Nick Graville is the Sales & Marketing Director for Kudos Showers. He has extensive experience in the bathroom market, having worked for many established industry brands. Here he discusses product developments in shower trays and how some make installation much easier for developers.
For many years we have progressively seen shower trays become much shallower, driven by a desire to create a wet room style bathroom for much less effort and cost. These developments have been largely driven by aesthetics and creating bathroom spaces easily accessible for the less abled and catering for multigenerational living.
Gone are the days when shower enclosures required deep trays and front panels to conceal the tray legs. Product developments have led to increasingly slimline designs, and shower wastes have also evolved to support this trend. Now, wastes as low as 35mm in height can achieve a much higher flow rate, quickly draining water from a powerful shower head. As a result, there is no longer a need for a deep tray to hold water while it drains slowly away.
But the drive for many of these product innovations has rarely been to assist the needs of the installer. In fact, in many cases the installation of these slimline products are much more difficult not only to fit but to subsequently access as many of the potential leaking components are now hidden under the floor. Nevertheless, housebuilders have felt compelled to adopt these products in order to keep up with design trends.
Whilst shower trays with upstands have for many years been a firm favourite with new housebuilders, allowing for any settlement in a new home, there has been a stepped change over the past few years to using a flexible rubber membrane on a flat tray as a preferred option. This ensures that the showering space remains watertight as the house ‘settles’. 
There are also some shower trays that have been designed with the installer in mind. A great example of this is the Connect2 tray from Kudos Shower Products, which boasts a truly unique feature. It has been designed specifically to avoid floor joists, ensuring it retains its super-low profile when installed. What’s more, it has been thoroughly tried and tested as it was launched in 2018 and is increasingly being used in new build properties by a growing number of developers.
The Connect2 trays, that stand at just 35mm in height, are guaranteed to avoid all standard joist sizes and spans thanks to the precise positioning of a unique offset dual waste outlet, allowing the installer to choose the waste clear from obstruction to connect. The tray may have to be rotated 90 or 180 degrees (dependent on shape) to accommodate the fixed joists, but once set, the installer simply uses the blanking plug provided to seal the unused waste and plumb in the hi-flow waste and trap, avoiding any need to lift the tray off the floor. If both waste holes are free then both wastes can be connected for even faster water removal.
A re-inforced, magnetically secured waste cover, that’s easily removed for cleaning, then sits neatly over the plugs to complete the installation.
The Connect2 range of shower trays are manufactured in a acrylic capped ABS filled with a structural resin bonded stone for maximum strength and stability. The collection offers 12 rectangular sizes from 800mm square to 1700x800mm plus four quadrant/offset quadrant options. They also come in a choice of slate effect, high gloss white or slip resistant SR finish in white too. Each comes complete with a high flow waste rated to 35 litres of water per minute, and is competitively priced.
Kudos has been designing and manufacturing shower products at its Cumbria facility since 1999. The team understands the UK bathroom market and all its idiosyncrasies and endeavours to develop products with easy to install features. Their products are stocked with a number of regional distributors to ensure a reliable service and ease of availability and they offer a lifetime guarantee on their shower trays and a spares website giving a superior after sales service.
Now trading as RONAL Bathrooms UK Ltd, the Kudos portfolio includes shower enclosures, shower trays, over-bath screens, and wet-room solutions sold via KBB showrooms and merchants across the UK.
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