A BEAUTIFUL SELECTION OF SHOWER ENCLOSURES.
Available in many different styles such as framed or frameless, sliding or swing shower enclosures. Constructing our systems of aluminium and laminate safety or toughened glass allows a combination of various glass thicknesses. Creating optimal water retention by the use of drip-seal and gasket profiles, lending extra water-proofing in all our designs.
A BIT OF HISTORY [WIKIPEDIA]
The ancient Greeks were the first people to have showers. Their aqueducts and sewage systems made of lead pipes, pumping water into, and out of large communal shower rooms used by elites and common citizens alike. These rooms have been discovered at the site of the city Pergamum and can also be found represented in pottery of the era. The depictions are very similar to modern locker room showers, and even included bars to hang up clothing. The ancient Romans also followed this convention; therefore finding their famous bathhouses (Thermae) all around the Mediterranean and as far out as modern-day England is common. The Romans not only had these showers but also believed in bathing multiple times a week, if not every day. The water and sewage systems developed by the Greeks and Romans broke down. It fell out of use after the fall of the Roman Empire.
THE FIRST MECHANICAL SHOWER…
… was patented in England in 1767 by William Feetham, a stove maker from Ludgate Hill in London. His shower contraption used a hand pump forcing the water into a vessel above the user’s head. Pulling a chain would then release the water from the vessel. However these showers failed to catch on with the rich, since piping hot water was not available. Also the same dirty water would run through every cycle.
This early start was greatly improved in the anonymously invented English Regency shower design of circa 1810 (there is some ambiguity among the sources). Making the original design over 10 feet (3 m) tall, of several metal pipes and painted to look like bamboo. A basin suspended above the pipes fed water into a nozzle that distributed the water over the user’s shoulders. Draining the water on the ground and pumping it back through the pipes into the basin, where the cycle would repeat itself. They were making steady improvements in the following decades until it began to approximate the shower of today. Hand-pumped models became fashionable at one point as well as the use of adjustable sprayers for different water flow.
RELIABLE INDOOR PLUMBING:
The reinvention of reliable indoor plumbing around 1850 allowed free-standing showers. A connection to a running water source could supply a renewable flow of water. Installation of modern showers done in the barracks of the French army in the 1870s under the guidance of François Merry Delabost, a French doctor and inventor. By using a steam engine, they had hot water and in less than five minutes. In France, public bathhouses and showers were established by Charles Cazalet. Firstly in Bordeaux in 1893 and then in Paris in 1899.