Sandbags in the shower

[tonybocymru]

The Australian plumber who installed the shower in my wet room presumably believed that, because water flows down a plughole in an anticlockwise direction in the southern hemisphere - the opposite to ours - that it also flowed uphill in the north (just kidding), with the result that the shower drain is higher than the surrounding floor, with the inevitable consequences.

As wheelchair access is needed, nothing permanent can be added to prevent this, so I made a sand filled bicycle innertube *sausage* to try to overcome the problem but, as the floor is a dimpled, non slip surface, it didn't do the job adequately.

Anyone got any suggestions for improvement? The impervious rubber outer of the tube is, I suspect, key, but I can think of nothing, non rotting and non smelling, that will cover the tube, expand, and fill those gaps.

Tony.

[Owain]

What is the wet room floor made of?

If it is (or could be replaced or covered with) rubber sheet then something like those rubber strips used for running cables across floors (a small version of sleeping policemen) might be glueable to the floor. It's sufficiently low profile it should be wheelable-over.

Owain

[auctions]

Would it work to fit an accessible threshold like you'd put under an outside door, for instance

A

[meow2222]

Is this a wetroom? Whats the floor made of? If its a cement screed, and the slope is only slight, levelling compound would make it level, which sounds like it would be a real improvement. That way only a flim of water would be left on the floor, which hopefully is easy to sweep most of down the drain leaving just droplets. The plus of levelling compound is its very easy to apply, and I got the impression thats what you'd like. Youre not really giving enough info to work on though.

NT

[Ian Stirling]

Is this a property you own? Was it bought like this?

[Pyriform]

Sadly, this is a scientific myth. The Coriolis effect is too small when acting on a body of water that small to have any effect.

[Dave Liquorice]

Don't pay him, get him back to corect the problem at his own expense. He'll winge but he shouldn't have fupped up in the first place.

[tonybocymru]

You're wrong there mate. The experiment was conducted at Melbourne and Cambridge universities some years ago; mind you, it involved vast underground tanks where the water was allowed to settle for days before pulling the plug but was originally inspired by numerous observations in less controlled environments where people noticed that it seemed to go one way more often than the other and followed up by making enquiries over here. Interesting, but I wish they had found something more useful to spend my money on (:-).

On the original subject of the post, none of the options are practicable for various reasons, but thanks to all for the suggestions.

Tony.

[Pyriform]

Hardly surprising that it worked then! I never claimed that the coriolis force did not exist, only that it would not be a factor in determining the direction of water rotation down a domestic plughole.

I'm fairly sure that this is where the myth part begins. It's very easy to persuade water to rotate in either direction. And whilst it is true that there is a tiny hemisphere-dependent preference for one direction over the other, in practice this effect is dwarfed by any initial rotation of the body of water (such as that imparted by a tap when filling the basin). It would only show up in large scale statistical studies of the phenomenom (of the kind that no sane researcher would undertake), and would certainly not be noticed by the man in the bath.

Obviously you know your requirements better than us, but I'm puzzled by why a wheelchair-traversable permanent barrier could not be installed. I immediately thought of the strips used for protecting cables run across floors, and would have mentioned them in my earlier reply, if someone had not beaten me to it!

[meow2222]

If you dont tell us why, I doubt we could help any further.

NT

[Phil L]

Tile the floor again, leave the old tiles down, this will give you another

15mm of floor height....I assume you've attempted to lower the drain already?