The wall my shower is mounted on is a plasterboard wall. The plaster board measure approx 1cm thick. The wooden braces appear to be approx
40cm apart on the vertical. With a horizontal at the top, middle and bottom. Most of those figures are estimates from poking around.
I'd like to hang a folding glass panel shower curtain off this wall. But I went down to B&Q and glass weighs more than I expected. I'd say as a guestimate, it weighs at least 20kg. As this folds out to approx
1m, I assume this would increase the forces again. It looks like it attaches to the wall in five places, which would probably distribute the load.
Am I being too hopeful? Should I just stick to a good ol' shower curtain?
Can you rearrange things to hang it off a vertical timber? Otherwise, a nice piece of hardwood, stained and varnished screwed floor to ceiling to pick up all three horizontals and attach the screen to that. Or if the styling of your bathroom is more modern then maybe some U section aluminium screwed with the open side of the U to the wall would look better.
To be honest a 1m wide folding glass screen sounds a bad idea. You don't say if the shower is over a bath or a walk in type. That sort of weight with plasterboard fixings will rip the plasterboard. Why does it need to fold? Most screens aren't that wide and are normally fixed, the weight being taken by a floor fixing. You don't say if the shower is over a bath or a walk in type. Perhaps a plastic screen would be better? (a lot lighter)
No it doesn't! No shower screen is designed to have it's weight taken by the bath "90% of the time". Some may have a sealing strip 'kissing' the bath top surface but non are designed to be used in the way you describe. The OP would be much better off trying either to either attach the screen channel to a (behind the wall) batten (or noggin) or else using plugs into the brick/breeze behind the plasterboard and longer screws. Using your 'method' if the fixings started to fail the screen would start to chafe on the bath edge and then eventually fall off if not rectified quickly. Also if the OP's wall is tiled the fixings you recommend wouldn't work as they are designed to fit into a soft surface
To answer a few questions in this post. It's a shower over a bath and the wall is (in the process of being) tiled. I was going to try and put in some wooden battens to take the load. But I lost a weekend after the first bath I fitted was near transparent when I went underneath.
As an experiment I tried one of the hollow wall anchors in a spare piece of plaster board I had. Then attached about a 12kg weight. The plaster board seemed OK until I tried moving the weight around (such as the regular movement of a folding shower panel). I guess this is 12kg on one wall anchor, but the weight was close to the wall.
I get the impression that I should keep with a rail and curtain. Unless there are better modern, light weight, discrete solutions. Google it is then.
I have a similar issue for my main bathroom refit.
As I have an en-suite with power shower, the main bathroom would be used mainly for baths with occasional shower use. So I didn't fancy strengthening the wall to take a hefty screen, couldn't find much in the way of polycarbonate or acrylic screens (polycarbonate is common in the care industry but not for normal use it seems) and didn't really want one in the way all the time either. Not a fan of curtains.
I'm mulling over one of these and wondered if anyone else had come across one and/or whether it might help in your case Tim?
Midge wrote: > I have a similar issue for my main bathroom refit. >
Looks like a reasonable idea. It weighs about 3.3kg, which hopefully is within the capabilities of a tiled plasterboard wall. I'm not sure how the additional forces of lifting and putting back in place would act on the wall. Any comments? I doubt there is any point in asking the company the question, as I'm sure they would just say "it's OK".
Cost isn't cheap at approx £150 though. I appreciate that isn't much more than some of the cheaper folding glass panes. Think I'll put this in the bloody good suggestion pile.
It doesn't look that great but it's neat. How can they say it wont go mouldy though as surely if it's retracted wet then it will go? Maybe you have to dry it off first?
Yeah, that's the biggest problem I thought of. Plus a new curtain will cost £45 and it looks like he's a very small company, so may not be knocking around much longer after the cheaper Chinese imitations hit the market.
Doesn't look that great when it's up, but very nice when not in use.
3.3kg should probably be OK for a plasterboard wall.
It doesn't look that great but it's neat. How can they say it wont go mouldy though as surely if it's retracted wet then it will go? Maybe you have to dry it off first?
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Hi - sorry if this response is too late, but only just spotted "outasight" being mentioned.
We bought one in May 2007.
Fitting was very straightforward. Ours is on a solid wall, but we don't seem to need to use too much force to raise and lower the arm, so imagine it would be ok unless attached to something very weak.
We like the idea - it works well (providing you slope the arm down very lightly to ensure bottom of curtain remains inside bath (we have a high pressure shower which might otherwise push the curtain out).
It's designed to be retracted wet - but you're meant to spray it with dettol anti-mouldy-stuff each month. We keep forgetting to do this, and it started to get blackish in places. So a few weeks ago, I put the curtain through the washing machine, Came out perfectly clean - and wasn't too difficult to retain the "fan-fold" creases, so it can be put away as easily as before.
All that said, the product has defects (or did in 2007). The black "plastic" bits are simply not robust enough. There's a clip to keep the thing shut - and this snapped after a few months. The metal tube on which the curtain is suspended just "springs" on to a small plastic spigot-like thing at each end. This broke recently. Luckily, it was the hinge end, and the hinge is symmetrical, so we removed and reversed it - and hence are now relying on the "spare" spigot thingy. (I'm sure spigot isn't the right word...sorry).
Each end of the piston is fastened with a single bolt (hex key needed - and difficult to gain access) and this relies on a bit of plastic to prevent it swivelling. This doesn't work because the loading on the plastic bit is more than it can withstand.
On the plus side, you can buy spares at sensible prices (but should you need to after less than 2 years?). And when I rang about a problem in the early days, the out-a-sight people were brilliant. They sent a spare bit foc, and gave careful instructions on how to fit etc.
I really would like to see this firm do well - and hope that nearly 2 years on, the above problems have been sorted.
Sorry this a bit long - but hope it's helpful.
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