Advice needed on sealing a bath against existing tiling when replacing shower tray with a bath

[Savo]

Hi,

I realise that what I'm asking is generally not a good idea and you should generally fit the bath first and then tile afterwards, however, we recently moved into a new house and the bathroom was only a few months old and therefore like new. The only problem is that it had a walk in shower but no bath which is not ideal as we have 2 young children.

As the whole bathroom has been tiled floor to ceiling I don't really want to have to rip the tiles off the walls and start from scratch. I thought about channeling out a strip of tile to slot the edge of the bath into but am worried about cracking the tiles (as we only have 1 spare tile that was left in the garage by the precious owners and no tile shops stock anything like it).

This leaves me with the slightly worrying option of butting the bath up to the tiles and trying to get a good watertight seal (especially as the room below has an artex ceiling containing asbestos so we really can't afford any leaks from a safety aspect), so I was just wondering if anyone has any ideas/advice on the best way to get a good watertight seal with the bath butted against the tiles?

Any advice would be gratefully appreciated.

Thanks,

Ian

 

[Terrywookfit]

Without removing tiles it's an asbestos job !

 

[Savo]

Ah, that's what I was afraid of. So is there any recommended way to channel out the tiles or of removing them without damaging them? I don't want to take any unnecessary risks but re-tiling the while bathroom is way beyond what I can afford to do.

Thanks for replying.

 

[Terrywookfit]

Try and remove tiles with the backing /plaster.
Soak in water for a few hours / days and scrape clean.
You should have plenty spare from behind bath.

 

[Savo]

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately the guy who took the shower screen had to break the tiles to get the screen out (it was installed before the tiles) and they are big (about 18in x 12in) so the bottom row have been damaged and the next row up are the ones that need removing so if I damage more than 1 tile when removing I'm in trouble!

 

[Keithmac]

I've used this, would work fine without having to cut the tiles.

https://www.byretech.com/acatalog/Bath-Seal-Ultra10-kit-rectangular.html

 

[Madrab]

Draw a straight line, then use a dremel with a diamond cutting wheel, it's so narrow and sharp it wont crack the tiles, keep the blade wet. Then chap out the channel.

 

[Madrab]

The other option I would use would be to baton along all the edges that touch the wall and then seal to that. If you make it a continuous baton on the long and short edges then that will give you a platform to seal to, that's a little more hazardous unless you know you can make a complete seal under the bath edge, along it's face touching the wall and then along the top.