Luxurious Showers and Creating your Luxury Shower Experience
Like our article last month on Luxury Bath Tubs, a luxury shower is based on many things, such as the choice of materials, styles of fittings, and, critically, how they are installed.
Today, we’ll look at all the elements that make up a luxurious shower experience.
What are people’s assumptions about a Luxury Shower?
If you ask the average person what they think a luxury shower is, they might think of five-star hotels or spa therapy centres.
They would also be likely to mention things like:
- Expensive!
- Power showers.
- Brass or other high-quality fittings.
- Self-Cleaning or Stay-Clean glass.
- Stone or Marble enclosure tiles.
- Herringbone Tiling.
- Floor-to-ceiling walk-in enclosure.
- Hidden drains or even a wet-room style.
All of these combined make for a luxury shower experience, but on their own, they are just “nice-to-haves.” However, all of these things need experienced, professional installation—the type of bathroom installation that WSC Plumbing specialises in.
Luxury Shower Installations
High-pressure power showers require careful installation. Because everything in the “wet zone” within your shower is permiable. Both tiles and especially the grout.
Grout allows the moisture in and the tiles also seal in this moisture.
This leads to cracks between tiles and mould growth and damp issues.
This can cause further damage to the framework of the walls or floor (Joist’s and wall studs) as they begin to rot.
To avoid this, we only use waterproof, cement base board like aquapanel to line the walls first.
New Build Properties:
If your property is a new-build, it’s very likely that there is only non-compliant (Standard) plasterboard behind the tiles.
Normal plasterboard will absorb this moisture over time, destroying the plasterboard. This will also allow mould growth and damage to the walls behind the plasterboard.
Rotting stud walls and soaking wet insulation are common in poorly built new build showers.
Plasterboard also flexes and bends with temperature and moisture changes. This causes grout to crack and can loosen tiles from the wall.
Hans Grohe (Commercial grade) power shower in hotels.
Correct Shower Installations:
Installing your luxury shower correctly should involved creating whats known as a “Tank”. This means to seal the shower enclosure internally and make it 100% waterproof.
Using cement based waterproof board that also doesnt flex. Unlike plasterboard, it’s as good as a solid wall and therefore maintains the integrity of the seal between the tiles.
There are national British Standards for installations of everything. Each standard starts with BS followed by a corresponding standard number.
All of these British Standards can be found at the NBS website.
NBS stands for “National Building Specification” and is a platform used in the UK construction industry for specifying and managing product information.
WaterProofing
With the latest codes of practice released in July 2018 for BS 5385-1 (wall and floor tiling in normal internal conditions) by the British Standards Institute (BSI), there has been a positive change in regulations overseeing works in wet areas.
Under the new revision, all substrates should now be waterproofed before tiling, even in domestic locations.
Luxury Shower Shopping:
When installing luxury showers for clients in and around Reading, we work with a company called Grant & Stone for shower supplies. hey have several online catalogues too.
Luxury showers are typically more spacious and have less friction for use, such as no doors (walk-in) or floor-to-ceiling screens.
When talking about a luxurious shower experience, bathroom owners will typically be looking for something like a “power shower or spa, a high end hotel experience”. (A Hotel Experience).
