How to Make a Shower Room. Part 1 of 5

Self Builder home

How to Make a Shower Room
After years of suffering leaks around shower trays, installers and manufacturers have started working together to fix the problem.

Bar shower mixers can be hard to mount in walls because you don't always have the tile thickness worked out. The Croydex mounting kit allows you to adjust the shower after fixing tiles and it holds the mixer rock steady.		The spring plates go on the back of the central mount plate. I used back plate elbows to mount them on plywood to prevent them turning. The plywood is not fixed to the structure so it can be moved in and out as the tails are adjusted.		The mounting plate is fixed level on two studs.
Bar shower mixers can be hard to mount in walls because you don't always have the tile thickness worked out. The Croydex mounting kit allows you to adjust the shower after fixing tiles and it holds the mixer rock steady.		The spring plates go on the back of the central mount plate. I used back plate elbows to mount them on plywood to prevent them turning. The plywood isn't fixed so it can be moved in and out as the tails are adjusted.		The mounting plate is fixed level on two studs.
The tray is tried in position only to find that the waste hole is smack bang on a joist.		I always like to use a laser level to set a datum line around the room. I can then measure off this for tiling.		The new plasterwork is primed with Dunlop waterproofer.
The tray is tried in position only to find that the waste hole is smack bang on a joist.		I always like to use a laser level to set a datum line around the room. I can then measure off this for tiling.		New plasterwork is primed with Dunlop waterproofer.

For too long we have had a blame culture where the manufacturers blamed poor installation and the plumber blamed the manufacturer. I fully acknowledge that many plumbers don’t take nearly enough care when installing shower trays but I also believe that problems of installation ought to be designed out. If the silicone seal is the vulnerable point why keep relying on it? This all seems fairly self evident but change has been a long time coming and a shower tray that doesn't rely on silicone is still a relatively rare thing. Even if the tray has upstands there is still a requirement for silicone on the surround. Adamsez is one manufacturer that has taken a completely fresh approach to fitting shower trays and surrounds, and they have come up with a completely silicone free installation. Their new range of trays are handed left and right so you can always achieve an upstand against the wall. The open edges also have slight upstands to deflect water back into the tray. The result is a system that is 100% water tight. I also discovered that Adamsez trays are very easy to fit.

Having selected the low profile tray configured to suit the corner, inevitabley the joist lay almost directly beneath the trap. The customer was adamant that they didn't want the raised version so I started to work out how I could accommodate the trap. The trap encroached by half the width of the joist and when I checked in the load tables of the building regulations, the joists were in fact twice what they needed to be for the short span of the shower room. Even with maximum loading they were 2 inches deeper than need be, obviously this was simply to match up with the rest of the floor which had much wider spans in the larger rooms. Being a 'belt and braces' man I decided that I still wanted the joist to be as strong as possible. I was taking the floor up anyway to lay a plywood deck so it was an easy matter to glue and screw a strip of OSB (Oriented Strand Board) to the entire length of the joist. This is a trick I have used before to eliminate bounce when I have laid ceramic tiles on timber floors. The guidelines say that anything more than 1mm deflection is bad news even if you've tanked out the room.


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