New bathtub
Posted: Tue May 01, 2018 9:15 pm
We've been living in our van for over a year now, using the shower regularly. A couple of weeks back I noticed water flowing out the back doors when Melissa was having a shower. It turned out there was quite a large crack in the bathtub which we hadn't noticed, who knows for how long! To make matters whose this happened in Guatemala, so there was no chance of buying a replacement online, although the stores we looked were out of stock anyway.
We removed the broken tub and found that the wood supporting the bottom wasn't even attached in the front left corner! So all this time all our weight when we went in and out of the shower was being taken by the very thin plastic, which cracked in this exact spot.
We found a fiberglass company in Nicaragua which looked competent. We had them take the old tub to use as a mold, and a couple of days later they'd made a brand new bath for us!
We're very impressed by how strong the fiberglass is compared to the old plastic. We're also a little annoyed that the support was never installed correctly, if it had this may never of happened. When I installed the new tub I made sure to install proper supports all the way around.
Just thought I'd share this in case anyone is doing any work around the bath, I definitely recommend fixing the supports, or if your tub breaks think about getting a fiberglass one made. Using the old one as a mold it only took a day(ish) and cost around $250. I know this is more than replacement ones from the internet, but it was the only choice we had. I've included a couple of pictures, one shows what happened to the old tub when it was unstuck as a mold. I used putty around the drain and lowered the bath back in with the u-bend attached, then screwed it back together reaching from the back. Checked for leaks, and after using a pipe wrench, not a drop! I had to cut the hole slightly bigger in the plywood under the tub so the attached u-bend could slide in, but that was all.
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We removed the broken tub and found that the wood supporting the bottom wasn't even attached in the front left corner! So all this time all our weight when we went in and out of the shower was being taken by the very thin plastic, which cracked in this exact spot.
We found a fiberglass company in Nicaragua which looked competent. We had them take the old tub to use as a mold, and a couple of days later they'd made a brand new bath for us!
We're very impressed by how strong the fiberglass is compared to the old plastic. We're also a little annoyed that the support was never installed correctly, if it had this may never of happened. When I installed the new tub I made sure to install proper supports all the way around.
Just thought I'd share this in case anyone is doing any work around the bath, I definitely recommend fixing the supports, or if your tub breaks think about getting a fiberglass one made. Using the old one as a mold it only took a day(ish) and cost around $250. I know this is more than replacement ones from the internet, but it was the only choice we had. I've included a couple of pictures, one shows what happened to the old tub when it was unstuck as a mold. I used putty around the drain and lowered the bath back in with the u-bend attached, then screwed it back together reaching from the back. Checked for leaks, and after using a pipe wrench, not a drop! I had to cut the hole slightly bigger in the plywood under the tub so the attached u-bend could slide in, but that was all.
Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk