps
If a club asked me to write the single page that goes into the renovation information pack, this is it, in the order the drawings are produced. The last row is the honest one: the two things this range does not publish, both of which an architect or a quantity surveyor will ask about in the first meeting, and both of which are better said now than discovered at tender.
| Stage | What to decide or draw | Why it belongs here and not later | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Before any provision: the building ★ | Moisture, air change, drain traps, carpet drying, a fresh-air purge before opening | Fragrance over a musty building produces a mixture that reads as a cover-up, and members name it | No purchase |
| 2. Concept stage: the unscented list | Dining, private dining, bar counters, spa treatment, gym floor, boardrooms, heritage library | Deciding it first is what makes the rest of the scheme credible to a chef and a long-standing member | No purchase |
| 3. General arrangement: zone boundaries | Boundaries drawn on closed doors; connected volume and ceiling heights recorded | Volume, not floor area, decides coverage — and only the drawing knows the heights | No purchase |
| 4. Ceiling and electrical coordination | Mounting positions on the airflow path, each with a DC 12V point at the position | Both of these sit above a finished ceiling; afterwards they are chasing and making good | ₹11,999 per zone unit |
| 5. Mechanical: AHU face and access | Bracketry for a 3.9 kg body at 284 × 125 × 246 mm, a supply at the face, a door that opens on a Tuesday | Plant access cannot be retrofitted, and the whole-floor coverage rating depends on the connection | ₹25,999 |
| 6. Handover: the written setting | Intensity per zone, schedule hours, who holds the key-lock key, refill cadence, who may not change it | A scheme is only a system once it is written down with one named owner | No purchase |
| No digital integration, and no listed commercial refill: the honest gaps | The AHU connection is mechanical. No digital integration, network interface or automation connection exists on any SOSA machine, and no installation service, installation charge or maintenance contract is published. No purchasable refill oil is listed for the waterless machines either — that fragrance is specified and quoted per property | Said at drawing stage, because a controls package will otherwise assume the first and a budget will otherwise assume the second | Quoted |
Versailles
The most useful meeting I have ever had about a club was with its services consultant rather than its general manager, and it lasted eleven minutes. He asked three questions: what voltage, what does it weigh, and does it need anything from me on a network. Twelve volts, under four kilograms, and no. He wrote a point onto a layout at a return grille, put a note on the mechanical drawing about a bracket at the air handler, and that was the whole of it. The club commissioned the scheme eight months later and nobody chased a wall.
I mention the eleven minutes because the fear at committee is usually that bringing scenting into the design process will turn it into a project. It will not. It is a smaller services item than the audio-visual in one meeting room. What does turn it into a project is leaving it out, because then the only positions available are the ones with a socket, and sockets are in skirtings and on joinery, which is to say in places where air has already stopped moving. I have watched a club spend a second machine trying to solve a first machine’s position.
The other thing I would say to an architect is that the unscented list is a design decision and deserves to be treated as one. It is tempting to draw a provision into every room on the basis that it costs little and keeps options open. It does the opposite. A capped point in a dining room is an invitation, and in two years somebody will accept it, and then the kitchen will be competing with a fragrance it did not choose. Draw the provisions where you mean them and write the exclusions down. Everything we compose is made in Pune, and a part of every order funds a girl’s classroom through Nanhi Kali.
Frequently asked questions
- What professional scenting costs in India — the pillar page on what is published and what is quoted.
- Scenting inside the interior plan — the same argument at the level of the refurbishment as a whole.
- Is a machine worth buying at all and reeds against commercial machines — the two mechanisms compared for a budget line.
- The questions to ask a supplier and how to calculate the monthly fragrance cost — the two procurement pages.
- One scent across several clubs, standardising across locations, and writing the scenting SOP.
- Brand: the SOSA founder story.
SOSA commercial scenting — facts verified August 2026: Vaayu ₹11,999, waterless cold-air nebulising, coverage up to 1000 m³ ≈ 2,000–3,000 sq ft, 400ml refillable sealed tank lasting up to about 90+ days depending on intensity and hours, Bluetooth app plus onboard buttons, run windows of 1h / 4h / 8h / 24h, day selection, adjustable intensity, auto-stop and key-lock, under 38 dB, freestanding, wall-mounted or HVAC-return mounting, DC 12V / 1A at 5W, CE, RoHS and SGS, black and white. Aangan ₹25,999, HVAC or AHU connection or standalone wall-mount or lay-flat, coverage up to 3,000 m³ ≈ 8,000–10,000 sq ft, 800ml reservoir, under 42 dB, DC 12V at 14W, intelligent programmable board with work and pause cycles and daily schedules, metal body 3.9 kg at 284 × 125 × 246 mm, black or white, one-year warranty, imported; it has no app and no Bluetooth, and no certifications are published for it. Meenar ₹38,500 is the larger-property option and is specified on enquiry; no coverage figure is published for it here. Ultrasonic machines: Sukoon ₹1,899 at 270–320 sq ft, Boond ₹899 at up to about 150 sq ft. Reed diffusers ₹749–₹849 for 50ml lasting 6–8 weeks and ₹1,249–₹1,349 for 130ml lasting 14–18 weeks, six fibre reeds, alcohol-free, phthalate-free, paraben-free, IFRA-compliant, 0 ppm formaldehyde, heat-stable CCT carrier, refillable glass bottle, tested at 45°C and 85% RH, composed in Pune. The Hotel Collection fragrance oils are water-based and ultrasonic-only at 15ml ₹299, 100ml ₹999 and 300ml ₹1,799; they are not for reed diffusers and not for the waterless commercial machines. No purchasable refill oil is listed for the waterless commercial machines — that fragrance is specified and quoted per property. There is no digital integration on any SOSA machine: no building management interface, no automation protocol, no network connection and no wired control input; the air handling connection is mechanical only. SOSA publishes no leather fragrance in any format and no tobacco or smoky fragrance for any diffuser. SOSA sells no air purifier, no dehumidifier and no room spray for interiors, and makes no health, air-quality, VOC or mould claim. No dealer programme, reseller margin, trade price, territory, installation service or service contract is published. Free shipping above ₹499. A portion of every order supports girl-child education through Nanhi Kali. SOSA is an independent Indian fragrance house; the Hotel Collection scents are SOSA’s own interpretations inspired by the world’s finest hotels, and SOSA is not affiliated with or endorsed by any hotel brand. Prices subject to change — see the live product pages.