Adding a Shower

May 13, 2004 2:53 PM

Plumbing question - you have a bath tub, free standing, with no shower; no switch to change between the water coming of the faucet vs from a shower head, and no shower curtain or support for such. How much (and what) would the parts be to add shower functionality? Is this a job that you could do by yourself?
posted by GriffX to health & fitness (7 comments total)

Well, it can be done inelegantly pretty easily: add two T junctions behind the faucets, aimed up; run from those to a shower body and from that to a shower head. You could spend anything from $25 to a couple hundred bucks, depending on how nice the parts are.

Adding a shower curtain to a free-standing tub isn't hard either; you just need...

Hey! So I Googled "free-standing shower curtain" and voilà: this product does the whole job, shower and curtain, for $124.
posted by nicwolff at 3:09 PM on May 13, 2004

The thing Nicwolf found is exactly what we have at our apartment. Nothing fancy, and the person who installed it ran the suspension bars wall-to-shower instead of to the ceiling, but it works.
posted by littlegreenlights at 3:27 PM on May 13, 2004

You can buy really nice period-versions (i.e., Mission or Victorian or Deco) of that same item from places like Omega 2 or Omega Too for about twice that.
posted by luriete at 3:47 PM on May 13, 2004

Apologies--nicwolff, I mean.
posted by littlegreenlights at 4:02 PM on May 13, 2004

they also make shower attachments that plug into the bath faucet, with a long hose, and a metal arm attached to the wall that holds it up. (like this sort of-- hotels in europe that i've stayed at have had them)
posted by amberglow at 4:53 PM on May 13, 2004

I have that set-up and am also considering adding a shower. One thing that is a sort of "duh" realization but weasy to forget is that unlike all-in-one tub-shower thingdoos, these need two and quite possibly three shower curtains to make sure you don't get water all over the place when you shower, depending how much of a splasher you are.
posted by jessamyn at 5:18 PM on May 13, 2004

When we moved into our house, we had the same sort of problem. Bathtub is located under an eve, with no place to locate a full shower.

Depending on your plumbing set up, it could be very easy to rig something up. Is your tub faucet seperate from the hot and cold knobs?

If that's the case, you just need to removed the old faucet and replace it it one with a built in shower hose. The control mechanism for turning it on will be in faucet head itself. Remove the old faucet (some of them have a set screw to loosen first), clean off the pipe, apply some fresh teflon tape, and screw the new one on. 15 minutes and 20 bucks and you too can have water coming down in a dazzling variety of streams (depending on the shower head you pick).

I'd recommend it over the rubber tubes that slide over the faucet, since they have a tendance to pop off at inconvient moments. But you have to work with what you've got.
posted by jeribus at 11:00 PM on May 13, 2004