Repairing Acrylic Bath Crack or Split
If you are unfortunate to have an acrylic bath which has splits or cracks in its surface then you are faced with two options: either replace the bath completely or, if that isn’t feasible, have the crack or split repaired.
If the bath can be removed easily, without disturbing a lot of tiling, and you have a friendly plumber or you are quite handy yourself, then a replacement is a very good option. You end up with a new bath which is under guarantee for a year.
If, however, you have a bath which will only come out after you have had to take a lot of tiles off, and the whole process of replacing the bath is going to be disruptive and expensive; well, just having the crack or split repaired is a much more viable option for you.
We cannot repair every crack or split in every situation. There are instances where a bath can end up with a lot of splitting in it, especially the base, and this can be due to a structural problem with the bath itself.
Usually this manifests itself with a lots of small cracks forming in a particular area of the bath. In some cases the entire base of the bath can be covered in hundreds of these small cracks. The cracks themselves are often only about a centimetre long and usually end up black in colour (I think the black colour is just due to dirt settling into the crack).
If the above is happening in you bath then you are looking at a situation where the bath’s own support structure is failing. On older acrylic baths there is a layer of chipboard under the base of the bath, between the base of the bath and the feet of the bath.
The chipboard is there to provide extra rigidity and strength to the bath. Without this the feet of the bath would end up punching through the bath base every time it was filled was water. And the bath would flex far too much as a person moved about in it.
On occasions the chip board layer itself can start to loose its strength and cease to provide the amount of support required, allowing the base of the bath to flex far more than was ever intended. This amount of movement cracks the “gel coat” (the “gel coat” is the smooth, coloured layer which coats the bath).
You can also get the feet of the bath starting to push the base of the bath up. Where the bath base gets pushed up like this it will also split the gel coat.
If this is happening to your bath then you really need to replace the it. Resurfacing the bath will be, at best, a very short-lived solution as the cracks in the gel coat will split the new surface as they open up (and they will open up every time you use the bath).
But the above situation where the bath has lots of cracks in it is not too common. The majority of baths we see just have a crack or split in them. And these are the baths which we can repair.
If you have any questions about whether or not we can repair the crack in your bath, then please call us on 020 8634 5922.
