I would like to have a bathtub big enough to soak in at night and to read a book. My bathroom just isn’t big enough for that. Until I can afford a house that would allow that, I was wondering if a walkin tub would work out for me.
Any doper have one? How do you like it? Does it use more water than a regular tub?
I have thought about a hottub, which would work well for the soaking, but not so much for the reading (I have tried it, and once it gets dark an ourside light just didn’t cut it for the reading part.)
We have a walk-in tub. My wife has MS and needs it to bathe.
Installing it was a huge pain. We actually have a second tub in the garage - they shipped us a used tub when it was supposed to be new, and it leaked, so we couldn’t use it. But the company that sold it to us went out of business before we could send it back, and the finance company (whom we haven’t paid) is not interested in picking the darn thing up. We’re waiting until our lawyer tells us it’s OK to put out with the rest of the garbage.
Anyway, the installation is EXPENSIVE. One company came in and offered to sell us a tub and install it, all for “only” $16,000. We wound up getting a second tub for $4000, and the installation was about another $4000.
How big is your water heater? It’ll quickly go through your hot water, and you may need to upgrade that too.
In short, the walk-in tub can cost a LOT. For your purposes, a hot tub and more powerful light (heck, even a STADIUM light) would probably cost less!
How would a walk-in tub make it any more possible to soak and/or read than a regular tub?
The ones I’m familiar with are just regular bathtubs with holes cut in the side so people with bad hips can walk in, rather than have to swing their legs up over the side. This make the tub all but useless for soaking as you’ll only be able to put a couple inches of water in before it flows out the opening.
got passwords,the walk-in tubs I’ve seen in TV advertisements are taller and narrower than regular bathtubs. They have a raised seat inside and a water tight door in the side with a low sill that is easy to step over. The seal in the door permits filling the tub to a higher level than in a regular tub.
I’ve always had a secret wish to install one of those Japanese tubs. You can sit down in them and the water comes up high enough to cover your shoulders. These walk-in tubs look a bit like them, but I wonder if a real Japanese tub would cost less?
Ooh, that looks cozy. Our bathroom is small, too, at least too small to buy a long soaking bathtub. Maybe a deep soaking bathtub like this is feasible. Dunno about the shower problem, though.
The one we have (which probably holds about 30% more water than a regular tub, which I should have mentioned earlier) has a door and a seat. It’s about 2.5 times the height of a regular tub, but fits in approximately the same space, give or take 2 inches. You can definitely sit and read in it, but if you don’t NEED one for medical reasons, there are lots of better ways to spend 10K.
