Understanding Door Thresholds in Bathroom Pods, Assisted Living Specifically
Contractors, architects and building owners who are unfamiliar with pre-fab modular bathrooms tend to overestimate how thick the units’ floor assemblies are. It’s a natural mistake to assume the floors would need to be nearly as thick as the walls to ensure a stable bathroom pod.
But, the reality is the floor assembly can be relatively thin – yet still strong and rigid. This has important implications for use of modular bathrooms in assisted living facilities.
In any building, un-impeded floor transitions are crucial between rooms to avoid trip hazards and to meet Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements. But, this need is especially true in assisted living facilities, where residents with mobility challenges must be able to transition smoothly and safely across the door threshold to the bathroom. If you are interested in finding out more about equipment that could help you with mobility in the bathroom, you could check out these walk in baths by ahm installations.
Well-designed modular bathrooms, such as SurePods, have floor specs with tighter tolerances than required by ADA. As a result, the contractor is able to slide the bathroom pod into place without needing to depress or modify the floor slab. The work crew then installs a floor threshold – just as they would with a bathroom built on site – as a transition between the bathroom and the rest of the living space. Residents are able to enter the modular bathroom with no trouble, whether walking un-assisted, with a cane or walker or in a wheelchair.
Building professionals also can specify modular bathroom floor assemblies to accommodate accessible showers and baths, to further enhance mobility for residents. For example, Golden Construction worked with the SurePods team to include roll-in showers from Bestbath in the modular bathrooms installed in the Fair Haven Retirement Community (Birmingham, Alabama). “SurePods did a fantastic job working with us and the design team to integrate the new bathroom design into an existing design,” said Hunter Benton, project manager for Golden Construction.
View our portfolio of projects built with SurePods modular bathrooms.