Hansgrohe shower drain cover wet room model engineering mikes-models

Shower drain cover - Home designed and made

Well some projects arrive at your workshop unannounced! We have just
had an extension to our bungalow. An en-suite wet room being part of the
work carried out. The shower itself is mounted flush to the ceiling and is 2ft
in diameter! Its called a 'Rain shower' from Hansgrohe and produces over
37 litres of water a minute! That's a lot of water. The drainage for this
volume of water is quite large and the cover to the drain was white plastic
[see photo] which I felt did not really finish the room off. When enquiring
from the builder whether we could have a polished metal one he said they
were very expensive and difficult to come bye. So since it had already been
fitted that was that.

When we started to use the shower room we were very pleased with the
new shower. It really is an experience. However my thoughts about its
efficiency were proved correct and it didn't keep up with the water output
and I decided to have a go at making my own. I am fortunate that I have a
scrap yard within 4 or 5 miles and I am on good terms with them. They keep
back scrap brass, aluminium, and other metal which may be of interest to
me. A great resource which is worth considering in your area. Anyway,
when checking my stock to see if I had anything suitable, I was pleasantly
surprised to find a blank of aluminium that was only 1/8th" over sized in
diameter and where it reduced when scraped, was again just oversized.
Luck at last!

I drew out a few possible designs on scrap paper, and decided that I would
have holes on top, to aid the speed of water removal. I also decided on 32
holes at 1/8th" diameter to make up 4" worth of holes, which was certainly
bigger than the drain itself. I also wanted to make sure that where the drain
cover would be a tight fit into its housing, that the water around the edge
would also be able to escape. I therefore made the outside ring of holes
coincide with this requirement. Anyway a picture tells a thousand words so
have a look at the pictures. The pleasing thing with this project is everything,
without exception, worked well and first time. Not only was the metal blank
the right size but the design also seemed to fall into place.

Turning the blank to size was relatively straight forward. The only time
consuming stage was turning the insert of the cover to the drain itself. I did
not want a loose cover so made several trips from the workshop to trial fit
the cover.

In all it has been the most successful small project to date. From design to
fitting it only took a couple of hours and I am pleased that it does not detract
from the rest of the wet room. So all in all a success!