Sliding shower doors are the first preference for compact bathrooms as there may not be enough space around to install a swinging door. Not only in small bathrooms but good size bathrooms can also have sliding shower doors. While installing them, the gap between the sliding doors must be properly maintained.
When the sliding shower door is entirely shut the right side of the sliding door should be at a distance of 3 inches ahead from the left side of the fixed door (considering the door slides from left to right. On the other hand, when the sliding door is open, its left side should be on the same level as the left side of the fixed door.
The sliding door should never be at a level behind the fixed door when opened as it does not create any extra space to go in and out of the shower.
How to overlap sliding shower door step by step.
Generally speaking in a readymade sliding door system for shower, all the measurements are already done and adjusted by the manufacturer and cannot be changed.
For custom sliding doors for shower, to get a good idea of how much overlapping to keep between the two doors begin with installing the fixed door first.
Step 1: Installing the fixed door
Take a side rail or ‘U’ channel and fix it on the wall at which the sliding door moves towards when opened. After the U channel is installed on the side, install a supporting rail on top of the door. This supporting rail holds the fixed door firmly in its position.
Afterward, simply put the fixed door in the side rail and screw it with the top rail. Now the fixed door is installed and the next step is to install the sliding door.
Step 2: Installing the sliding shower door
The sliding door is always installed after the fixed door has been installed.
On the same U channel fix the sliding door. To get the best judgment of overlapping, before installing the sliding door, place the door as fully closed and then see how much it overlaps on the fixed door. Ideally, this distance should be about an inch to 1.5 inches.
If this distance comes out to be greater for eg 7 inches or 8 inches then simply add slide blockers on the supporting rail to get the ideal overlapping distance when the door is closed or opened.
Step 3: Add protection for doors
If the protection for doors is not provided by the manufacturer than add two rubber strips at both side rails. This rubber strip will help to absorb all the impact when sliding door is opened and closed and hitting the walls.
How much gap between sliding shower door and fixed door
In framless sliding door systems there should be a gap of about 1 cm to 1.5 cm between the sliding door and the fixed door.
This gap ensures free movement of the sliding door and also in a framed sliding door system, a small gap between sliding doors prevents water accumulation in the bottom rail.
While taking a shower, the water that is splashed on the glass door slowly collects at the bottom of the door due to gravity. All this water at the bottom of doors should be diverted back to the bathroom. A framed sliding door system has both doors on a common channel and thus covers most of the empty space in the channel leaving no space for water to get accumulated in it.
Additionally to ensure that the sliding door doesn’t rub against the fixed door while opening or closing, a separator can be added in between the bottom rail. Upon adding the separator the sliding doors follow only a straight line.
A separator is a small metal piece that has two grooves like channels for the doors.
In most shower sliding door systems, how much gap can be left between sliding and the fixed door is already set as per the width of individual doors. So there’s no need to measure how much gap to keep between two doors if a readymade sliding door system is to be installed.
Should sliding door and fixed door be of same width?
Yes, both the fixed door and sliding door should be of exact same width in the shower for ease in maintenance and cleaning of doors.
Normally in a sliding shower door system, there is a common channel in which both of the doors are installed. If one of the doors has a size bigger or smaller than the other then that channel becomes useless.
In such a case two separate channels are required for each door or alternatively a bigger size channel can be used to put both doors within. Now the drawback of using a bigger channel as we discussed in the previous heading is the accumulation of water. Once collected, it is very quite difficult to get this water out from the bottom rail.
If both doors have same size than the bottom channel/rail can be of just the size that allows movement of sliding doors and leaves only a little empty space where much water cannot collect.
Which side to put door handle: Outside, inside, or both sides?
Both sides of the sliding door i.e front and back should have a handle.
Generally, the handle for the inner side of sliding doors is smaller in size compared to the handle on the outer side. But it is not important to have handles of different sizes. Both handles can definitely be of the same size.
The reason for providing a smaller size handle for the inner side is to save more space inside the shower and to make its cleaning easier. It is much easier to clean a small door handle than a bigger handle.
