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Moving Bathroom Upstairs?!
Comments
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Googler is correct. Werdnal you seem to have one of those special vocal rectums.Eat vegetables and fear no creditors, rather than eat duck and hide.0
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Yes personally I would. I have a large tropical fish tank and know our floors would never bare the weight of it (not that I would want to take it upstairs anyway). Depends on the age and state of the house really.
My parents lived in a 1950's ex-Council house when I was growing up, with a large solid wood wardrobe in their bedroom, and it did actually go through the floorboards!
I've edited my post above - how many people normally gather around your dining table? Is their combined weight greater than the weight of your fish tank?0 -
Agree with op that upstairs bathroom would improve the layout. Have lived in rentals with that kind of setup, and wouldn't fancy it again. It's often quite inconvenient to access the bathroom via the kitchen, for example.
Most estate agent i have spoken to seem to agree upstairs bathrooms are more popular , presumably as downstairs ones give the impression that the layout has been rejigged or compromised to squeeze in another bedroom.0 -
Example - a bath supported on four small metal brackets and thin screw-in feet, and a couple of small wall brackets, with most/all downward loading taken by those four feet and the flooring panels below - not directly by the joists, but mainly by the particle board atop them.
Which is stronger? The flooring combination of joist, particle board, and plasterboard below, or the little metal feet? Which will fail first?0 -
Typical bath capacity - 100 litres.
Typical person - 12 stones, 76 litres or so of water to displace when person gets into bath.
Combined weight of full bath - 100kg or so (assuming acrylic bath)
Like the fancy calculations, but you are not quite correct with your figures here. The displaced water does not go anywhere - the human body may push it out of the way, but unless it runs out of the overflow or over the side of the bath, the total water volume is still counted in the overall weight with the body in it!
Insult me all you like! But when you live in a 350 year old house like I do, with wonky, creakly floors, then I still maintain, I would check before taking any large/heavy furniture upstairs.0 -
I would definitely be wanting to move the bathroom upstairs if it were me........merely having an upstairs loo would not be sufficient. We were fortunate enough in a previous house to have four loos - in two upstairs bathrooms, one separate loo and one in a downstairs cloaks/utility.
When we sold that house and moved to one with two downstairs bathrooms but none upstairs it was on the understanding that one of the first jobs we did was to add an ensuite bathroom upstairs. Luckily the master bedroom had a huge walk-in cupboard in the eaves that was directly above one of the downstairs bathrooms, so adding pipework was not a problem. We also still ended up with a 16' x 10' master bedroom so didn't lose any space really.
Our current 300+ year old house does have a (very small) upstairs bathroom (as well as one downstairs which we will be losing and replacing with a cloakroom), but we have taken the decision to convert a bedroom into a large ensuite bathroom whilst transforming the bathroom into a shower room. Whilst we will lose one bedroom, we will still have four others so don't think we will be devalueing the property too much......in fact having one good sized bathroom plus a decent sized shower room serving four bedrooms is preferable in my mind to having a small bathroom serving five bedrooms
Obviously it does depend on your own requirements/future plans - both family-wise and how long you plan to stay in the property as well as the layout of the house itself, but personally an upstairs bathroom wins every time for me
Regarding the weight of a bath filled with water, we have had cast-iron baths previously with no problems, but our plumber did tell us about a guy who had a huuuuge round bath fitted in an upstairs room but had to have the floor reinforced to take his and the full bath's weight......he was a big guy apparently
Our architect has collaborated with us in re-designing the upstairs layout and has confirmed that our current joists are man enough to support the bath we intend to install......a *modern* cast resin version of a roll top.....Mortgage-free for fourteen years!
Over £40,000 mis-sold PPI reclaimed0 -
Like the fancy calculations, but you are not quite correct with your figures here. The displaced water does not go anywhere - the human body may push it out of the way, but unless it runs out of the overflow or over the side of the bath, the total water volume is still counted in the overall weight with the body in it!
Insult me all you like! But when you live in a 350 year old house like I do, with wonky, creakly floors, then I still maintain, I would check before taking any large/heavy furniture upstairs.
Yes, so if the bath capacity is 100 litres total, when filled and without a person, you don't fill it full to the brim and then get in.
You part fill it, and when you get in, the level rises because of the displacement- so if you put 25 litres or so in, and 76kg of you gets in, the bath is full to capacity.
My point is, people routinely use pianos, gather a number of people around their dining tables in flats and in upstairs rooms without a second thought, and both of those are far, far heavier than a bath of 100 litre capacity with or without one person therein. Whether you dine upstairs or not is not the point, rather the fact that many families up and down the country do so, without worry - and load the floor (probably at its central point - the weakest point) far more heavily than a bathtub or a large fish tank.....
Where did I insult you?
Which floor is likely to be stronger? Yours, with probably 6x2 joists and inch-thick wood flooring, or the modern house, like the one in the pictures I linked to, with 3/4 inch particle board atop thinner joists?0 -
My bolding. The majority of downstairs bathrooms tend to be in Victorian properties where it is usually attached outbuildings that have been converted or a single storey extension added to provide the bathroom, so as to leave the original bedroom spaces unaffected. Don't know of any where an original upstairs bathroom has been moved downstairs so as to rejig the original into extra bedroom space.Most estate agent i have spoken to seem to agree upstairs bathrooms are more popular , presumably as downstairs ones give the impression that the layout has been rejigged or compromised to squeeze in another bedroom.
There are usually whole areas of towns/cities where it is the norm for the majority of the problems to have bathroms that are downstairs.
In the OP's situation I think I'd maybe look at having an en suite shower upstairs and leaving the bathroom as is, but it's obviously a matter of personal choice.
I think B&T's 5k estimate is on the high side. Some of the work involved is easily doable by a competent DIYer/handyman but there will be Building Regs implications.0 -
As suggestion as a compromise - as 2 of the bedrooms are very big why not divide one of them to accommodate an en-suite shower room & keep the downstairs bathroom ? best of both worlds!0
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