Shower your bathroom with the perfect tray

THE basic work of any shower enclosure is to get the water from the shower head, over you and sluiced away in one fluid movement that spares the rest of the room.

Example shown above from Merlyn Showering, based in Kilkenny. www.merlynshowering.com, Tel: [phone].

Size is everything, so make a plan of the bathroom on your PC or to scale on squared paper and mark the position of fixed features. Will the shower need two side panels or can you use a corner or recess? How much room do you have to open a door into the remaining room?

Sizes start around 760mm in a square rising to 1700mm in length for a bath replacing uber-spa. Curved quarter circles, off-set quadrants. D-shapes and pentangles may appear to balloon into the room. However modest curves fill in the sharply angled dead space that would naturally surround a square unit.

For the wall that forms the fourth panel, and in some cases it that may be three surfaces, tiles offer the ultimate waterproof surface. There are also new acrylic resin panel systems such as Grossfilex, that properly installed will manage to hold a seal. Prices start around €350 per metre width, and 2070mm high.

DOOR ACTION

Sizing, design and placement will heavily influence the only moving element of the shower — the door. There are three forms of sophisticated door action to sweep away that ankle strangling curtain.

* A hinged door that opens in one pull or pivots at the centre. Obviously this demands a person sized opening. A largish plate of glass swinging out into the room can be problematic in a smaller bathroom or where it’s likely to bounce off, say, the loo edge and moistly slap the user in the face.

* Sliders, which move as one panel or fold up as a concertina on a set of runners. This latter action can rob some aesthetics as you’re faced with more visible framing. Slipping like a silvery scimitar along the fixed panel, a one piece slider is virtually seamless in a curved model or generous rectangular enclosure. Exposed industrially influenced rollers at the top of the door are currently very popular. See B&Q’s Eclipse series.

* The walk-in — a shaped arrangement of plates of glass or a set of curves that you step around and into the shower. As it’s not going to close, the arc of the shower and waterproofing of the surroundings walls is vital, but it can give a sublime finish with frameless sheets of 8-10mm toughened glass hovering over a tray or self draining wet-room floor. Walk-ins can demand as much length as an 1800mm bath.

SHOWER/BATHS

Using a ‘P’ shaped bath that balloons out at the tap end, gives the extra boogie room of a real shower while jealously retaining the occasional use of a very nice bath.

Any full-sized bath can wear a folding, sliding or door style screen, upping its looks and splash performance considerably. For ‘P’ baths a dedicated screen to follow the curve to the split millimetre is vital.

When retro-fitting a bath screen as a showering solution, remember the edge of the bath should be perfectly flat with no intrusive handles, soap dishes, stepped fronts or lips to interrupt the join between the panel and the bath.

Fitting a standard screen is an easy job for an old hand at DIY and involves screws, drill bits, wall plugs, and some adjustment according to the maker’s instructions. If you know the wall is out of true, ensure the system you buy has a forgiving adjustment of at least 22mm to compensate.

Ensure the screen will hold up against a powerful shower if you’re blessed with a pump or good pressure, or it will regularly pop open or batter a folding model into leaking submission.

Where there are metal fixings on show (rather than white elements) match them to the brassware — ie chrome, brushed nickel, brass or bright steel.

TRAYS

Whether the tray is a composite or acrylic (GRP) is a matter of budget, but every tray must be perfectly fitted, tiled in and sealed along the entire wall length. The only solution beyond this to guard against leakage is a one piece moulded shower in fibreglass. Not exactly glamour personified but highly practical.

A tremendous amount of accumulating damage can be caused to timbers and plasterwork by even a slight, sly leak through a badly tanked tray or botched enclosure.

Pay for professional installation for sophisticated tiled-in trays (tiled over as well as around) and regularly check for breaks in seals or grouting.

Flexible sealants give some relief to a line of defence clattered around by a wobbling legged bath or shower tray. A shower enclosure should be sealed using a proprietary silicon sealant, vertically inside and out, and horizontally on the outside only to allow any water inside the enclosure to run down into the tray - and not onto the floor.

Ultra low profile trays (27mm or less) might be all the rage but if you have a super power shower with high bar pressure in a small shower enclosure, consider a deeper tray as the drainage rate will need to be faster. Trays with an integral waste make fitting easier.

GLASS

Depending on your modesty in a busy family, obscuring glass can be a blessing. It’s not either/or, as you can vouch for increasing degrees of privacy or something with the waist or shoulder height screening of a texture.

If you’ve paid €49.99 per metre for the tiles in the shower and you want to show them off, go clear or for a light ‘smoke’. Heavier glass offers a luxurious, structural solidity, wonderful if all you’ve experienced is a shivering, Perspex Tardis.

More to the point, Anthony Perkins is unlikely to get through 10mm glass with the kitchen knife no matter how strident the cello scrapes.