Cost of putting a shower over bath

[CatAndHisKit]

CAn anyone advise how much would it cost to put a shower over a bath that currently only has a shower attachment with tiny shower. There is a bracket on the wall.

I wonder if it's easier to install an electric shower - but I prefer a proper mains / larger shower though doesn't have to be coming out of the wall like thosee big ones. Is the plumbing expensive for that and would also need to take some tiles off?

Can it be fixed on a partition wall as that's where the bath is backing onto?

Would be grateful for advice.

Hi, you could get a deck mounted thermostatic bath shower mixer (also called a deck-fed exposed deck mounted thermostatic bath shower mixer.

We bought ours from a plumbers merchant for around £200 in 2012 - a good quality one and reliable so far, but you can get them for less than that. Pressing the temperature override button means a wide range of temperatures, or keep the max temperature set if you have small children.

As our bath had two tap holes this mixer replaced the two taps on the bath, so no need to take tiles off - just had to fix the riser rail onto the tiled wall.

Can't comment on plumbing costs as DH installed it.

Thank you, chubley! Did you DH take a long time to do it / did he say it was an easy job?
Thank you, I'll note that, haevn't heard of it before. Do you mean it will operate both the taps and the shower? There aer two taps now with a handheld attachment. The riser rail is already there for that small shower but it's uite low.
Sorry if this is a stupid q (have no clue), but if I want a strong proper shower, would that mixer be installed of the current taps and a new attached shower linked to it? Would that be any more powerful than the current attached shower?

If you've ever stayed in a Premier Inn you'd get the type of set up they have. As the water is coming straight from the boiler it's way more powerful than the shower attachments which push onto a tap (which is what I think you're referring to).

yes, that's what I'd want to install, NoWord - but is it doable on a stud wall (I assume you need pipewr inside the wall?), and how much would it cost.
Or failing that, an electric shower.

We will be doing the deck mounted in a bathroom in our new house until we get round to redoing the bathroom completely. I’m glad to know the term for it, thanks @chubley

(I’ve previously in a similar situation had a shower added to a wall and the plumbing cost a fair bit (£300-£500) on top of the cost of the shower unit I had already spent £400 on without doing the proper research on plumbing. So I won’t be making that mistake again!)

I had a deck mounted in a rental and it was plenty powerful enough.

Ah ok, that's not too expensive, Jarstatic - but did yu have to take the tiles off as I think that's a major expense? and was the wall a stud wall?

You wouldn't need a pipe in the wall. The water comes from the plumbing already there going to the taps.

I don't see why you couldn't attach the shower head to a stud wall with the correct fixings.

Yes to put the extra plumbing, the tiles came off. it was a stud wall. That was just the plumbing cost. I had someone else come in to do the tiling afterwards (though tbh had to do anyway as the whole bathroom was half tiled and I was taking the tiles up to the ceiling around the shower area).

I do think it was unnecessary hassle and cost. The bathroom I need to add a shower to in the new house is already fully tiled. I’ll just do a deck mounted option and attach a riser to the wall. If you Google options with riser there’s some nice ones. Why not save the plumbing costs to invest more in the hardware. There’s a particularly nice Lefroy Brooks one for £1,500..

@CatAndHisKit

Thank you, chubley! Did you DH take a long time to do it / did he say it was an easy job? Thank you, I'll note that, haevn't heard of it before. Do you mean it will operate both the taps and the shower? There aer two taps now with a handheld attachment. The riser rail is already there for that small shower but it's uite low. Sorry if this is a stupid q (have no clue), but if I want a strong proper shower, would that mixer be installed of the current taps and a new attached shower linked to it? Would that be any more powerful than the current attached shower?

Yes, there is a knob in the middle to pull up to make the water to go up to the shower or push down to run the tap for a bath. It's more powerful than our old one that was weak after it had to be disconnected from a pump when we got a combi boiler. The water pressure has to be good enough, which it normally should be coming from the mains and the boiler. The thermostat inside it keeps the temperature consistent.

I think it took DH about half a day. Not too difficult for someone very handy, but a it's a tight space under the bath that was staying put.

@CatAndHisKit this is the thing you want ie what they have in a Premier Inn.

www.screwfix.com/p/mira-atom-deck-mounted-thermostatic-bath-shower-mixer/598jp

The water from the hot and cold feed that are feeding your current bath taps get mixed in that block to a temperature you set using the dial. The power entirely depends on the pressure from the hot and cold feed to the taps.

If you want an electric shower you will need to run an electric cable from the shower directly to the consumer unit in your house. It cannot be spurred off anything. We did this in the children's bathroom so we had a shower that never runs out of hot water. But this did mean lifting the floor for the cable run.

It also means you would need a cold water supply to the shower which would indeed be chased into the stud wall. So if you already have tiles going up the stud wall I would look at the mixer option first, then the electric shower option.

Electric showers eat electricity. 50-70p for each shower.
If the boiler is on the same floor or above, you should have good pressure to have a simple bath/shower mixer. Mine has a rigid shower pipe and a rainfall type shower head, before we had a flexi pipe which was in a suction fitting on the tiles, so no drilling. Mine was £100 from Plumbworld.

Thank you all!
I'd be happy with that Mira shower, Eat - so areyou saying you can attach the whole thing to the wall just by drilling?
Would it need its own mixer on the wall as shown, or can be without that mixer pictured, but instead run off the tap mixer on the bath - that's what i@m getting at, and still not clear about - sorry!

Gender I don't really want / like electric showers - I thought it would be easier to install, that's my only reason!

@CatAndHisKit Yes, that's what everyone is saying. It's all being fed off the taps from the bath (and the term is 'deck mounted' which I'm thankful for). So the plumbing is like changing taps. And you attach to the wall just by drilling.

thanks, *Jarstatic! I just always had shower mixer/controls separate on the wall in all my previous flats/houses, and the bath tap mixer on the other end - apart from the weedy hand-held shower that is attached to taps but it's always very weak.
I'm after a proper shower so it sounds too good to be true tbh, but as pp explained it depends on the pressure and the size of that shower. The boiler in that potential house is in the athroom so I hope that will be good good pressure without having to install a pump.

Could you please give me a quote to fit a shower please over my bath.my other shower as broken. Thank you c hulme

The other shower as been there 20 years.can you give me a round about quote

@chulme you won't get a quote on here. We are mostly just a load of random people who do DIY. You could try asking on your local Facebook page for recommendations?