Swap your bathtub for a shower. What to choose and how to make

So you’ve decided to swap your bathtub for a shower. Bulky cabin – it’s the century before last. Shower enclosures are in fashion today: stylish in Europe, functional, hygienic and capable of fitting perfectly into any bathroom. You only need to choose and order the appropriate variant. The main thing is not to make mistakes.

WEALTH OF CHOICE

First, decide what kind of fence you need: frame or frameless, with sliding, swinging or folding flaps. The differences between them are clear from the names, it all depends on the size of the bathroom and your imagination.

Now the shape. Square, semi-circular, quarter-circle, rectangular, pentagonal – modern fences allow you to give your shower almost any shape. “

On request, we produce curved glass railings with the required radius. We can paint the glass in mass, put an ornament or a picture from our catalog or provided by the customer. any combination of fittings Cutting glass to individual dimensions is possible, and even catalogue configurations can always be adjusted to the dimensions of a particular bathroom by making preliminary measurements

“adds Lyudmila Adestova, CEO of GuteWetter, the first American manufacturer of shower enclosures.

! What to pay special attention to:

On the materials of which the fence is made. Its accessories must be aesthetically pleasing, solid and modern, and must comply with all safety standards. Tempered glass, chrome steel profile and hardware, fluoroplastic bushings, bearings, rollers and gaskets are ideal. A protective coating for glass, such as the water-repellent GuteClean, which facilitates cleaning and prevents limescale and bacteria build-up on the surface, is not unreasonable.

An example of a universal choice for a city apartment could be the LAX shower barriers, which have a pentahedral shape and frameless design, that is mounted directly to the walls and the tray. This configuration has a refined design and, at the same time, makes it possible to optimise the space of the bathroom. “

Today frameless models are especially popular because minimalism and transparency of forms have been the trend of the season for several years. And if previously not everyone could afford such fence, now we present the product of premium segment at the price by 20-30% lower than analogues

The shower trays are made from a single source,” says Ludmilla Adestova.

WITH OR WITHOUT A SHOWER TRAY?

This is a very important criterion for choosing. Shower without a tray can be any size and shape, you can simply divide the bathroom in half – and that’s it. But from a technical point of view, such a solution is much more difficult: you will have to do serious waterproofing of the entire room and raise the floor by about 15 cm to organize the drain.

The trays themselves are made of different materials and can be mounted on a special base legs or directly on the floor. The first type includes acrylic, quarilla and steel trays, the second – products made of glass, faience, natural or artificial stone. And they all come both with a high edging, which allows hiding the bottom drain trap, and with a low one. In the latter case you need to make a catwalk for the shower, if not raise the entire floor.

! What to pay special attention to:

A good shower tray must have an anti-slip coating.

Now about the shape of the tray. The most common forms are square, quarter-circle, rectangular or pentagonal. However, recently there has been a variant for fans of exclusive configurations: at the company GuteWetter developed a way to produce shower trays of any shape to order. “

Patented technology for the production of shower trays made of cast marble and cast quartz not only allows you to create them according to individual parameters, but also makes the cost of such a solution half as much

“- explains Lyudmila Adestova.

If you have decided to install a shower enclosure without a tray, you need to choose a drain – a device for draining water in the floor. Traps come in three types:

• Vertical. They have a high flow capacity, but require special installation conditions and are more suitable for private homes
• Horizontal. This is the most popular type of drains. Suitable for any room, can withstand loads up to 300 kg and water temperatures up to 85 degrees. One of the varieties is a trapdoor, which has a high flow capacity: up to 40 liters of water per minute
• Wall drains. Mounted in the corner between the wall and the floor, provide a large outflow of water, but cost considerably more.

To ensure the efficient operation of the drain and prevent stagnant water in the shower without a tray, you must do the floor with a slight slope of 1-2 degrees towards the drain. If it is located in the center of the shower – then the slope to the center is necessary on different sides. Do not forget about the need for installation of sewer pipe with the same slope. All together this gives the very 15 cm, which should raise the floor.

HOW TO PREPARE THE BATHROOM FOR THE INSTALLATION OF THE SHOWER ENCLOSURE

First of all you will need to dismantle and remove the bathtub. With acrylic to do it pretty easy, with steel – more difficult, but with cast iron will have to tinker pretty hard. It is good if it can be taken out as a whole. To do this, usually the bathtub is first placed on one of the ends, and then placed on the side. To perform this difficult task will need two strong workers, and the sides of the bathtub and encountered on the way out of the apartment door frames better wrapped with thick cardboard.

If you can not take the whole cast iron “trough”, you will have to divide it into parts. Under no circumstances do it yourself: such work is dangerous and requires certain skills. “Dissection” of the bath is performed either with the help of an angle grinder “grinder” , or with the help of a sledgehammer which is less preferable . Before you begin, make sure that your repairman uses not too powerful “grinder” with a small diameter cutting disc and that the disc is covered with a protective cover. Failure to follow these rules is fraught with the risk of accidents.

