One of the fashionable trends in the modern renovation of bathrooms and showers is the installation of a shower without a pallet. In fact, the used water flows directly onto the floor, obviously made with a slight slope. This design, or rather its absence, looks very stylish and modern. However, how practical and feasible is this in the realities of our Ukrainian apartments? Let's figure it out.
What are the advantages of a shower without a pallet
The tendency to put a shower without a cabin and a pallet is rapidly gaining popularity in developed European countries, including becoming more and more common in Ukraine. There are 3 main reasons for this:
- Such a cheap zone is easier to wash, it dries quite quickly by itself. Cleaning, disinfection and other household processes in the shower without a pallet are easy and simple, much easier than washing and drying the cabin with a pallet.
- It is much easier for the elderly, pregnant women, young children and the disabled to use the shower, where the water flows directly to the floor, than to throw a leg and climb into a high shower tray. In the case of disabled people, a shower room with a slope is almost an irreplaceable thing, since a sedentary person can take a shower while sitting in a wheelchair or a special seat.
- Unlimited field for imagination. It is much easier to implement almost any design idea regarding a bathroom if you give preference to a barrier-free environment, in particular an open shower.
How water is removed
The main question in a properly equipped shower without a pallet is how to remove water, do it efficiently and inexpensively. Modern technologies involve the use of ladders or trays that are mounted in the wall or floor.
Ladders are one of the simplest and most functional systems. The shower ladder consists of a siphon, a funnel and a branch pipe that outputs waste water to the sewer channel.
Such ladders are equipped with filters that catch particles, which helps to maintain hygiene and eliminates blockages. Also, the ladders have special fuses that detain unpleasant odors from the sewer, keeping the air in the bathroom clean and fresh.
Trays differ from ladders, in fact, only in large sizes. They can be mounted in the floor in the central part, on the side, against the wall, if the sewer configuration assumes a pipe in the wall plane.
Some trays can be cut directly during installation, while others have fixed dimensions.
Ladders and trays with rotary siphons have proven themselves well. This design feature makes it easy to install a drain even in situations where access to sewer drains is extremely difficult.
How to make a floor slope for an open shower
Often, for 1 m of the length of the sewer system, it is necessary to raise the floor by 2-3 cm. This calculation is used as a basic one. Raise the level due to the concrete screed, respectively, leading the angle towards the ladder. If the drainage is planned at the wall, the screed is made with a slope only in one plane. The floor screed is somewhat more difficult to implement in the case when the ladder is installed in the center of the room. In this case, the slope towards the ladder should be uniform from all sides.
After drying, put a layer of waterproofing, which is also required on the walls adjacent to the shower without a pallet. The modern choice of waterproofing materials is huge: liquid rubbers, mastics, rolled materials-it all depends on the specific case. The next stage is a decorative coating. For bathrooms and showers, a tile with a thickness of 8 mm is used, which is placed on a layer of adhesive composition of 4 mm.
The thicker the tile is used — the thicker the layer of adhesive material should be. It is recommended to choose a tile with an anti-slip coating. In general, the project is implemented even in domestic apartments of old construction, subject to technical requirements.