Shower Installation Kits

Shower Installation. So first of all let's break down the word. "Shower" - this is obviously going to be a shower type of job. You may be doing a remodel or a new construction where you're building a stand-alone wet area. Next word in this going to be the "installation." So we're going to be talking a little bit of ideologies, theories and a little bit of step-by-step, but we have specific step-by-step instructions on the website. Feel free to call or look at the links here for more specific direct guides, and the last one is going to be more than one product, which means you're looking for something that "I want to rip out my bathtub and install a shower kit." Well, there's going to be things to include and we're drains for shower kits  going to over that in these later sections. So now you understand what we're going to be talking about, what this article is about and some of the things that you're going to learn and find out throughout this article. 

 Where To Get It?
Where to get is quite a question. There are many different avenues with the internet nowadays. Google it and you'll find it. So some of the more common realistic things to look for when trying to find where do I get this type of product, there are kind of some rules and guidelines and a little bit of research that needs to be done to understand more of really what you're getting. So first of all the first question I would ask is - Do I know what all I need? If you do, great! When you're doing your research you're going through companies and you're looking at people and products who have everything that you need. It may not be specific sizes, but it might be the item, say for instance - a bench or a tiled seat. They may have all of the stuff that you need for everything else but the bench size is wrong. Well, either you can start piecing it off, get everything else through that company but go get a bench somewhere else or you can try to find another company that has everything that you need in the sizes that you need or a company that builds things custom for you.   

So I'll get into that further in talking about custom and different things. When I start talking about price point you're going to start seeing different levels of companies and products that will get you more or less the same thing, it just depends on you and your personal and what value and things that you're trying to get and create with your area that you're looking to install stuff on. The other piece in where to get - If you don't know barrier free shower kits what you need, it's going to be a little bit more research intensive. You're going to need to talk to people. You're going to need to read blogs, read articles (like you are now) to find out what is all included in something that you're looking for, something that matches what you're looking for. Say for instance - under the section where to get it - I'll cover a little bit of what you need. So let's get into that. What do you need? Well, in a typical showering area you have your showerheads, your valves. You may or may not have sprayers, that depends on you and what quality you're looking for. You're going to have to install a drain in the floor. There may or may not be a bench. What about a shelf? Nitches... Is it a rain head or is it one that's attached on one of the left or right walls against that seal? Are there two showerheads? What about...again with the drain smell, is it going to be a center drain just in the middle or do you want a trench drain on either of the sides? 

The next question is do you want a curb to step in and out of in the wet area or do you want it to be curbless walkin? With things going curbless, what does that mean? You may have special requirements for either handicap accessible, ADA requirements or things like that that you need something curbless, something to roll in a wheelchair or to that effect you may need that. So understanding your requirements and going into what do you need, you need to ask yourself these questions. You can get as simple as just one showerhead, one valve, one drain and I am going to tile it. Well, there you go. There's four things you need to find. You need to find a company that provides the items needed to install all of that and then you can buy from one company, keep it simple and you don't have to go around to several different places. 

Price Points

This really relates to where to get it which was section two here, but in section three we're going to cover a little bit of quality and a little bit of different things that you're going to receive at different price ranges and the different fallacies that happen with the pricing in looking for these types of products and just in the construction in general. First of all I'll talk a little bit about the market, but where we are currently the market is on the rise which means homes are selling for more, which means builders are able to pay more or they're making a lot more margins so therefore they are able to pay a little bit more for items and products to increase the value to get higher margins, which means manufacturers and suppliers are upping the prices for their individual products that may or may not have the value necessary for it. So when looking at price points you need to understand kind of the value of what you're looking for. Is the product made of a metal? Is it plastic? That's honestly one of the first things that I would find out - is it metal or is it plastic? Okay, you're going to immediately know the quality right there. Now I wouldn't even look at price points yet. I would fully understand what do I want material-wise and then I'm going to shop for the product that is the same but at different price ranges. It's one of the fallacies that happen a lot with online shopping. You have the same item but being sold at two different price ranges, not just two different prices like they're ten dollars difference. No, two different prices meaning a $50 item is selling also for $300. So you need to know and understand that, and in the construction industry, there is a lot of that.

