Wet Room Floors FAQ

Lots of people make templates for us using thin MDF or hardboard.

1. Take the bottom 2 or 3 courses of tiles off the walls. This may destroy the wall boards if they are plasterboard so you'll need to be careful and a tool like the Fein Multimaster will be invaluable.

2. Rake out the old and damaged wall grout and make space in the corners for a silicone bead as there's no grout in here.

3. Remove the existing floor up to a convenient grout line, fit new, level ply where the old floor was removed and then template for the new tray to fit under the wall boards.

4. Fit the new tray and make good the wall boards using Wedi boards with a 200mm strip of Wedi board glued behind the plaster boards to provide an overlap which will strengthen the joint between old and new. The Wedi boards will need to be notched in the back at the bottom to fit over our tray's drip stop lip.

5. Re-tile the bottom couple of rows leaving a 2-3mm silicone gap between the new tiles and the tray. This allows for a wide enough silicone bead to allow flex between the floor and walls; if you go too thin the silicone doesn't have enough flexibility.

6. Re-grout then silicone seal the wall corners and wall to tray junction.

Please also see:

Contrary to popular opinion tanking is not required for a wetroom floor. Tanking is only required if your choice of floor is not waterproof (porous) or is likely to crack. Tanking is vital for natural stone and tiled floors as they are likely to crack and in some cases they are porous (e.g. Marble, Limestone, Travertine etc).

Once installed Solidity wetroom floors become one giant, 12mm thick, non-porous, seamless piece with no weaknesses so they will not leak. This is why we are confident that tanking is not required.

HI-MACS, Krion and Corian are non-porous and do not require any surface sealant or protection.

The surface of our wetroom floors is smooth and hard yet flexible enough to move with the surroundings or a supporting timber structure. The sheet material is as flexible as 18mm plywood so you cannot detect any movement underfoot.

Solidity wetrooms are hard and smooth with a satin finish which offers more grip than a typical bath or shower tray and makes them very easy to keep clean. For commercial applications we recommend our textured anti-slip coating which complies with Anti-slip performance in accordance with DIN 51097 Class C. This coating can be applied on site and we offer this service free of charge to residential customers who find their floor too slippery. Typically we need to do this for one or two customers per year. Floors with the textured Anti-slip coating are more difficult to clean.

Corian, HI-MACS And Krion behave in a very similar manner to wood in thermal terms. The acrylic content of our floors allows them to retain a lot of heat so they are normally heated by convection from the living space below. Our floors do not normally needed warming unless there is no heated living area below.

If you wish to use under floor heating it is better to use a liquid system between the joists as these are much more reliable.

Electric under floor heating is possible following these criteria:-

1. Do not heat the wet area, thermal cycling will cause additional stresses and strains which may eventually turn in to leaks. Also, the heating will dry out the water residual water film more quickly which give it less chance to run away to the drain and therefore speeds up the build up of soap scum and limescale. We find that turning on the shower will warm the floor very quickly indeed.

2. The floor must be levelled accurately prior to installing the underfloor heating. It is better to do this work after we have done our site survey so our fitter can discuss the details with your trades people.

3. The wires must be covered by a 5mm layer of self smoothing latex screed to protect them during our installation.

4. There must be somebody on site to test the underfloor heating prior to our final installation (after we have dry fitted everything).

5. Loose wire systems (which can be easily repaired) are preferable to mat systems as we will be working at your risk. You are responsible in the unlikely event that we cause any damage to your electric under floor heating.

Our projects typically take 10 working days from the site survey to installing the floor. It is wise to book us in 4 weeks ahead.

1. Give us a ring with the approximate sizes or email us a dimensioned plan of your floor and we will send you a quote and any material colour samples you would like to see.

2. If the price looks OK but your project has some tricky aspects to it just let us know and we’ll come over for a pre-order survey free of charge and get everything properly defined.

3. Tell us you want to proceed with the order, we’ll then send you a proforma invoice for a 50% deposit and let you know our earliest available survey date which will normally be in 2 to 4 weeks time.

4. Send us the 50% deposit, we’ll confirm your survey date and the installation date which will normally be 10 working days after the survey.

5. We’ll call you a day or two before the survey to make sure everything is OK

6. We’ll do a comprehensive survey and make a set of templates so the whole floor can be custom made off site. Before we leave we’ll run through everything with you or your builder, architect, plumber etc.  Once we have completed the survey, work in the room can continue while we complete the manufacturing process.

7. We’ll send you detailed drawings of your floor for approval, a finalised cost (changes are normally just the difference between the size you measured for the quote and our more accurate measurements), confirm the installation date and provide details of anything important that needs to be done before we fit your floor. You need to respond to this within 24 hours.

8. We’ll call you a day or two before the installation to make sure everything is OK

9. We fit the floor

10. We send an invoice for the balance for payment within 2 weeks.

Please see our site preparation instructions by clicking on the link below: