Steel baths

[usenet]

Er, yes, but you normally have rubber ducks in the bath to play with not sledge hammers. How often do cast iron baths break in use?

They've worked very well for a hundred years or more.

[BillR]

You're right I meant to say con. I agree with you on the heat loss too. There has been no complaints from swmbo, who likes baths, that it is any colder than the plastic one it replaced. You can always insulate around the bath anyway. I've seen that done effectively but in that case the bath was against an external wall.

I cunning scheme I saw in a new build was a finned skirting type heater underneath the long front edge of the bath. The bath panel, which seemed to be part of the system, was also metal with a grill along the top edge. It looked good and is apparently very effective. Its instead of a separate radiator so I guess saves space. There was no other rad

[jerrybuilt]

Erm, that's not so, CI is strong.

Eh?

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[Christian McArdle]

It is pretty standard to smash up old cast iron with a hammer (if it isn't worth saving, of course).

Christian.

[Bob Mannix]

Putty! Hah. I decided to smash my cast-iron bath up in situ, so I hit it as hard as I could with a 2lb lump hammer on the edge. There was a sound like Big Ben chiming that rendered me deaf and a small flake of enamel came off. Hmmmm. Maybe what I thought was "as hard as I could" wasn't OR I was stuck with a (now chipped) old bath. After wellying the edge over and over, a small crack started, which I had to follow, slowly, with more furious whacking with the hammer. After about an hour I had reduced: the bath to four quarters (each about as heavy as I could manage and each furnished with razor sharp edges that I had to get downstairs without damagaing anything) ; myself to a quivering wreck

If anyone has putty like that, I'd like to see it.

[The Natural Philosopher]

That was more or less my experience too, except it had to be smaller than quarters.

I gave it a good whack in the middle, and it chipped the enamel.

I hagev it a mother of a whack, and it flaked off a lump of enamel.

I pondered. I'd nebeen TOLD you could break one...OK I thought. Duel to the death, and gave it everythung I had, and a little bit more for luck.

It just cracked a bit. It took best part of 3 hours to reduce it to bits small enough to go in bags and down to counciil dump.

[David W.E. Roberts]

One thing I found - the cheap plastic ones had a squarer profile (at the bottom) than the cheap pressed steel ones, which had less 'foot room'. As I was looking for a shower-friendly bath the plastic one won (it was also bundled with a toilet and handbasin at a very cheap price).

HTH Dave R

[Andrew Gabriel]

I think I'll go into B&Q and try laying in the bath that interested me, like you would do for a bed.

After all, someone seemed to have gone round testing out most of the WC's on display... ;-)

[David W.E. Roberts]

Be warned - some of them are displayed vertically :-)

[Rod Hewitt]

The Natural Philosopher wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@b.c:

I did our old one a few weeks ago [1] - and it was a bit like putty! I was surprised how much the actual CI bent as I was hitting it. I had expected it to be far more brittle. I reckon no more than half an hour of actual bashing to get it into loads of pieces.

Rod

[1] It must have been from the early 1970s.

[Christian McArdle]

I bought the B&Q steel bath. It was by Kaldewei. It was excellent. No flexing at all and cheaper than the nasty plastic one. The steel one has the advantage that it can't be moulded into all sorts of nasty shapes by Austrian blind loving bath designers with a sea shell fixation.

Christian.

[Andrew Gabriel]

Is this recently (wondering if that's what I'll get if I order from B&Q now)?

Also, how heavy is it -- is it a one-person job lifting it and moving it into place?

[Toby]

The 'standard' Kaldewei is light and easy. You can wear it on your back to carry it upstairs if needed. One person is OK for weight, but thsize makes it slightly awkward.

[mark]

In message , Andrew Gabriel writes

If you buy an enamelled steel bath examine it very closely for the slightest bit of damage. If I might relate a tale........

Pressurised into doing a job by an established customer that we had no time to do; never mind, couple of evenings and weekends. Replace their old bathroom suite with new WC, sink, bath etc. First Saturday; remove WC sink etc. and replace with new. Customer supplied suite and it had been sat in their garage waiting for us to fit. Carry bath very carefully upstairs, fit bits and install, including ornate 'telephone' style tap/shower unit. Go home. Sunday night phone call explaining that there is a chip in the bath. Argh! Monday morning when I should have been at the current job I inspect the bath. All night I've been worrying that I must have dropped a spanner in the bath (even though we'd been extremely careful with carpet piece in the bath etc.) The chip is at the opposite end of the bath and its fairly obvious the 'dent' is from the outside. Customers look on accusingly and I wonder if I should just take the blame anyway...no I know It's not me so I stand my ground. Customers agree to call suppliers rep in.

2 months later we get a new bath. It's the wrong colour. Another 2 months and we get the right colour but the its chipped even worse; in the same place! Another month and we get another chipped bath. Then another. Finally we get a bath that is OK.

You see; enamelled baths are not very good with the even a light tap; & it's difficult to see any damage until you put hot water in and the expansion blows the scale of enamel off. This leaves a very sharp edge................

[Christian McArdle]

It was a couple of years ago. It was the same price as the equivalent plastic bath.

I could shift it on my own, but needed help to get it into position as it was a very tight fit (i.e. cutting slots into the wall) and needed careful and accurate positioning.

Christian.

[Ververka]

Not in Cheltenham, they don't. Went down there Saturday but all they were offering was the basic Kaldewei at £99. Salesman claimed it was "A bargain.. Usually £153"

"Heard they were doing them for less than £60" said I. "Come off it, Mate. You must be joking. At that price we would be selling them for less than we paid".

Ververka