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doorless showers

11 years ago

How much clearance do you need from the faucet to the opening? I want door-less showers and want to make sure we have enough room between the shower head and the opening to minimize splashing outside of shower. Thanks!

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Comments (9)

mydreamhome
11 years ago
Depends partly on the direction of the spray in relation to the door. Is the door on one end and the shower head on the opposite wall? Or is the door on one end and the shower head on a side wall? What size shower are you planning? Do you have sketch/floor plan you can post?
LE
11 years ago
I want to know this, too! (Our partial wall comes out from the same wall as the shower head. I think that's the only way I've seen these-- otherwise, you'd better have a wet room for sure!)
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Your shower is similar to the initial layout of mine, except I don't have a window. To start with, I'd recommend something along the lines of this: The shower supply valve (in red, or alternate location in orange) somewhere near the entrance so the water can be turned on without having to enter the shower. With thermostatic valves, most people set the water temp with one knob and for the most part never change it afterwards. The only knob they manipulate is the volume ON/OFF. Towel bar in green. Mine is heated, a Runtal Omnipanel. Doesn't have to be heated. Doesn't even have to be in that location, you could install it on the wall to the left of the shower valve, or not install one at all. But in a large shower with two exterior walls and a window, if you're in a cold climate, the Runtal will warm the space and warm and dry your towels quite nicely. The Omnipanel qualifies more as a radiant room heater than just a towel warmer. Shower head in blue. Your shower is easily large enough for multiple heads. Consider an auxiliary rain head on the ceiling, or a second fixed or sliding bar-mounted head on the wall. I'd feed the second head with its own supply valve. The 5-6" wall keeps the head off of the exterior wall, but if you wanted a head on the exterior wall there is a work-around. For the exterior wall, I'd run the plumbing from the shower supply valve vertically up the wall, then across the ceiling, and then back down the wall to the shower head. When the supply valve is turned off, the water will drain out of the pitched ceiling pipe and out of the shower wall pipe, so if your house lost heat in a freezing climate, frozen water-filled pipes in an exterior wall would not be an issue. With the shower head(s) on the 5'-6" wall, they are spraying towards the window, but the dimensions of the window indicate to me it's a transom window that will be high on the wall. If you go with a ceiling mounted rain head, consider putting it right over the floor drain, or skew it a bit towards the window wall so someone can be under the rain head while someone is using a wall head. Purple is a moveable corner stool. Three legs so no wobble on the sloped tile floor. Put it where you want to sit, move it where you want as a shaving foot stool, etc. I will always vote for a moveable wood stool or bench over a tiled built-in seat. If using the rain head, you can pull the stool right under it and take a 60-second sit-and-soak before getting out of the shower. Stoll can also be pulled over by the handheld to shave legs. You can buy an extra wall bracket for a handheld and mount it at knee or thigh height, whatever works. Sit on the stool and shave with the head low on the wall. An alternative is a small foot ledge or toe bracket that can be built into the wall to assist in leg shaving. It's really what you want. Shower alone, shower together, share a showerhead, each with their own showerhead, etc. Two heads on the 5'-6" wall would accommodate two side-by-side bathers comfortably. I do recommend one of the heads in the shower be a hand-held on a long hose. that way you can use that head to spray down the walls and floor of the shower when needed. Hand-held heads offer the same quality spray as their fixed-head counterparts. Anyhow, it's a starting point for conversation.
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Yes, too much water will splash out. I replaced a fiberglass shower enclosure with a tile shower. You gain quite a few inches in the process. So it will be roomier. Were you planning on going curbless as well as doorless, ie sloping the floor? You could use a ceiling mount curtain track, either flush mounted or recessed. You could build a recess into the wall for the curtain to fold into out of site (after it had dripped dry) If you are not going curbless, but are going with a custom tile pan, you could gain a little room by angling the shower, but then you would need a custom glass door I assume and you are adding expense.
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Oh yes, the old "But officer, I am legally blind and cannot see the speed limit sign, therefore I can drive as fast as I want." argument. And then we get "The federal govt requires me to pay taxes, so it is OK to rob the state bank to get the money to pay the taxes" argument. Or more specifically, the "It is OK to break other laws if I claim that I am asserting my rights" delusions. Why should a handicapped person be subject to, and have to contend with moldy and rotting subfloors just because they are handicapped? Building and designing a space for ADA does not give anyone the right to make excuses for substandard work or ignore building codes. ADA does not afford a person the right to a roll-in shower by any stretch of the imagination, or any configuration that does not have a reasonable expectation of containing and draining all the water associated with a shower. The designer must choose an option that meets both ADA and building code requirements that fits in the available space, or provide more space to make the design choice work for both ADA and the building codes. In this case, waterproofing and sloping toward the drain more of the bathroom floor to outside of any possible spray zone may have appeased the building inspector, but we have absolutely no idea of what the specific design is. You also can not ride 1/2 of a horse. You can not claim an ADA exemption for the shower, and then put a 2'-4" door on the bathroom and no clear space in front of the shower as required by ADA... or a 24" doorway into an "ADA" shower... ADA requirements only address those requirements that are specific to ADA. They do not, for example, address what size floor joist must be underneath the shower, or what type or extent of waterproofing needs to be done. If ADA was an excuse to not follow the building codes when inconvenient, people would be falling through the shower floors in short order. Both ADA and building code requirements must both be met. https://www.access-board.gov/guidelines-and-standards/buildings-and-sites/about-the-ada-standards/guide-to-the-ada-standards/chapter-1-using-the-ada-standards
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Comments (12)
Can you draw a sketch of which way the opening would be? I think you can have a doorless, but what you want is for the opening and the shower head to be on the same wall. So, doorway 30" (you can do less if you aren't worried about getting a wheelchair in there) and 30" with the showerhead centered on it. The water will if anything hit the 5' wall 3' behind you. I had a 4x6 shower. My door opening was about 26" ( a bit smaller than I planned, not ideal). The shower head was on that wall, spraying towards the long back wall. My shower had a 1.5" curb. Never had water outside (well, until you leave the shower, obviously) :) Now, if i had put the shower head on the shorter side and sprayed towards the door, would have been a different story, in fact, it was plumbed wrong initially and I had them fix it.
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dekeoboe
11 years ago
Depends on how wide the shower is too.
elphaba_gw
10 years ago
probably a little late to post this for the OP but wanted to say (as I've said numerous times), we love our shower without a door. The shower is 5X5 with a fixed shower on one side, handheld shower next to an Envision seat on the other and a rain shower in the middle. we have a linear/trench drain.
Both shower heads are 16 inches from the wall. They can be pointed if want but we usually just leave them the way they are. There is a lot I could say but I will post this picture (which I have posted before). We wanted a setup that would work with a wheel chair if we needed it.
I have put a small mat in front of the sink. There is a small amount of water that sprays onto the matt but not very much. Doesn't make it soggy or anything like that. Helps with my balance which mine is not good. I love the bars. Since we have the Moen digital spa, we didn't need a lot of trim for valves.
We weren't sure about not having a door so we had contractor build it so we could add door later if we wanted. That's not going to happen. I think the doorless shower is probably what I like best about the whole room and I REALLY love the room.

