What is the best way to seal between a straight bath and a wall. I shall be fitting a new bath and tiling round it.
Options that I can think of are : a) Use plastic tile trim around the rim of the bath and tile on to it. b) Tile down to the rim and apply silicone.
My requirements are straightforward enough, to look neat and seal the gap.
mark
On Thursday 27 June 2013 15:57 mark wrote in uk.d-i-y:
I find OK if the gap is deep and wide enough (1/4" or more deep and 1/8" or a little wider. Then you can get a good solid bead in.
Some advise filling the bath prior if it's plastic so it relaxes when empty into a mode of compressing the joint rather than pulling it apart when full.
What I did was before tiling, I filled up the bath to wall joint with industrial clear silicone (bit tougher and sticker). Then after tiling, I applied a bead of white.
If the white leaks the clear will stop the water.
The only time I got caught out and had a joint fail was over my basin - the silicone did not like the groute sealer I'd used and is separating at every grout line. Will have to redo that... But the bath is fine. Possibly because the bath silicone bead is "base edge of tile to bath" and the basin is "basin back edge to face of tile".
You can buy special stuff to do this. Looks like a bit of plastic angle, one leg has holes in for the tile cement (goes under the tiles) The other leg has a soft rubber flap.
Come is various colours to match tiles etc.
I've done b) each time I've installed a bath. Make sure you have the bath half full of water when you silicone the gap.
Thanks for the replies. I'm going with loads of silicon down the gap and water in the bath to pre sag it, and avoid getting grout sealer on the silicone. To be honest I'd forgotton about grout sealer, another item on the shopping list. The plastic trim/sealer, I can see how it works but seems a bit bodgy to me, not that bodging is strange territory to me. The bathroom project is due to be done w/c 25th July when the others are out of the house. Failure to complete isn't an option. I have to get all materials and potential problems identified and resolved before then, so there will be more questions I'm sure.
mark
...and make sure the bath feet are well adjusted to prevent movement.
Unless your silicone application skills are of a high order, the trim will inevitably look better
I used silicon first then "teleseal" plastic trim, seems to have done the job well enough and looks ok. For plastic trim.
Lee
The plastic trim works a treat
I don't bother with the adhesive they sell, I use Nail & Seal or Sticks Like.
If the bath feet are standing on floorboards, especially if they are old/tatty/thin ones it's a good idea to intersperse large-ish plates or planks of wood (ie running at 90 deg to the floorboards) to spread the load, too
Hi Mark
Whatever you do, use decent sealer (at least for the final capping run), not shed super-cheap stuff. Recommend Dow Corning 785 Sanitary Sealer. If you prep and clean surfaces well, this will look good and seal for years (provided you have eliminated any major movement as others have said).
Phil
c) apply silicone THEN tile down to the rim. Over the ugly silicone.
Tile down to just below the level that the bath edge will be. Then butt the bath to the tiles and use a clear sealant.
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