Wet Room Installation

A 'proper' wet room will have a completely open shower with no tray or screen although for a small room a screen will be advisable to stop water from getting everywhere so you're not having to wipe down every surface in the room once you've finished your shower.

Yor Zest Underfloor heating teams are fully versed to install a watertight wet room but importantly can offer sound advise on the suitability of a wet room in your house.

Historically wet rooms were associated with wheelchair bound individuals or people who may struggle to step into a bath or into a small shower cubical and as a result most were fitted on ground floors. Ground floors provide a strong stable base as the floor will typically be concrete or screed and when laying tiles there will be no movement when weight is applied to the floor. Ensuring your floor does not move is a critical aspect of ensuring that movement doesn't lead to cracks, in either tiles or grout, which in turn doesn't lead to water ingress. Water damage can be very harmful to a property and can also be hard to rectify - especially if water damage has occurred unnoticed for a number of years slowly seeping into the fabric of the building.

However, as most family bathrooms are located on the first floor or a house the desire to have wet rooms on these floors has also increased. Wet rooms can be installed upstairs and even in loft conversions but the key to having a water tight wet room is ensuring your have a solid floor on which to lay your wet room flooring, which is most cases is tiles.

Out team will check for the amount of floor deflection and depending on this they will determine the best course of action for your installation. On occasion where cheaper joists have been used in a property we may recommend the use of a low level shower tray, as even with retrospective supports added, there may still be a risk of movement. Modern low level shower trays have come along way in recent years and can become a bit of a feature themselves, depending on the design scheme of the wet room.

The Zest Underfloor Heating teams will always ensure your wet room is properly tanked with a waterproof membrane to provide a watertight wet room which will be a delight to use for many, many years.

There are quite a number of material and product choices to make when planning your wet room. From floors to walls to the shower itself, let alone the sink, toilets and any storage

One of the main considerations of a wet room will be the choice of wall materials. Tiles have traditionally and still are the most common wall choice but with many people citing low maintenance as a key factor in deciding what materials to use, shower boards are growing in popularity. Shower boards do themselves come in a variety of styles and materials but the bulk of the material will be a type of plastic. The main appeal of shower boards is the lack of grout. Most boards will butt up against each other with an almost invisible connecting line, with minimal sealant visible at corner joints. The end result is shower walls, which have no grout which can collect hard water and eventually mould. This does not mean that shower boards to not need any cleaning, they will still benefit from a regular wipe down to remove any build up of various shower, cleaning and skin treatment products, which will find themselves splashed onto the boards. However, this will be a more occasional clean and fairly easy to do. You can use shower boards across the whole of the bathroom or around the shower area. You can then tile or half tile the rest of the bathroom.

If selecting tiling for both walls and floor as well as the obvious cosmetic choices these is no reason why you can vary your tiles in a similar fashion to shower boards. You can use different tile or select different feature tiles or layout of tiles around the shower compared to the rest of the room in much the same way as your will find feature walls in living rooms. And don't forget - grout doesn't only come in white. different shade can closely match your tiles or you can choose a grout colour to contrast your tiles.

When choosing your shower think about where you may want your shower rose to sit, how big you may want this to be and whether or not you'd also want an additional hand held shower head.

We'd outlined that you will have a number of decisions to make concerning what materials you may want to use in your wetroom, however this may also be influenced to a large degree on your design - more specifically how you plan to lay out different bathroom fixtures as this will also affect where we run the underfloor heating too.

For smaller wet rooms the position of your sink, toilet and bath, if space allows, relative to your shower may well effect how easy or frustrating your will find your new room. If you need to include a shower screen, which most people do, then it needs to be effective in preventing water from getting everywhere but also easy to get past to get into the shower itself. Fortunately, if you've opted for underfloor heating - worrying about where to put the radiators is one less thing to think about.

If the opportunity allows positioning out where you plan to put things to scale with masking tape on the floor is a very good way to get a feel of your proposed wet room lay out. Walk around the imaginary sink toilet, shower screen to see if it all flows. This exercise may only be possible once we have remove your old fitting. Please let the tam know if you'd want to do this it clearly better for all concerned to make final changes on paper than trying to move things around when they've already be partially installed. Reworking takes time and costs and depending on how far an installation has gone some replacement parts may need re-ordering, which could delay things further. We're happy to work with you to ensure your get the wet room you've been dreaming of.