Is a wet room right for your bathroom?
A wet room is the version of this job that people either love or get talked into without understanding. It is worth 5 minutes to know which one you are.
The idea is simple. Instead of a tray sitting on the floor, the floor itself becomes the shower. It is waterproofed underneath, laid to a gentle fall, and drained through a grate or a channel. There is nothing to step over anywhere in the room, so a frame, a chair or a second pair of hands all fit.
What tanking actually is
Tanking is the waterproof layer that goes under the tiles and up the walls. It is the whole job. Tiles and grout are not waterproof and were never meant to be, so if the tanking is wrong the water goes into the floor and you will not know for a year. This is the single reason to use somebody who fits wet rooms every week rather than a general builder having a first go.
Two fair questions at the visit: which waterproofing system do you use, and what guarantee comes with it in writing. A firm that fits these regularly answers both without pausing.
Which floors make it easy, and which make it dear
- A suspended timber floor upstairs. Usually workable. The installer cuts between the joists to drop the drain and rebuilds the deck to a fall. More work than a tray, and it is where a good part of the price goes.
- A solid concrete floor on the ground floor. Harder to cut into, so a pumped waste is often used instead. That works well, and it does mean a small pump living somewhere with power to it.
- A small room. Often the cheapest wet room of the lot, because there is less floor to take up and less tanking to lay.
- A room where the toilet and basin also have to move. This is no longer a conversion, it is a refit, and it should be quoted as one.
Does the whole room get wet?
No, and this is the commonest worry. A screen or a half height panel keeps the spray where it belongs, and the fall in the floor takes the rest to the drain. In practice the far corner of a well built wet room stays dry enough for a towel rail and a laundry basket. What you do lose is the ability to leave a bathmat down and forget about it.
Who a wet room genuinely suits
Somebody who already uses a frame or a chair, or who may need one before long. Somebody being helped to wash, because there is space to stand beside them. A household that wants one bathroom to work for everybody for the next 20 years. If none of that applies and the bath is simply too high to climb into, a walk in shower on a low tray does the same job for less money and less disruption.
Questions worth asking at the visit
- Which waterproofing system do you use, and what is the guarantee?
- Where exactly does the drain go, and does the floor need cutting or a pump?
- How many days is the room out of use, and does the toilet stay usable?
- Which flooring are you proposing, and how does it behave when wet?
- Who certifies the electrics and the ventilation?