The question always arrives the same way: “how much will it cost me to take the bath out and put a shower in?”. The honest answer is that it depends on three or four specific things, and all of them can be seen in a twenty-minute visit. Here they are, so you can get an idea before anyone comes to your house.
The starting price and what it covers
Swapping a bath for a shower tray in Alicante starts at around €3,000. What decides it is not the floor area of the bathroom but the width of the recess the bath leaves: the tray is cut to measure and there is no size limit. That entry price usually includes six items:
- Removal of the bath, chasing off the affected tiling and transport of the rubble to a licensed tip.
- Moving the water supplies to the height of the new shower and changing the waste with its trap.
- Shower column.
- Waterproofing of the shower base before tiling.
- Non-slip shower tray, usually resin, cut to measure.
- Toughened glass screen.
- Tiling of the shower area and the final clean.
If a quote does not mention the waterproofing or the rubble removal, it is not that it is cheaper: it is that those items will turn up later.
What pushes the price up
Four factors explain almost all the difference between a €3,000 quote and a €6,000 one.
Moving the waste
If the shower is going to take up exactly the bath recess, the waste usually stays where it was. If you change the position or move to a linear drain, the floor has to be chased and the fall rebuilt. That is between €300 and €600 more and one or two extra days.
Tiling the whole bathroom
Covering only the shower area is the cheapest option, but it leaves the difference between the new tile and the old one on show. Tiling all four walls multiplies both the material and the labour, and it is the item that rises most when large format is chosen.
The material of the tray
A standard resin tray and a large-format rectified porcelain one can be €400 apart. We go into it in the article on resin or porcelain trays.
What turns up when we open up
Lead pipework, damp in the party wall or floor structures without enough screed. They cannot be seen before anything is chased out. A serious quote says what happens if they appear, instead of pretending they do not exist.
How to read a quote
Ask for it broken down item by item, not as a single price. With the breakdown you can genuinely compare two offers and decide where to save. Check these four points as well:
- Whether VAT is included or added separately.
- Whether the rubble removal and the tip fee are inside it.
- What completion time is committed to and what happens if it is not met.
- What guarantee is given on the installation, on top of the manufacturer's.
A quick steer
For an average flat's bathroom in Alicante, without moving the waste and tiling only the shower area, a reasonable figure is between €3,000 and €3,800. With full tiling, a new unit and concealed taps, between €4,500 and €5,500. Above €6,000 we are already talking about a complete renovation or top-range materials.
If you want a figure for your particular bathroom, ask us for a quote: the visit, the survey and the written proposal cost nothing.