Rest of pictures of the room are at:
www.houstonbookclubs.org/hbath
gabbythecat
10 years ago
I've been wondering about doorless showers instead of a wide (48 inch) shower stall. Could one fit in roughly the same footprint as the shower stall? Is the cost roughly the same as a shower stall? Who puts these in, anyway? The tile flooring sub? I'm so confused - way too many details right now, and two of our early/main subs are keeping me jumping!
divotdiva2
10 years ago
we are planning ours now. No door, no curtain and no glass panels to clean. We will have a trench/linear drain (although my contractor seems surprised by my request) and a curbless design - no threshold to step over as we age. Current dimenions and layout being tweaked, but about 3 to 3 1/2" feet by 6 ft. You might want to google or go on houzz and look at curbless designs. The architect currently has the drain positioned along the long wall (6 ft) but I advised him he may have to relocate to back (short) wall depending on code/slope requirements, I'll let him figure it out.
a2gemini
10 years ago
divod - I am thinking of the same type of drain -but have to find out if we can retro to our BR. We would have to put ours on the back wall as well (short wall)
ADScroggs
10 years ago
We are building a house. One of the upstairs bathrooms has a 3'x3' opening. Can I do a doorless shower? Also are prefabricated marble showers nice?
elphaba_gw
10 years ago
Did you make a typo? What is a 3' X 3' opening? Is that the footprint of the shower? If so, you would need to make the room a wet room.
Here's a wetroom on Houzz that has a relatively small footprint for the shower and no door.
[small wetroom here [(https://www.houzz.com/photos/universal-bathroom-modern-san-francisco-phvw-vp~25801) - wall mounted toilet is recommended though I guess not a hard requirement. They tend to be more expensive than standard wall mounted toilet.

[Here's another - not so pretty but shows the idea[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/european-style-master-bathroom-dc-metro-phvw-vp~304469) Floor plan works well without a shower door but I would have different floor tile, different toilet, different vanity and even different grab bars. YMMV

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