The walk in shower, sometimes known as a wet room, has become popular recently - with the current economic downturn, people are spending more time decorating their homes to save money on going out and the bathroom is often the first room to be redesigned with the wet room being a common modification.

Though most suppliers of a walk in shower will offer installation services for a reasonable fee, many people would rather do it themselves, making their bathroom a real labour of love. Though this is an excellent way to really feel that your home is your castle, sometimes people underestimate the importance of waterproofing and just how complex a task it is.

When it comes to a wet room, there is an awful lot of water going around the room compared to a regular shower and the importance of properly waterproofing the room cannot be overstated. Even one unprotected patch can cause serious damage to the home, costing a lot of time, upheaval and money to repair.

Waterproofing the bathroom when installing a walk in shower is a multiple stage task and requires the complete removal of the floor and the wall tiles. Firstly, a liquid polyurethane layer should be applied uniformly to the entire room, ensuring that no water will leak to the rest of the building, though this is a last line of defence and is only necessary if the other two stages fail, which should not happen if they are correctly applied, it is arguably the most important part of the process.

The second stage is installing the drainage tank for the room, which will ensure the water from the shower safely flows away. This is where planning out the floor design of the room becomes vital as the tank must link to where you are intending to have the sink located in the rooms' sloping floor. It is important when installing the drainage tank that enough room is left under the floor for other pipes such as heating and water and electrical wiring.

The third stage of waterproofing a wet room is the tiles. Though most choices of tiles will be adequate, the grout needs to be smoothly and evenly applied and should not be too porous as this will encourage leakages.

Ultimately, installing a walk in shower - especially when it comes to correctly waterproofing the room - is a very big task and should not be undertaken by someone who isn't completely sure of what they are doing. Tempting as it may be to do it yourself, it is probably a task which is best left to the professionals as there are a great many considerations to make with the installation process.

Anna Stenning is an interior designer with many years of experience refitting bathrooms. Find out more about installing a walk in shower at http://www.walkinbathing.co.uk/

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 8:55 pm and is filed under Home Improvement. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.