An ADA shower is one that is a wheelchair accessible shower. This means that it needs to be designed so that is is easy to get a wheelchair into and out of the shower stall. This can be a problem with traditional showers, which often have a lip at the door of the shower to keep the water from flowing out onto the bathroom floor. There are new innovations in shower stall drains, however, that not only help to make them into ADA shower stalls, but also can help to reduce the costs involved in shower installations.

Linear Drains And Accessible Showers

It can be rather difficult to create a roll in shower using a traditional floor drain. These drains are round shaped, and consequently must also have a round-shaped slope to the flooring in the shower stall, in order for the water to flow down and into the round drain. In order that there is no water overflow out into the bathroom, most of the time there will be an added barrier, in the form of a lip or very short wall, that will span the entire front entryway into the shower stall. If you are trying to maneuver a wheelchair into that shower, it can be very difficult to get the wheelchair up and over that lip easily.

This is why linear drains are often used to create barrier free showers. A linear, or line drain, is in the shape of a long and narrow rectangle; better ones are constructed from stainless steel. It also utilizes a trench or channel the same length as the drain as part of the drain system. How it works in handicap showers is that the channel with the drain fitted inside are placed at the doorway to the shower stall. There is only one single slope needed toward the drain to make this type of floor drain work properly. In addition, there is never any standing water inside the drain because of a built-in slope to the inner mechanism of the linear drain itself. Because the line drain is flush with the surrounding shower flooring, it makes a perfect drain to create barrier free showers suitable as handicap showers.

This type of ADA shower design also helps to save you money. Traditional round drains take much more labor to craft a round slope to accommodate the round drain, but all that extra work is eliminated with the roll in shower that uses a linear drain, because it only requires the building of one slope, which is much less time consuming to do.

You can learn more about accessible showers, including the roll in shower that uses a linear drain, from a drain supplier online. You will also see all of the beautiful wheelchair accessible shower drain designs that can be used for any shower in your home.