I=92ve been asked to help to sort out someone=92s bathroom and shower arran= gements. They currently have a bath which has a shower on the wall at one s= ide, half way along.=20
They have a U shaped rail for the shower curtain. It works, but they hate t= he curtain. They want to be able to use the bath to bathe in as well as for showering.
I=92ve proposed two hinged and folding glass shower screens =96 one at eith= er side of the shower. These would fold against the wall when not wanted an= d when open would form two sides of a shower cubicle.=20
The third side of the cubicle would be formed by a piece of custom-made tou= ghened glass which would hang from the ceiling somehow and drip just inside= the bath. My main question concerns this third side of the proposed cubicl= e.
How to attach it? At the crudest I envisage it standing on the edge of the = bath secured by silicone and held on the ceiling by a wooden strip screwed = into the ceiling at either side.
Are there special fittings for such purposes if I were to =93hang=94 it fro= m the ceiling?
My ideal is some sort of track so it could be =93parked=94 out of the way s= omewhere else when not needed.
arrangements. They currently have a bath which has a shower on the wall at one side, half way along.
of the shower. These would fold against the wall when not wanted and when open would form two sides of a shower cubicle.
toughened glass which would hang from the ceiling somehow and drip just inside the bath. My main question concerns this third side of the proposed cubicle.
bath secured by silicone and held on the ceiling by a wooden strip screwed into the ceiling at either side.
somewhere else when not needed.
As no one's taken on the challenge, I guess they're thinking the same thing as me ! Why not move the shower to the end of the bath. It's what
They have a U shaped rail for the shower curtain. It works, but they hate the curtain. They want to be able to use the bath to bathe in as well as for showering.
I?ve proposed two hinged and folding glass shower screens ? one at either side of the shower. These would fold against the wall when not wanted and when open would form two sides of a shower cubicle.
The third side of the cubicle would be formed by a piece of custom-made toughened glass which would hang from the ceiling somehow and drip just inside the bath. My main question concerns this third side of the proposed cubicle.
How to attach it? At the crudest I envisage it standing on the edge of the bath secured by silicone and held on the ceiling by a wooden strip screwed into the ceiling at either side.
Are there special fittings for such purposes if I were to ?hang? it from the ceiling?
My ideal is some sort of track so it could be ?parked? out of the way somewhere else when not needed.
Sounds like a very difficult way to solve a problem, and also potentially pretty expensive.
Also, you don't seem to say where you are going to store this hanging piece of glass when it swings out of the way. In fact, it sounds a bit dangerous having a moving, swinging, top suspended piece of glass in a bathroom.
If you are going for hinged glass screens, why not have two sides of the folding cubicle hinged together - that is one side swings out, the other side and outer panel swing out together. However that is going to have to be one strong piece of glass and a strong wall to hold it up.
Realistically, the best thing to do is replace the whole thing, for example with a P bath and screen with the shower at the end. Or put a screen all the way along the bath. Although you don't say if the end of the bath is up against a wall.
If they hate the curtain but cannot afford to replace the bath/shower or just move the shower then they will have to grit their teeth.
So, sadly, almost anything but your plan sounds a good way to go.
The only practical suggestion I can make is to replace the U-shaped shower rail with one that is basically U-shaped but wider. That is the rail starts near the foot end of the bath, goes right along the length of the bath, and ends up at the tap end. That way the user will not be in contact with the shower curtain except right behind him/her.
Or easier still, just put a standard straight shower curtain the whole length of the bath?
Sorry, I'm replying to the OP but have lost the original post...
When you say "U-shaped rail" do you mean one that encloses an area about 2 foot by 2 foot, which I guess would be horrible to use, or do you mean something that follows the shape of the entire bath (nothing like so bad).
You don't say if either end of the bath is against a wall.
There's no need to completely enclose a shower area, provided the people using it are careful where they point the shower-head.
A shower curtain that (say) runs the length of the long side of the bath and also returns to the opposite long wall at one end of the semi-enclosed space is not too bad, not too claustrophobic either.
Of course curtains do tend to flap a bit and can be sucked towards running water and bodies, but if a long rail running above the long edge of the bath is placed correctly, just a little bit further out into the room than the edge of the bath, when it falls to bath height and is tucked inside the bath edge it will be pulled slightly outwards. If the side of the bath is very slightly damp then the curtain can be made to stick to the inside edge of the bath and will then flap very much less than if it were hanging free inside the bath. This is what happened in my last house.
Slightly off-topic, I have a shower area in one small bathroom here which is built in to a corner, with tiled walls on two sides. On the open sides, when I bought the house, there was just a single curtain on an L-shaped rail. I'm tall and the curtain is only barely high enough, especially if falling water bounces off my head... It also tended to get sucked into the space. I found out the hard way that a bathroom fan in a nearby window wasn't waterproof one day when a brief accidental jet of water from the shower squirted into the fan and it expired with a bang.
Although eventually the bathroom might get done up, my immediate concern was to find a way to prevent a new fan from getting wet (even though I bought a much more expensive properly waterproof one), and try to make the whole shower experience less unpleasant.
I made a framework of white plastic tubing (electrical conduit) cable-tied to the L-rail and to itself (for cross pieces); it stands just inside the shower tray on the whole of one of the previously open sides, and comes around the corner for about the first 6 inches of the 4th side. The bottom ends of the tubing are standing on 4" long upward-pointing piano wires which snake over the edge of the shower tray and are screwed to the floor outside it (both the wires and the 'saddles' that secure them to the floor came from a r/c model aircraft shop and are the normal way to make model aircraft undercarriages). The conduit/tubing continues up above the L-rail to the ceiling where it's fixed to a batten that's screwed to joists inside the ceiling above the shower.
On the upper part of the framework I mounted a sheet of solid acrylic plastic, so in essence there's now a waterproof wall between the top of the shower area and the window (and replacement fan). Water that hits the acrylic sheet drains down and drips off it but by then it's lower than the top edge of the curtain running outside it. Where the acrylic sheet butts up against the wall behind it, I glued (with silicon sealant) a run of u-shaped plastic channel to the wall (square-section electrical conduit - the stuff that has a clip-on lid - with the lid removed), and I think there's a couple of screws through it as well. The acrylic sheet hangs pulled tight into this channel so water that is sprayed into the edge of the sheet/ channel doesn't actually work its way around to the outside edge.
The shower curtains are still present, suspended from the L-rail, but they now run outside the tubing framework, so cannot billow into the space where people stand. Although the framework is not strong enough to bear weight (I think the cable ties would burst at the joints) it is plenty strong enough to form extra rails from which lots of shower-gel containers, face cloths etc can be hung.
I originally thought I might need to have a horizontal conduit tube/rail at about waist height that would hang loose until I'd got into the shower then I could put across the 'doorway' to keep the curtain behind it away from me, but it's turned out not to be needed.
As it's all plastic, none of it rusts, and it's easy to keep clean. Of course it's not very pretty, but it was extremely cheap...
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