Bathroom Pods Versus Built-In Bathrooms

Prefabricated bathrooms come in two forms and they get discussed as though they were one.

The difference shows up at the floor, and in accessible housing the floor is the whole argument.

What a pod is

A self-contained bathroom manufactured as a separate unit, complete with its own floor, walls, ceiling, waterproofing and fit-out, then installed into a building that was constructed around it.

It is a proven approach, particularly in apartment and hotel construction where a large number of identical bathrooms are needed and the building itself is conventional.

The pod arrives finished, it is set into position, and it is connected.

What the junction costs

The pod has its own floor. The building has its own floor. Where they meet, there is a junction.

In most buildings that junction is resolved with a threshold, a small step, or a recess formed in the structural slab to receive the pod so the finished levels align.

Forming that recess is straightforward in a concrete slab poured on site. It is a different proposition in a floor cassette that has to travel on a truck.

And where the recess is not formed, there is a level change at the bathroom door.

Why that matters in accessible housing

A level change at a bathroom door is a barrier.

Not a large one to most people, and a genuine one to a person in a wheelchair, and a hazard to a person who is unsteady or who has low vision.

A Specialist Disability Accommodation bathroom needs a flush transition, a floor that falls to the waste without a hob, and continuous waterproofing across the whole wet area including out past the doorway. All of that is easier when the bathroom floor and the dwelling floor are the same floor.

Which is what a bathroom built within the volumetric module gives you. There is no junction, because there are not two floors.

How MADE builds it

The bathroom is constructed within the module, on the module's own floor cassette, as part of the same build.

The floor structure is set down in the wet area so the finished floor level matches the rest of the dwelling with the required fall to the waste. The waterproofing membrane is continuous across the wet area and up the walls, applied in the factory under controlled conditions and inspected before anything goes over it.

The structural backing for grab rails, a shower seat and a hoist goes in while the wall is open, wherever it might be needed rather than only where the current resident requires it. That is the [designing for change](/blog/designing-for-changing-resident-needs) principle applied to the room where it matters most.

Then the whole module travels as one structure, so the bathroom is not a separate object bolted into a building.

The waterproofing argument

The most common failure point in any bathroom is the waterproofing, and the most common place it fails is at a junction.

A junction between a pod and a building is a junction that has to be sealed on site, after installation, by someone working in a confined space.

A bathroom built into the module has no such junction, and the membrane it does have was applied indoors, at a controlled temperature, with the required cure time, and inspected. That is the substance of [waterproofing in a factory-built building](/blog/waterproofing-in-a-factory-built-building) and it is one of the stronger arguments for the method.

Where pods are the right answer

They are not the wrong technology. They are the right technology for a different building.

A multi-storey building of conventional construction with a large number of repeated bathrooms is exactly what a pod is for. The slab is poured on site, the recess is formed, and the pod delivers a controlled bathroom into a building that is otherwise built conventionally.

The choice is about what the rest of the building is, not about which product is better.

The short version

If the building around it is conventional, a pod is a sensible way to get a factory-quality bathroom.

If the dwelling is already a volumetric module, building the bathroom into it removes a junction that has no reason to exist, and in accessible housing that junction is the one that matters.

Talk to us about a project.

MADEmodular / MADEbetter.