Bathroom and toilet officially speaking is a bathroom unit. A space it takes makes only 6-8% of the general flat area, but considering its importance it is out of competition. It is possible to imagine an apartment without any room or even without a kitchen (there is no kitchen as such in “studios”, it is joined with the living room), but it is quite impossible to imagine an apartment without a bathroom unit. Major repairs of a bathroom unit is technically quite a difficult task, it is not a joke. You should leave this work only for highly skilled specialists.

At first, if a quality of mounting and finishing works can be checked by anyone (for example, a wall is curved, a window or a door does not close, or tiles are put roughly), then a quality of plumbing mounting, sewage and electrical systems you can’t check.

And secondly, as a result of bad work your neighbours can be flooded, constantly clogged sewage system, short circuit failure in the electric wiring due to the contact with water and other serious problems.

We have already written a lot about floors, ceilings and walls, therefore I will remind you briefly that all the materials must be water proof, and there must be damp proofing on the floor. It is also very important to observe the geometry of your bathroom; otherwise it will be difficult to put tiles and to place sanitary equipment in a right way.

Electric wiring and electrical equipment.

A bathroom and a toilet impose the special requirements on everything that is related to electricity. An electrical equipment, used in a damp room, must have grounding, wiring must be three-wire (phase, zero, ground). Lamps, wall outlets, switches are used with the degree of protection.

Water supply and sewage system.

Steel, copper, metal-polymeric and polypropylene pipes are used for hot and cold water supply. PVC pipes are used for the sewage system. Water is cut off by ball stop valves. If plumbing specialist uses screw-thread connections, it is important not to brick them up in a wall to have an access to them. The welded connections of steel pipes must be grounded to avoid corrosion. It is necessary to put pre-filters on all water-pipes to avoid damages of expensive sanitary equipment. It is better to set filters with drainage, as it facilitates their service.

While connecting towel dryer “childish” error is the wrong supply of hot water. If sanitary technician says that it is impossible to supply hot water to a towel dryer, trust him and set an electric towel dryer. Sewage-pipes are mounted with a slope of about 5% and if possible avoid corners of 90°. I strongly recommend buying all the pipes and sanitary engineering armature only of the known producers and preferably in the specialized shops. Revisory access holes for the maintenance of plumbing-sewage system must not be too little, otherwise their purpose is lost and in case of some problems it will be necessary to break the walls. All of these are basic moments of plumbing and sewage system mounting, and in general all of this must be the business of your sanitary technicians.

Let’s discuss ventilation.

It is obligatory to mount drawing ventilation. What should be considered when buying a ventilator? First of all it is its power, it must correspond to the size of a room, and second it is its noise (measured in decibels). Both descriptions are specified on a ventilator.

Sanitary engineering equipment. Here we will discuss mixers, water heaters, ceramic bathroom fittings and etc.

For a shower and a bath pay attention to the models with a thermostat. There are two regulators in them. One regulates a temperature, and another regulates water pressure. To my mind, it is exceptionally convenient.

Pay attention to toilets flushing systems, which are wall mounted, and wall toilet sinks for them.

Electric water heaters. They are divided into running and storage. Running water heaters are smaller, but are more powerful, than storage ones. It can reach 16 kW. Having a lot of other electric devices in an apartment can create heavy load on your electric system.

Whether to have a spa or not – I will not advise anything, because a good bath is a very expensive thing and it’s up to you to decide, whether to pay £1000-£3000 for it. I will only tell you, that connection of a spa does not differ from ordinary bath connection. I hope that these information will help you during repair works, when buying materials and dealing with builders.