Dismantling the bath: replacing a cast-iron, steel, acrylic bath, on legs

People often say that repairs are worse than a fire. It is almost impossible to finish it. There is always something that needs to be greased, pasted, completed, etc. However, this approach is rarely applicable to the bathroom. If you can still do without repair in living rooms or even in the kitchen, then you can hardly live long without a toilet and a bath.

If you need to overhaul the bathroom, one of the most pressing problems for you will be the dismantling of the bath. The fact is that even if you do not plan to buy a new bath, and you are only going to do repairs in the room( lay a new tile, change the plumbing, pipes, etc.), you will need to completely empty the room of any foreign objects, includingand from the bath.

Find out who is obliged to deal with the disposal of bulky goods under an agreement with your management company. The fact is that any large-sized garbage and construction waste you have no right to throw into a common container with household waste .To dispose of such garbage in the yard of the house can be installed an additional container, which is decided at the general meeting. Your management company can provide you with such a service privately on a fee basis. If none of the listed options are available to you, you have to take out the garbage yourself in a specially designated place for these purposes, most likely, outside the city limits.

Remove old faucets - if you started overhaul, it makes sense to change all the plumbing at once. Especially since the service life of the mixers and so in most cases is not long.

Estimate whether the bath passes through the door or they will also need to be removed from the hinges or even dismantled the entire door frame. Even if the bath fits into the aisles in the passageways, it must be taken into account that the bath can have more legs, which can easily damage the doors. In most cases, it is easier to remove the door from the hinges for a while, than to buy a new one later. If you absolutely do not want to do this, then try to protect the door covering from damage by using a soft cloth or film.

If you still decide to dismantle the bath yourself, you need to stock up:

• with a wrench and a set of wrenches;
• screwdrivers;
• pliers;
• chisel;
• hacksaw for metal;
• with a sledgehammer;
• with crowbar;
• by the Bulgarian;
• safety glasses and respirator;
• with a large piece of cloth;
• with silicone sealant;
• with new rubber gaskets for plumbing;
• packages for construction debris;
• additional pair of hands - to engage in such a serious matter alone can be not just hard, but even traumatic.

When dismantling the bath, as in any other important business, it is important to observe the safety precautions:

1. Turn off the water supply. Do not forget that water is supplied not only to the sink and bath, but also to the drain pan of the toilet bowl. Therefore, it is best to immediately close the shut-off valve, which is on the way to the drain barrel.
2. Seal the inlet sewer. For example, cover them with some waterproof film, attaching it with tape to the floor or wall.
3. If you also plan to replace a part of the sewer pipes with a bathtub replacement, , bring the new pipes in order in advance: they must be clean, fit each other in diameter, the ends of the plastic pipes must be cleaned.
4. Choose the right clothes. Since you will have to work with heavy tools, such as scrap and sledgehammer, it will be better if you just protect your body with tight pants and shirt. It will soften the blow if something goes wrong.
5. Use safety goggles and a respirator - when working with a sledgehammer, especially if the enamel is damaged, large and sharp pieces of debris can damage your eyes or get into the respiratory system.

Many old bathtubs, especially cast-iron baths of the Soviet era, were made on legs. Due to the high humidity in the bathroom, the legs will become sour with time and it becomes more difficult to strip them from the bath. If the legs of the tub stubbornly refuse to untwist, you have two options - either leave them in their original place and try to take a bath with them, or cut them with a Bulgarian. In every single case, you need to look at the situation, whether it is worth leaving or better cutting them.

Dismantling of the cast-iron bath is the most difficult, as it weighs a lot of such a bath. In some cases, the width of the doorways will not allow you to take out the cast-iron bath from the house entirely.

If they are of sufficient width, you can try to remove the whole bath, following the following action plan:

• Make sure that the tub's feet are tightly fixed and do not fall off when transported. If this happens, you can seriously suffer and even get a fracture. Check to see if the wedges with which the legs are attached to the bath itself are affected over time.
• Start with dismounting the siphon. Try to unscrew it with a wrench. Start from the place where the water is drained from the bathroom. If you can not untwist, you will have to resort to using a hacksaw for metal, a grinder or a hammer and a chisel.
• Old baths, especially in Soviet times, it was decided to tightly fix to the walls of with the help of a mortar and also to cover the entire bathtub and spread it with tiles. All this solution will need to be removed with a chisel. The bath should move freely from walls and floor.

• If the bathtub has been sealed into the wall, it is necessary to first remove the legs of the bath from this side, put something under the tub to not damage the floor and do not drop the bath to your feet, and then forcefully push on the sides of the bathroom - the bath should disconnect and fall throughdown.
• Next, you need to move the bath from the wall to such a distance that one person can fit freely there. On average, this distance is up to half a meter. For this, the easiest way is to use a mount or a crowbar.
• After the bath has been pushed aside, one person enters the formed space and helps to unfold the bathtub 90 degrees from the bottom. Be careful! Do not let the tub fall or move. To ensure that the bath does not slip, use gloves and after the bathtub can be turned around, support it with something heavy from below.
• From this position it is convenient to turn the bath horizontally so that it passes freely in the doorway and it is convenient to carry it together.

sledgehammer If you can not completely remove the cast iron bath, we will take it out in parts:

1. Remove the siphon and dispose of the construction mixture around the perimeter of the bath, as described above.
2. Try to push the bath away from the wall for at least 15 cm.
3. Cover the tub with a damp cloth - this will allow you to protect your body from debris that can fly off while working with a sledge hammer.
4. There's no point in hammering with sledgehammers all over the surface of the bath - just apply a couple of accurate strong strokes. You can use scrap: in this case you will need to inflict one precise blow with a sledgehammer on the scrap in the place where the drain used to be. If the bath did not succumb, you can use the Bulgarian and make small cuts on the sides, and then already work with a sledgehammer on the bottom of the bath.

The basic principles for the dismantling of a steel bath remain the same as for the dismantling of cast iron, with the only difference that, firstly, steel baths weigh less, and secondly, can not break such a bath with a sledgehammer - if the bath does not pass indoorway, it will have to saw.

Instead of a siphon in steel baths, as a rule, a special system of plastic or steel pipes is used, which is also referred to as a bathtub tie or a drain-overflow system. It is much easier to dismantle such a system than cast-iron pipes. First try to untwist the system.

The main advantages of the acrylic bath are its lightness( the bath mass is about thirty kilograms in average), and a variety of different shapes. Fanciful bends bath in some cases can greatly simplify the removal of the bath through the doorways, so the acrylic baths rarely have to pre-saw before recycling.

Difficulties in dismantling acrylic bathtubs can occur only if it has any additional equipment, such as a whirlpool system. In this case it is better to turn to specialists, in order not to make the system unfit for further use.