Industry Partner,

Are you aware that your layout and tile work can have a large impact on your frameless glass shower enclosure cost?

We find the current trend on shower enclosures is clear heavy glass applications with the least amount of metal showing as possible. After speaking with many of you it seems your objectives are to supply this solution to your clients while staying on time and in budget with initial bids delivered.

We recognize that this can become difficult as unforeseen obstacles drive up your costs. Looking into the future and anticipating these challenges can greatly improve your opportunity for success.

To that end I want to share a very common unforeseen issue that arises in shower enclosure costs. I will use the term “Elbow” during this explanation for any cut happening in glass that requires a concave or convex angle on an edge. Please see images below.

Any single elbow (concave or convex) in your glass can add as much as $300 or more to the project. There are a lot of ways an elbow can happen but an avoidable one is layout. One area I see elbows occur a lot is when the door meets a knee wall. Picture example below.

This typically results in the door needing an elbow as seen in drawing below.

What the drawing shows is that the door has to be cut or fabricated as in the picture below

Costs would go up.

Layout Solution:

This can be mitigated by making the opening large enough for a glass “leg” to come down and still leave the door size you want. The smallest glass “leg” should be at least 4″ wide. Then the enclosure would look like this.