Does your bath have an overflow?

Mistral001

The bath in my present house does not have an overflow drain.  Baths in previous houses I have lived all had an overflow.  It seems sensible to have an overflow and I am now thinking about installing one myself as behind a plastic cover there is a hole where normally an overflow outlet would be.  There is no connecting pipe coming from this hole, so it looks like the bath was intentionally installed without an overflow.   

I do not know why there was no overflow installed in my bath.  It seems a bit crazy not to have an overflow as people can be distracted when running a bath and the damages caused to floors and ceilings by water going over the top of a bath can be very expensive to put right.  Is it now common for baths to be installed without overflows and if so why?

GDB2222

The taps can supply water much faster than the overflow can take it away.  So, it may not help much. 

marcia_

 True ^ a family member flooded my house by leaving a bath running. Overflow didn't help much 

Mistral001

So the overflows are usually not designed for taking the full flow from the taps when they are open at maximum, but all baths are fitted with overflows. My bath was missing an overflow when I bought the house.  Any suggestions why it was missing? 

BUFF

Mistral001 said:

 but all baths are fitted with overflows. 

This isn't true - a lot of "designer" baths won't, particularly freestanding.

[Deleted User]

Probably depends on the water pressure. Mine is quite low in the bathroom so the bath would never fill quick enough above the overflow line. If you have really good pressure then the overflow may struggle to drain in time.  

Bigphil1474

I always thought that overflows were mainly for when you get in the bath to stop the water flowing over the side due to the extra volume (Eureka!). I would prefer not to have an overflow on my current bath as it is a bit low so can't get that deep filled bath feeling. Most of the ones we looked at when we replaced our bath last time had overflows but we weren't looking at high end stuff.

Gavin83

Surely it would depend on the size of your overflow as well. Ours could drain as much as the plughole could, although admittedly I've no idea what the capacity of this would be and how it would compare to the water flow rate from the tap.

Slinky

Our bath in our previous home had an overflow incorporated into the large circular knob you turned to push up the draining mechanism. It wasn't obvious that it was an overflow too. Are you sure you don't have something like this?

Rosa_Damascena

Slinky said:

Our bath in our previous home had an overflow incorporated into the large circular knob you turned to push up the draining mechanism. It wasn't obvious that it was an overflow too. Are you sure you don't have something like this?

That's me educated, thank you!

Mistral001

So it looks like most baths have an overflow drain except some new high end baths. Maybe I should not install an overflow so when i am showing people around my house I could tell them that all the best baths nowadays do not have an overflow!  My bath is far from high end BTW.