Okay - price points. You can go super, super, super, super cheap with getting the bottom tier tile, okay? You're going to need to waterproof your showering area because when looking at these installations there's something called "code" which means your home has to beat a code if you ever want to sell it or anything like that an inspector could come in and inspect it and actually fail you for this remodel that you did kits for an outdoor shower because it wasn't up to code… The same thing with your electrical. Your electrician, your electrical work needs to be up to code. That's a typical term with construction and you need to be aware of that and that's going to affect your price point in the overall remodel because you may or may not need to have an inspector come in and inspect it. Just look at your local state codes for the different rules and requirements needed for your area. Even the counties are different sometimes. So you can get a bare minimum - get a plastic drain, get a plastic ring or a rain head, you know? Maybe make it look a little bit higher class but still keep a really low cost. Maybe you only paid $80 for a nice really big rain head where you know, a more metal one would be selling for $250 or $300. Okay, so you can go and get all of the plastic items that are going to be cheap. Keep in mind you're probably going to replace it often. So think of long-term effects. I can spend $300 once, or I can spend $80 over the lifetime of me being in this house of twenty years. Every five years I am buying a new showerhead at $80. That's a long time. You know you're well over... you're doubling the price with just in you know, fifteen years. You've doubled the price of what you would have paid in the beginning once. Keep that in mind. 

Now as far as the installation, when you're looking at this one thing to keep in mind is the waterproofing. Wet areas need to be waterproofed. It is "code" that they are waterproofed pan. There are different theories and product lines out there. Some provide a lifetime warranty, some don't. They don't provide any warranty which means if it leaks and water starts dripping down into your kitchen from your bathroom upstairs, that's just on you. You chose the price point that's way low, that doesn't have a lifetime warranty. However there are products and systems like ours. We are at a lower price range but we provide a lifetime warranty. So you need to look at companies in different lights and talk to them to find out why their price point is what it is, what values they actually provide, so that you can get a good estimate and overall of what's going on within the company, do you feel comfortable with them and what's their price point like? 

Types Of Material

 I mentioned in the first section in number one and number two - materials - and I mentioned tile. Okay, so this is more of a finishing question or topic that needs to be discussed which is what type of tile are you using? Not even that. Do you even want to use tile? What about a solid, stone slab? What if your floor was all one big piece of stone? Not only that, what if all three, two walls (depending on how many you have) are one just solid piece? It's super high-end, super classy, the value of that room goes way up, but so does the price! But again like I said in the last section with the pricing, just verify and look at your sources. 

So types of material…There is also way down at the bottom of the food chain I think you can get a shower installation kit for close to $300. What is that going to give you? It's going to give you a fiberglass base. It's going to give you fiberglass walls. It's going to give you plastic showerhead, valves. It's going to be plastic. So like I mentioned before - quality. You may have to replace that shower again in the next five years and do it again. So what are you looking for? What is the value exchange? If it's a quick fix you know, that you need... or if you're looking to remodel the house so you can increase the value of the home and sell it and make more money on it, you need to take those into consideration. 

Material is really going to matter. There's material in the insulation stuff as well. There are - in the waterproofing section - there's bonded polyethylene, okay? A bonded polyethylene membrane or sheet is basically a solid piece of plastic that you install on your walls and create a funnel out of solid plastic for water to funnel out of your drain. It is the highest quality, the highest success rate for waterproofing out there. There is nothing better, okay? Then you can go down to something like a -- It doesn't fully make sense to me, but a liquid paint-on material for waterproofing. A liquid paint-on is a liquid that does some kind of chemical reaction that turns it into rubber. However we know - just do your research - that those kinds of things break down over time. View Our Shower Kits A Coke bottle - a Coca-Cola bottle, right? We can get into recycling and those kinds of things, but scientists know that kind of plastic doesn't decay for 500 to 1000 years. It hasn't even been long enough for it to have decayed to where we can know how long it takes for that item to decay. Bonded polyethylene - the membrane sheet that I talked about - is that type of plastic that won't decay for 500 to 1000 years when it's out of direct sunlight. Well if it's been put in your home and it's been covered with a finishing material, you're never going to see it and neither is the sun - so 500 to 1000 years. Hence why we can provide a lifetime warranty at our price point. There are other same type of waterproofing systems that will be at a much higher price point and not even provide the lifetime warranty, even though we know it's not going to decay for 500 to 1000 stall shower kit years - much longer than your house will last. It'll probably be the last thing standing - is your showering area. Awesome, right? So types of material - keep that stuff in mind when looking at your finishing materials as well as the materials that you need to create and build the area. 

