Wet rooms – anybody had one fitted?

What’s involved please? Is it mega-bucks for flooring? Can existing sanitaryware be used?

As always, thank you so much. 🙂

Is that not just a shower without a door on it? Like at the swimming baths? 😉

I know one thing, it has to be done right. If it leaks it’ll cost a FORTUNE to fix. More trouble and expense than it’s worth IMO….

Not wanting to squash your idea, but the sceptic in me asks to ensure you are not getting carried away by a fad – What’s the actual point of these rooms?

– Lots more water on surfaces, it all has to dry off, and if you have hard water watch out for all the limescale.
– Lots more domestic energy needed to dry off the excess water and remove even more humid air. What’s wrong with squeegeeing down a shower?
– Tanking out makes plumbing maintenance under the floor much more difficult.
– Wet floor means more treadig dirt about the house.
– Wet socks.
– Didn’t people invent houses to stay DRY?

Believe it or not, the 3rd hit on Google was this:

http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wet-rooms-are-they-worth-having-considering-the-costs-and-upheavel

!!!!

Wet rooms – the new

Wet rooms leave you with few dry places to stand after towelling yourself off ime…

They work well in hot dry countries. OK in the UK in summer but in winter you’ve just got a big wet room that soon starts to smell damp.

Underfloor heating probably helps

Ooooh, thanks for replies and that link was excellent! Is there any subject that STW doesn’t cover? 😉

OK, it’s for my mother who now has reduced mobility and lives in a bungalow. She has a badly planned bathroom with a shower cubicle that is difficult for her to step into.

Steps up to the shower?

Surely a wet room would be a dreadful solution? If she has reduced mobility I assume she would struggle on wet and potentially slippery surfaces?

Wouldn’t she be better off with something like this?

The shower tray is probably 4″ in height. She has recently broken her hip and am trying make life a little easier, as much as it can be when you’re in your 80’s.

Every hotel I have ever stayed at in Sweden has one, so I think if done right and designed into the building they must be OK. I guess easy to clean? They still have screens (keeps the loo roll dry!) but they tend to open fully and there is no ‘shower tray’ to speak of.

A couple of years ago I stayed in a holiday cottage that had a wet room. The flooring was mottled, for want of a better word, and not once did I slip. No mould to be seen.

In fairness I reckon it was only a few years old but looked professionally fitted.

Mrs FD’s grand parents have a wet room thing in their sheltered accomodation, but its functional rather than asthetic. Basically the room is covered in the same type of flooring you get in hospitals etc ie the heavy duty viynl stuff. A shower curtain hangs in one corner and can be drawn across, and theres an industrial type grate in the floor for the water to drain away. This is all in a bungalow.

However keeping it all nice, what about a walk in shower cubicle? Ours at home is probably about a 1″ step up at most and has acres of space. However when we looked, none of them had what I would call a proper non slip surface which I guess would help.

You can also get walk in baths etc too..

Just seen further post.. you can get shower seats, and could put various handles up to help access…IMO a bath like Mastiles suggest probably best as you can still have a shower head.

What I would have thought your mum needs is a quasi-wet room – somewhere where she can walk/chair into but is still separated from the main bathroom so water doesn’t get everywhere because it is difficult enough getting dressed successfully in a wet room with full mobility, never mind with reduced mobility.

Something like this that is separated

http://www.bathingfreedom.co.uk/the_osprey_range.html

My M’sus designed and fitted one for a client up in Islington last year. It was a nightmare by all accunts what with the sealing of the walls and drainage.. She fitted an aroma therapy vent too to it.. neat.

Hotel I used to stay in in Farnborough didn’t have a wet room as such, just a shower cubicle where the outside floor continued into the cubicle and the door went down to the ground and had a seal on the bottom. Still had a door tho.

The drain might be an issue to retro-fit though.

mastiles – it’s a small bathroom so dispensing with a shower cubicle would mean that she can access the loo with walking aids. Your pic of the bath looks to have a wee step.

There’s nothing special about the floor in a wet room other than the floor covering. Also for obvious reasons the trap for the waste water needs to be accessible, which is a little more problematic than in the case with raised shower trays. Although IIRC there are ones which are fully accessible from above by dismantling the waste water outlet/drain, but it needs a plumber to confirm this.

Other than that everything else is normal, although you need a reasonably sized bathroom for it to work. They are the best option for people with reduced mobility imo.

Our old flat had a walk-in shower, they can be fitted into pretty small spaces with a little ingenuity. Nothing slippery about the floor, either. How much space do you actually have?

By far the best solution for people with reduced mobility and indeed for anyone IMO. Floors need not be slippery – we use them in hospitals and nursing homes precisely for their ease of use.

I would have one like a shot were it at all feasible for me to install one.

My bathroom has a glass screen, but no door. the tray is a standard height, but i could have always gone for a slimmer one, or build up the floor more … as it is, its no more than 3inches of a step.

I thought about the wetroom route, but as already mentioned, loo roll … nobody was wet loo roll breaking when you need it most.

you can buy trays in multitudes of sizes, and screens also … yes the water comes out a bit of the gap, but its not much if your careful.

Obviously, my ensuite is small but if it was a bigger room, I would still go the same route, only have a longer tray and screen.

I reckon a good size would be a 1600 – 1800mm tray with a 1000mm screen. That would stop nearly all the water, yet leave a nice wide gap to get in and out of. ( mine is a 1200 tray, 800mm screen

If you’ve got a timber floor the only way to do this is to use a moulded tile-backer board base (e.g. Wedi board). They are often 1200mm square, 40 thick and slope to the middle where a plastic coupling fits onto trap. There are really just expanded polystyrene bonded to fibreglass matting (they cost 500 notes!). You tile on top of these guys and the surrounding area which needs to be built up with plain Wedi board to same height.
As long as your floor joists arn’t knackered you won’t have leaks

Thanks again for the replies.

fisha – nice bathroom. 🙂

The overriding priority is to have a room without any obstacles. A shower tray is an obstacle for a person with restricted mobility.

ernie – spot on as it’s the waste water part that concerns me. It’s quite an old property so could be a challenge.

Dad flees is a builder and built one for granny flees, who was also struggling with mobility. She’s in a home now and had to sell her house, yuppie types loved the wet room when viewing the property. If you do decide to go for it be warned as others have said they are expensive when they go wrong so get a recomendation. Good luck with whatever you decide.

something to think about would be whether the waste could be accessible from another room. the wall that the toilet and radiator sit on is a partition wall backing onto a bedroom. If i needed to get to my waste, I would be able to lift the carpet and floor on the other side of the wall and be able to get under and at the waste trap of the shower. granted there’s not much room, but there would be enough.

my gran has a semi wet room setup like that linked in mastiles fanyon’s post … she thinks its great. In fact it was the council that fitted it to her house i think as part of the support she gets. She likes it and it works very well.

A couple of places I stayed in in Norway had wet rooms; one largish house, the other a small urban flat. Both had just a flat floor, with central drainage. Seemed like a good idea; you could take a bike in their and hose it down, stuff like that. I’d have one if I had my own place I reckon.

If it is for reduced mobility have you spoken to your local council social work or occupational therapist? There may well be assistance available. Our local council provide a service to design, spec and put out to tender, and IIRC a grant for 80-100% for installation.