[Yes, I know, another one out of sequence.]
Just after we left Spain on our previous visit, we had just had our misplaced shower screen refitted, complete with an extra component to make it actually line up with the shower tray. Now there’s a radical idea, making the shower screen sit on top of the shower tray instead of falling short by an inch and a half [~4 cms}. While the silicon sealant was curing, we’d been using the upstairs shower over the bath.
Here we were back in Spain and keen to have showers in our own shower room. We both showered and dried ourselves off. We hung the towels out on the balcony to dry in the sunny late afternoon air. I returned to the shower room where I was dismayed to notice a small amount of water at one corner of the outside of the shower tray. As I was looking, I was even more dismayed to notice a larger and much more disturbing pool of water at the opposite outside corner of the shower tray. Bugger! Clearly there was still a problem.
I spent a partly sleepless night considering what might be wrong. Since the shower screens were now correctly positioned, I began to fear a leak from the shower tray waste. In the morning, I set about a test; I began pouring 2-litre jugs of water down the shower waste. After four such jugs of water, no further water appeared where I had noticed them. Head scratching time again. I put the shower head on the floor of the shower and turned on with the screen doors closed. I noticed no problem at first but then Francine, now an onlooker, spotted water tracking along the shower tray below and outside of the shower screen.
Time to get prostrate on the floor. I peered under the aluminium and could just about make out at least one gap in the silicon sealant beneath the aluminium. For f**k’s sake, Mr. Bozo Plumber couldn’t even seal a shower screen correctly with it in the correct position. Actually, he’d done it all wrong anyway. Accepted practice is to position the aluminium and assemble the screen first, then seal around the outside edge of the screen where it meets the shower tray. It looked as if this sealant had been put down first then the aluminium of the screen positioned on top of it. How are you supposed to know you’ve put enough sealant down when you can’t see it? Either that, or he’d attempted to seal the inside and failed.
The bill for misfitting the screens twice was still outstanding. I could have withheld payment and got the idiot back for a third attempt. However, by now I didn’t trust him to be able to find his own arse with both hands, so I set about sealing the screen correctly myself and paid the outstanding bill whilst making my feelings known.
For pity’s sake, if you want a job done correctly, do it yourself. We can finally have our showers without turning our shower room into a swimming pool.
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