Bathroom. Cubicles. Location

Traditional wet room installations usually involve substantial expenditure and a lot of time. Because the requirements are largely standardised, prefabrication is desirable, especially for terraced and multi-family housing projects, holiday homes, apartments, hotel facilities and for old building restoration work. Sanitary blocks can be prefabricated – (1) – (3), as well as utility walls or complete cubicles (4) – (13) with premounted piping as well as units with accessories. Prefabricated compact cubicles are supplied in a range of fixed dimensions.

Prefabricated cubicles are mostly sandwich construction, with wooden frame and chipboard or fibre-cement panels. They use aluminium, moulded stainless steel or glass-fibre reinforced plastic to match the units and accessories.

Location. The most convenient location for the bathroom is adjacent to the bedrooms (and the WC if it is not incorporated in the bathroom itself). Although showers are compact and often preferred by younger people, baths are generally more suitable for the elderly.

If the house has no utility room and a small kitchen, spaces and connections can be provided in the bathroom for washing machines and laundry baskets.

Bathrooms with WCs are self-contained rooms which are equipped with all of the fittings necessary to meet all the sanitary needs of the occupants. However, the plan should ideally include two separate lockable rooms for the bathroom and WC and this is essential in dwellings for more than five people. A bathroom with WC can be directly accessible from the bedroom as long as another WC can be reached from the corridor – (2) – (10).

A bathtub and/or shower tray plus a wash-basin are installed in the bathroom, while a flushing toilet, bidet and hand washing basin are installed in the WC.

For cost efficiency and technical reasons the bathroom, WC and kitchen should be planned such that they can share the same service ducts - (3) + (4), (7) – (10). In multistorey homes, an arrangement such that the utility walls for the bathrooms and WCs are directly above one another helps to keep installation costs and the necessary sound insulation measures as low as possible. However, adjacent bathrooms in two different flats must not be connected to a single supply or discharge pipe system.

The bathroom and WC should be orientated towards the north, and should normally be naturally lit and ventilated. At least four air changes per hour are required for internal rooms. For comfort, a bathroom temperature of 22 to 24°C is about right. A temperature of 20°C is suitable for WCs in homes. This is higher than that encountered in office buildings, where 15 to 17°C is the common norm.

Bathrooms are particularly susceptible to damp so appropriate sealing must be provided. Surfaces must be easy to clean because of high air humidity and condensation, and the wall and ceiling plaster must be able to withstand the conditions. Choose slip resistant floor coverings.

Consider the required noise insulation: the noise levels from domestic systems and appliances heard in neighbouring flats or adjoining rooms must not exceed 35 dB(A).

At least one sealed electrical socket should be provided at a height of 1.30m beside the mirror for electrical equipment. It is also necessary to consider the following for the bathroom/WC: cupboards for towels, cleaning items, medicines and toiletries (possibly lockable), mirror and lighting, hot water supply, supplementary heater, towel rails, drier, handles above the bathtub, toilet paper holder within easy reach, toothbrush holder, soap container and storage surfaces.