- Plan ItBack
- Design ItBack
- Build ItBack
- Homes
- ProductsBack
- CostsBack
- Self Build Cost Calculator
Estimate your project costs instantly with Build It's interactive self-build cost calculator
Calculate Now - Costs & Finance
- Contracts & Warranties
- Build It Estimating Service
Get an accurate, detailed cost breakdown of your project
Submit plans
- EventsBack
Q&As
Is our glass shower door safe?
I want to know how to evaluate whether a shower's glass door bracket is compliant with health and safety regulations in the UK.
We have just had an accident where a floor tile was damaged when my wife slipped in the bath with our 1-year-old son. She held onto the glass door for support and at this point, the door came crashing down into the floor and damaged the floor tile. Luckily no one was hurt in the situation.
This, however, has concerned me that the glass door bracket is not compliant with health & safety regulations.
It is a glass door the sits on the rim of a bath.
There are a few possibilities here, firstly that this bracket is a floor bracket and was not designed to support the load of the glass in a cantilever/open position (and is only relatively safe when resting on the bath rim). The other possibility is that the glass itself is too heavy for the bracket because of the additional section that was added.
Possible solutions to avoid this type of accident in the future is to replace the wall bracket with something compliant with health & safety regulations, or to fix the glass door in a permanent position so that the load can rest on the bath rim.
What is your opinion on this?
One Answer
Hi Dieter,
Sorry to hear that your wife has experienced this near-miss!
I’m not clear on whether your shower door is a new or an older installation, but safety at home is certainly something more and more of us are becoming conscious of. There are minimum standards for most things that go into a house… but those standards evolve over time.
It’s important that safety improves, but as a society we also need to consider environmental impacts, not to mention the cost, of continually replacing materials. With that in mind, something that was installed say, 10 or 20 years ago, may well still be deemed acceptable because it accorded with the standards at that time – even if it doesn’t conform with today’s regulations for new installations.
That said, the main factor here is less about regulations, and more about your personal situation. This incident has demonstrated that, as it stands, the situation doesn’t provide a level of safety you’re comfortable with.
If you feel there’s a risk this could happen again, then you may well want to address it by looking at using non-slip materials in the bath (which after all is the cause of the slip!) and upgrading the shower door to reduce the risk of future issues.
In terms of the door, either of the options you’ve suggested could potentially work, or you might want to completely replace the unit – but it’s difficult to give any hard-and-fast advice from afar. This is all about your family’s safety and peace of mind, so the best thing you can do is speak to the professionals, go and look at products and try them out so you can satisfy yourself that they’ll be up to the job.
All the best,
Chris (Editor, Build It)