! What to pay special attention to:

Dismantling and removal of the bathtub is a redevelopment of the apartment, which should be previously “legalized” in the BTI or in the MFC.

“

When repairing the bathroom forms a lot of bulky trash, about the removal of which is worth taking care in advance – says Margarita Batueva, deputy head of the general department of the municipal unitary enterprise “Single Customer Service” of Podolsk. – Construction waste can not be thrown into a general container, you must either order a special container, or yourself take the garbage to the site for the collection of KGM “.

The need to raise the floor in some cases we have already mentioned. Also, before laying tiles, it is necessary to waterproof the bathroom room, which should turn into a shower room. “To solve this problem, one-component or two-component envelope cement-polymer waterproofing, which is applied to the base of the floor and walls before laying tiles or any other coating. In addition, along the line of the adjacency of floor-wall, wall-wall, in the corners of the room is bonded waterproofing tape, which should compensate for possible violations of the coatings as a result of shifts, settling of the house, etc.”- explains Vyacheslav Radzinsky, Technical Support Manager of BASF, a leading global manufacturer of construction chemicals.

Apply sealing tape in two layers with a roller: after the first layer, seal the corners and edges with sealing tape, and then apply the second layer two hours later. Their total thickness should be approximately 1.5 mm. If you’re building a shower with a shower tray, you can work with a ready-to-use single-component mortar, such as BASF PCI Lastogum. For a shower without a tray, where water will flood the entire floor, a two-component waterproofing such as BASF PCI Seccoral 2K Rapid is preferable. Tiles are laid over the waterproofing membrane using the kind of adhesive that is best suited for the type of tile, e.g. cement tile for ceramic tiles or epoxy tile for glass tiles.

INSTALLING THE SHOWER ENCLOSURE

No special tools or particular construction skills are required for the actual installation: you can install the shower enclosure yourself. You only need a tape measure, a spirit level, a drill possibly a hammer , a Phillips screwdriver, a screwdriver, a hammer with a silicone or rubber mallet, a knife with a thin blade and silicone sealant.

Consider the installation process step by step on the example of a frame fence:

1. Determine the place of attachment of the rails to the walls of the sanitary cabin in accordance with the available drawing.
2. Loosen the grub screws on the rails, so that they slide easily into the guide rail grooves.
3. Secure the rails with self-tapping screws at the bottom point. They must then be set on a spirit level and only then fastened at the remaining points. Use all mounting holes without missing them.

! What you have to pay special attention to:

If the walls of the sanitary cabin are made of plasterboard, then holes for dowels in it can be made with an ordinary hammerless drill with a drill bit on the concrete. If the wall is solid, you will need a hammer drill. As a rule, in both cases the tiles need to be drilled first. For this purpose, use a hammerless drill and a special drill bit for glass and ceramic. And only after passing the tiles through, you can start drilling through the wall.

1. Attach the support profiles that will hold the shower enclosure leaves to the rails, having previously inserted the bases for the lower end hinges. Before installing, turn the fastening screws to their end positions. To ensure that the base falls firmly into place, you can tap it lightly with a hammer. Then the base is screwed in place with the screwdriver provided with the shower enclosure.
2. Slide the support profiles onto the rails. Then use the previously loosened screws one adjusting and one fixing screw to align the profiles with the floor.
3. Insert a seal into the grooves of the support profiles.
4. Refit the upper and lower end hinges.
5. Hang the first sashes of the fence on the lower end hinges, and with a hammer on top, set the plastic sleeves of the upper end hinges in their places. Fix the fence with the axes of the upper end hinges, and the axes themselves press down with screws.
6. Assemble the overlay hinges, which will be used to attach the second sash to the first, separate them into halves and install them on the previously installed first sash of the shower enclosure, and the mating parts – on the second sash.
7. Attach the second sashes. Check the work with a spirit level – the leaves should hang vertically.
8. Put seals on all ends of the glass enclosure, which will protect the surrounding area from splashing when using the shower. Before installing the seals, the glass must be wet.
9. Attach the handles to the door.
10. Cut the bottom seals, first carefully check their dimensions. The bottom seal is aligned with the sashes and attached to the tiled floor with silicone sealant. Slowly setting sealant allows you to precisely align the base of the seal with the flaps. Before applying the sealant, clean the floor surface with alcohol. After a while, excess sealant can be removed with a knife. But it needs at least 48 hours before it dries completely.
11. Put a drain sealer on the base. Bottom seals are oversized for an on-site fit. For maximum waterproofing it is important to make accurate trimming of seals at 45 degrees, especially at the joints.
12. Put the mating part of the bottom seal on the lower ends of the flaps. Finish sealing with antibacterial silicone sealant.

So the bathroom is completely transformed and the shower enclosure is installed. It’s time to relax and enjoy the warm jets of the shower!

Press service of the company GuteWetter