Why pay more? DIY shower cabin

How to properly mount the ladder, options for arranging homemade showers

“A home-made shower stall always looks better than plastic, but a ready-made shower is expensive and for some reason suggests associations with a hospital ward,” says the majority of FORUMHOUSE participants. This article tells what options for showers our craftsmen make with their own hands and how to make a shower cabin with a pallet and a drain in the floor.

The advantages of a homemade shower

Many homeowners like the “cross between a shower stall and a factory stall,” which is common overseas. In the bathroom, parallel to one of the walls, there is a partition about 90 cm long; on the fourth side, this nook is fenced with a curb 10-15 cm high.

The design is complemented by a beautiful curtain, glass or plastic door. The main financial costs here fall on the shower mechanism.

The advantages of this design:

• You can choose the appropriate sizes yourself;
• You can choose any design: lay out with mosaics, make comfortable shelves.

Many people also make such an economical option: they put a pallet on bricks, communications - under it. Two sides of such an improvised cabin are tiled walls, two more are purchased sliding doors.

Zulfiya

Participant FORUMHOUSE

There are a lot of bells and whistles in the purchased shower stall, they are not used at all, and we did not pay for them. We are going to build a private house, and there we will make an option with a pallet, tiles and sliding doors.

Such a shower cabin was built by a member of our portal with the nickname Souze. Not a single ready-made shower cabin of adequate cost was suitable for his growth of almost two meters, so he made the structure with parameters 900x900x2200 mm.

The most expensive in the list of consumables were plastic panels for 3000 rubles and a finished pallet, bought for 1100 rubles. Also needed:

• Four bars 30x40x3000 mm - 320 rubles.
• Polycarbonate sheet 1000x2100 mm - 700 rubles.
• F16 pipe with flexible and brackets - 200 rubles.
• Spray paint - 150 rubles
• Two meters of plastic plinth - 250 rubles.
• Sealant, screws, mounting foam, crocodiles with rings - about 500 rubles.

Operating procedure:
First, the rear walls of the cab were assembled from vertical plastic panels. They are easily attached to each other with grooves and assembled simply like a children's designer. All joints were coated with a transparent sealant.

The next step is to install the pallet. A special wooden base was assembled under the pallet, and during the installation of the pallet, the master filled all the voids in a spiral with polyurethane foam, from the edge to the center - so the pallet would not bend. When the foam swelled and hardened a little, the master simply put the pallet in the place where it should stand and left it until morning. Then he screwed it to the floor.

Souze

FORUMHOUSE member

The only place where it can leak is the siphon. A normal hole is made in the floor for ease of installation and replacement. But I put everything on the sealant, I hope it won't flow soon.

The wooden frame for the pallet can be sheathed with polycarbonate from the inside, then the whole tree will be outside and will last a long time.

The edges of the plastic skirting board were rubberized, but Souze sealed the top and bottom with a sealant to ensure durability.

The hardest part was to make the side walls. For this, the master sawed the bars into pieces of 400 mm (wall length) by 2003 mm (height of the cabin minus the height of the pallet with the frame). On two long bars (2003 mm), I cut out the profile of a plastic skirting board with a jigsaw: this way they can fit snugly both to the pallet and to the plastic wall.

In the bars (on the thirty-centimeter side), he made grooves 1 cm deep, and a polycarbonate sheet width (6 mm).

Souze

FORUMHOUSE member

The groove needs to be made larger to leave a gap, this facilitates subsequent installation.

The bars were attached as follows: first, those in which the profile was cut under the plinth (for three screws), then the lower bar, then the upper one. Screws for the two lower bars were perfectly screwed into the holes made in the pallet with a metal drill Ø 2 mm.

Polycarbonate was cut to size, adding 1 cm on each side (to the depth of the groove).

The construction of six bars with polycarbonate was fixed with the last two bars so that they would not burst when tightening screws, for each hole with a drill I made a pocket about 1 cm deep and a little larger than a hat nail.

He painted the bent pipe, installed it, and then missed all joints in the walls with polycarbonate with a sealant and hung the curtain.

How to install a shower drain

In recent years, showers without a pallet, flush with the floor, with a drain ladder or tray are gaining popularity in our country. A shower with a floor drain requires a slight slope in the floor and a drain. Often in such a design there is not even a shower stall itself; you can do with a bar with a curtain or partition.

This type of shower is popular abroad. For all its asceticism, it has many advantages.

Andrey_Dachnik

FORUMHOUSE member

A concrete structure is more reliable than acrylic pallets. Who will jump? And on high heels will crawl into the shower? It is expensive to change the tray, and it will be difficult to find the same one.

Acrylic pallets are really not champions of durability; for some of our users, they rotted in three years.

This is how the completed shower project looks like with a drain at Andrey_Dachnik.

Project cost:

• Ladder - 1000 rubles;
• Mosaic - 2 600 rubles;
• Wall tiles - 3,000 rubles;
• Concrete waterproofing grout - 3,000 rubles.

maraha

FORUMHOUSE member

I did this: three plasterboard partitions, tiles on top. The floor for the assembly of the ladder was raised with bricks and covered with tiles. The main thing is to make a good angle for water flow into the ladder, for me it turned out to be very small, and the water leaves slowly. I made the fourth partition from tempered glass, bought fittings - it turned out very beautifully.

Usually, the installation of a shower drain is developed at the project stage, with the laying of a pipeline and a monolithic floor, in which the drain is mounted. But it can be done during a regular bathroom renovation by connecting the drain to the drain in the basement.

Appollo

FORUMHOUSE member

It is more correct to estimate the shower channel in height, and then in width. It is necessary to calculate the slope, while taking into account the connection of successively other consumers. The less you can see the ladder, the better, but cleaning it shouldn't be difficult.

Shower cabins without a pallet can have two options for the location of the drain: in the center or on the edge. In the first version, the drain is closed with a 10x10 cm grid, in the second it is usually a strip, which additionally becomes a visual separator between the wet and dry areas of the bathroom.

Shower drains are almost always laid in a monolithic floor, that is, there must be enough space in the floor to drown the drain.
Here is a shower cake without a pallet tested by our user with the nickname Kirilltos.

And this is what this design looks like.

How to choose a shower drain or tray

The main difference between a tray and a drain is in the surface area of ​​the water collection. But this does not mean that the throughput of the tray is higher than that of the ladder - they have the same exit to the sewer pipe. In practical terms, the difference is felt mostly during installation - the slope of the tile to the ladder needs to be made greater.

There is always a lot of controversy about whether it makes sense to buy a so-called "dry" ladder or tray with a valve that blocks the smell from the sewer to the shower. At FORUMHOUSE, the general consensus is “there is a sense”. If you leave for a couple of weeks, the water from the water seal will evaporate, and all unpleasant odors will be in the shower. This is especially true for suburban housing.

Also, there is no need to save on ladders and buy them for 300-500 rubles. Such will surely begin to leak, leaks will lead to fungus and mold.

conclusions

At FORUMHOUSE, do-it-yourself craftsmen lay shower drains and assemble homemade shower cabins. It looks more interesting than ready-made designs from the store, it is also more practical and cheaper. The most important thing in such projects is good waterproofing. Installation of a drain requires some experience, but.

Alekca

FORUMHOUSE Moderator

You can do it on your own, but a lot of saved rubles, a lot of impressions and new experience.

Useful experience? Like it!

Wet rooms can be plastered with tadelact, it looks beautiful and is not afraid of water at all. Watch a master class on laying tiles in the bathroom with your own hands.