Different Structures

This is a subsection really of number four, and this just talks about the different structures that wet areas are going to kind of be in, the different structures you can use to build it, the different -- A little bit of the different finishings, meaning like we didn't go into "What about a fiberglass structure?" You can have a showering area with fiberglass. I mentioned it a little bit just in the price point section. But a fiberglass still will create the exact same concept. So in the different structures, it really is kind of relating to the different structures needed or the different types of products needed depending on the structure. 

We recently did a veteran home. Not an individual, but an entire veteran home community, to where everything needed to be handicap accessible for veterans. So the quality that they needed, needed to be good enough to maintain and be to the standards that veterans need and that we should frankly give them. So what we were able to provide was our high-grade, solid stainless steel Linear Drains. If you want more info on that, check the article here. But those Linear Drains - because they needed barrier-free linear, they needed to be able to wheelchair in. You know, crutches and things like that. They needed to have that ability. So the structure was different. It was still in the home, so the structure of the home and the structure of the shower was still made out of 2x4s. You know, like a regular framed wall. But the structural work and the quality of the product needed to be different and to a certain standard. So you're going to need to look at this as well.

A commercial building - say a high rise. Not all of it is going to be made out of a 2x4 wall. They could be metal frames and things like that. So you've got to look at how do we attach? What do we use in this kind of a situation? New home builders and those kind of things, it's all going to be relatively common to use just regular 2x4 framed walls. That's probably the situation you're in, but I want to make sure that I cover that you need to be mindful of your entire structure. What if it's an exterior wall that's made out of brick or cinder blocks? You need to keep that in mind. What do you do? Well there's going to be drilling. How do you attach wood to concrete? You know, that kind of a thing you need to know and look into that, and I just wanted to bring that up. 

Benefits And Issues
Installations - the benefits is really going to come into play when you are talking about your waterproofing and the quality of product at the right kind of price point, okay? You're going to get the highest value for the best cost. Some things you can't really exchange. You're going to pay the price point for the higher value, but in every instance of looking into this area there are plenty of companies - not only just ours and the waterproofing section - but hardware section and things like that where you can get value at a great deal and price point and you get a better return on your value for that, for your spend. 

Your benefits are that things are going to last longer going with quality. It's going to increase the value of your home or your condo or the apartments that you're trying to rent out to people. You can charge a higher monthly rent for those kinds of things. So there's a lot of benefits to going quality material, quality product, lifetime guarantees and things like that. Really keep that in mind. Some of the issues that come up is when you really look at the lower end stuff - you start going plastic or you're using liquid to waterproof you know, other stuff. I may just not fully understand how that works but I can't really wrap shower kits how to install my brain around it and I know it can't last as long as materials that don't decay for 500 to 1000 years - so there's that. Tangent... anyway. Issues are only going to come up with the quality of material that you use. You're going to end up spending more than the value of the product and it's going to decrease the overall value of a home. If you're using all of those lower end items, your home is going to feel lower end and it's going to demand a lower cost. The same thing with apartments - your rent's going to start dropping if you're dropping the value of the items. Things are going to break more often. If you have renters, your maintenance guys are going to be a lot more busy. If you're a home owner, you're going to be more busy fixing things. So keep that in mind. Lower items, lower value, lower price point is going to have more issues but the right price point (not the high price point but the right price point with the right materials) will have large benefits that will last a long time with this. 

In conclusion, thanks for looking into this article and hearing my thoughts and ideas and rants about showering installation and what needs to be worked on in the industry to help bring you as a customer better materials, better systems and overall create a better cost versus value and help progress the industry overall. Thanks for reading.