Tub to shower conversion
Tub to Shower Conversion in Barrie
Taking out a tub nobody uses and putting in a shower that drains properly, including the drain move the acrylic companies avoid.
A tub to shower conversion is the most requested bathroom job in Simcoe County and the one most often done badly. The reason is the drain. A bathtub drains at one end of the tub, close to the wall. A shower drains in the middle of the floor. Those are different places, and moving the drain means opening the subfloor and re-sloping the pipe.
Why the one-day conversion is cheap
The national one-day conversion works by not moving the drain. An acrylic base is chosen with the outlet at the old tub position, and the base is set on the existing floor. That is a legitimate product and Barrie Bathrooms installs it when the customer wants it. It is not the same job as a tiled shower and it should not cost the same.
What the one-day version does not do is look at the subfloor. A tub that leaked slowly at the waste connection for ten years has fed water into the floor under the tub, and the plywood there is frequently soft. Covering soft plywood with an acrylic base transfers the problem to the next owner.
What Barrie Bathrooms checks first
- The subfloor under the tub waste, probed rather than looked at.
- The joist direction, which decides whether the drain can be moved at all without cutting a structural member.
- The supply piping at the valve, because a tub valve on Poly-B is being replaced whether or not the rest of the house is.
- The wall behind the tub surround, which on a 1980s house is usually greenboard with no membrane and is frequently wet at the bottom corners.
- The ceiling below, if there is a finished room under the bathroom.
Tiled or acrylic
| Acrylic base | Tiled shower | |
|---|---|---|
| Drain | Uses the tub position where possible | Placed where it should be |
| Waterproofing | The base is the waterproofing | Bonded membrane over the whole enclosure |
| Time on site | Two to three days | Two to three weeks |
| Curb height | Fixed by the moulding | Low or curbless if the joists allow |
| Repairable | Replace the base | Replace the affected tile |
| Resale read | Reads as a replacement | Reads as a renovation |
Barrie Bathrooms recommends acrylic for a secondary bathroom, a rental, or a house being sold within two years. For a main bathroom in a house you intend to keep, a tiled shower over a bonded membrane is the better spend, and it is the one that lets you put the drain where a shower drain belongs.
The Barrie wrinkle: where the water goes
A shower uses more water per use than most people expect and it uses it faster than a tub. In Barrie and Orillia that water goes to a municipal sanitary sewer and nobody needs to think about it. In Springwater, Oro-Medonte, Essa and the rural parts of New Tecumseth, it goes to a septic bed. Swapping a tub for a large shower with a high-flow head is a real change in daily load on an older bed, and it is worth knowing before rather than after.
FAQ
Tub to shower conversion — common questions
How much does a tub to shower conversion cost in Barrie?
The honest answer is that it depends on the drain. An acrylic base set at the existing tub outlet is the lower end of the range, because no floor is opened. A tiled shower with the drain relocated to the centre and a bonded membrane is substantially more, because it is a week or more of additional work and a different product. Barrie Bathrooms quotes both on the same page so the difference is visible rather than argued.
Do I need a permit to convert a tub to a shower?
Replacing a tub with a shower in the same footprint, using the existing drain, is maintenance. Moving the drain alters the plumbing and needs a permit, from the City of Barrie or from the township that covers your address. Barrie Bathrooms tells you which of the two your job is before the quote, not after the floor is open.
Should I keep one bathtub in the house?
If the house has only one bathroom and you may sell it, keep a tub. Buyers with small children filter on it, and a house with no tub at all loses a slice of the market. If there is a second bathroom with a tub in it, converting the main one costs you nothing at resale and gains you a room you will actually use.
Can you do a curbless shower?
Sometimes, and the joists decide. A curbless shower needs the drain and the slope to sit below the finished floor, which means either dropping the joists, building the whole floor up, or using a linear drain against the wall where the joists run the right way. Barrie Bathrooms looks at the joist direction on the first visit and gives a straight yes or no rather than selling the idea and discovering it later.
Talk to a Barrie bathroom renovation contractor
Barrie Bathrooms needs two things to give you a useful number: the year the house was built and a photograph of the room as it stands. The year decides what is likely inside the wall, and the photograph decides the finish. That is usually enough for a written range before anybody visits.