Bathroom ponderings ...

[Andy Burns]

When tiling the floor in 300mm tiles and the walls in 150mm tiles, would you try to align the wall and floor grout lines, it looks smart that way in SketchUp, but given the non-square nature of most corners, is that asking for trouble in reality? Would you do the opposite and have the floor tile grout lines centred on the wall tiles, so if it "walks" a little as you go round the room it's not so noticeable?

I seem to remember Andrew Gabriel mentioning "poor man's" UFH, the floor area excluding the bath is only 6'x4'. Looking for enough to take the chill off the tiles, rather go for the cat on a hot tin roof effect or expect too much actual heating of the room. I could easily run a couple of zig-zags of 15mm pipe in-series with the bathroom radiator, or if microbore would be good enough it would probably less hassle to thread that in ... thoughts?

Any recommendations for humidistat fans (wall or ceiling mount equally possible) quiet is good, particularly so the shutters don't click and clack in the wind all night long.

I think the current Mira Excel mixer shower is old enough that it doesn't owe me anything, so probably best to replace rather than dig it out of the wall and re-fit. Are their BIV ones still the same sort of quality as ~20 years ago? All their shower handsets seem to be chrome plated plastic now, which looks tackier than plain white to me, who else to look at?

[Andrew Gabriel]

I've done another one since then - two parallel runs of 10mm microbore, coming together and feeding into the towel rail with a TRV. The parallel microbore runs are on the flow side, and the towel rail on the return side.

It hasn't been tried yet though - waiting for a new boiler to be installed.

I've just done one which uses a pipestat on the hot pipe feed to the shower (and bath, only there isn't one in this case). Run-on is length of time pipe takes to cool after use. It's also driven by the light and run-on timer. Again, room isn't finished, so it's not yet tried yet for real.

[Tim Watts]

I have 100mm wall tiles and 300mm floor tiles. One wall line up, the other does not. Neither looks any more right or wrong than the other.

I have never paid attention until you asked (and I laid the tiles myself). In fact, remebering back, I set the wall tiles to give me the best cuts on each end and be buggered with the floor to wall alignment.

[Andy Burns]

Yes, mine would be to a towel rad, I think I'll give it a try.

Worth a thought, thanks.

Speaking of lights, the diyfaq wiki says IPx6 for lights above zone1, yet IPx6 downlights are like hens' teeth and just about every bathroom lighting shop sells MR16 IP56 as suitable for zone1, is the wiki gold-plating the actual IP requirement?

[spuorgelgoog]

No. The x is a wildcard. IPx6 means you can use IP16 if you want to. Owain

[Andy Burns]

I know what the X means; it's the large variety of IPX5 "zone1" lights and dearth of IPX6 lights that I'm on about.

[Andy Burns]

^^^^

OK, I see the confusion in my original post, I meant there a lots of IP65 available, rather than IP56 ...

[Capitol]

Well, I installed a ceiling 1.5Kw heater fan. I can say from experience, it is awful. I'd never do it again!

[ARW]

The area above zone 1 is outside the zones and therefore no specific IP ratings apply.

[Andy Burns]

Thanks.

Actually my 7'6" ceiling is under the 2.25m limit, and height will be reduced a little more by tiling floor and cladding ceiling. so the lights will be in zone 1, I'm not going to get hung-up on technicalities, but I'll go with IP rated lights anyway.

If, as the wiki says,

"Lights placed in shower enclosures and directly over baths in rooms with low ceilings will need to be SELV and IPX6 or better."

then I'd expect such lights to be available, however I find that IP44, IP64 and IP65 are what everyone sells, the latter is likely what I will go with, but is the wiki actually right by claiming IPX6 is required?

[ARW]

Do not always belive the wiki.

IPX4 if fine.

[Chris French]

The regs only require IPX4 (or IPX5 if water jets will spray against them)

See:

[Tricky Dicky]

Coming back to the tiles you will have difficulty keeping the grout lines a ligned because of the extra grout line between the 150mm tiles. We tried it with some 150mm tiles and a band of 75mm tiles between them, after just a couple of tiles the grout lines were hopelessly out of alignment.

Richard

[ARW]

Do you really need a humidistat fan?

[Andy Burns]

Dunno, thought they were preferable to a run-on timer from the lights? Ventilation at the moment consists of opening the window, then trying remember to shut it before I go to work.

[Andy Burns]

I was going to use 6mm spacers for the floor and 3mm for the wall, but following Tim's comment that he hadn't noticed, and your confirmation that it'll easily slip out of alignment, I'll try not to be too bothered about it ...

[PeterC]

The humidistat fan that I fitted last Autumn works OK but is dependent on the weather. In warm, humid weather I had to turn up the setting to stop it coming on spuriously; in the same conditions now, just having a piss will do it! Mine had an optional timer, so I wired that to a pull-switch and, by trial and error, set the time to ~25 min. Now. I let the humidistat operate when I have a shower then, just before leaving the room, pull the switch for a few seconds (the timer needs that) then pull again. I put some closeable vents in the door, modified for a bit more open area. When having a crap I just turn it on.

[JimK]

/Do not always belive the wiki. /q

Gasp...

Jim K

[ARW]

They can be a bit temperamental (as PeterC says)

It's horses for courses and you should fit whatever you believe will work the best in your situation. There is no right or wrong.

I am quite happy to use two switches, one for the lights and one for the timer fan.

If I thoght that the fan was going to be left on all day then I would fit a momentary action switch so that it just did the timer and then switched off, but if I thought that the fan would never by the user I would fit a humidustat fan.

Cheers