Qs about freestanding baths

[JinglingHellsBells]

Does anyone have a freestanding bath?

This is a totally obvious and silly question but...

is all the plumbing under the floor (ie pipes for the taps and the waste)?

Room images in catalogues don't show any pipes anywhere.

This is of concern because once fitted, if there is any problem with the pipes in future, surely you need to lift the floor?
(Fine if it's old floorboards, but not if a modern house or a ceramic floor.)

Any ideas?

Mine is freestanding but next to a wall (about 1.5 inch gap) all the plumbing therefore goes directly into the wall and out, so no issues with the floor here.

Our old house had a not freestanding bath and all the plumbing was under the floor. My friend overflowed it and it flooded through the lights in living room downstairs, had to lift the floor under the bath to help dry it all out

Thanks

Another issue is that the taps are only at one end / one side. This makes it impossible to replace them or do repairs without lifting the bath I assume.

We have this issue with our current bath- taps are on the longside- central- next to the wall. They need replacing but you can't get to them (because of the actual bath underneath) without lifting the bath which would affect the seal round the wall/tile edge.

We have just had the ceiling of the room below our bathroom cut open to deal with this. Also the tiles from the wall where the spout etc are fixed has been removed and replaced, fortunately with minimal damage to the tiles. I do love our massive bath but I wouldn't get a freestanding one again. And I certainly wouldn't get it fitted by the numpty that fitted ours.

Gosh sounds like you've both had nightmares. We've only been here 18 months but haven't had any problems yet. My FIL said it would be annoying to turn the water off and pull the bath out to paint behind it so I climbed around and underneath it but we would have just disconnected it all otherwise to deal with it.

My problem with free standing baths is that there is nowhere to put your soap etc as the edges are all curved.
Also with taps at the side, when you want some more hot water you have nowhere to go to avoid the heat.
With a cast iron free stander the metal body of the bath will take a lot of the heat out of the water so it will cool down quickly.
Apart from those problems, the dust builds up under the thing.

And the iron ones are bloody heavy ! I’ve heard of people having their floor reinforced to take the weight.

I have a tray over my bath for soap, will attach a pic of what my bath is like. It took a bit of getting used to having the taps in the centre but I don't find I struggle to get away from the heat, might depend how big the bath is though I suppose!

My bath is slightly different. It's acrylic with flat sides, tap at one end and it's flush to the floor - not on feet.

As regards visible pipework - if the bath goes to the floor it will all be hidden, If the bath is on feet you may be able to see the waste pipe from the plughole into the floor. You can get nice metal ones.

As regards leaks - The pipework to the taps will have to be within a wall or floor so yes bit of a pain if it needs repairs. However this is the case with many non freestanding baths too. Only exception would be if you have a built in bath and deck mounted taps at one end, so the supply pipes are behind the bath panel, but even then you could have a problem with the section of pipework that is running under the floor.

Had a freestanding bath in last place and would have loved a freestanding bath in new place, the plumbing put me off slightly but having all that dust build up under it was the main thing that put me off this time round. I was forever on my hands and knees trying to keep it dust free.