Are There Showers With Side Drains?

Simple Physics

• The laws of gravity are something that cannot be bent or broken, and showers must be designed with gravity in mind. Gravity dictates that water will always flow down a slope, not up, and will always exit where it can at the lowest possible point along the slope. For this reason, shower drains are placed on the floors, not the sides or walls of the shower. If a drain is placed on the wall, it must at least be partially buried in the floor so that the water can fully drain.

Average Slope

• Because slope is necessary for water to drain properly under the effects of gravity, a drain on the side of a shower wall isn’t necessarily the most effective. It will catch the water running down the wall, but the floor itself needs to be sloped to a drain point in the floor, not along the wall. The minimum slope for a tile floor, for example, is a quarter inch in every linear foot. This funnels the water toward the drain. While showers do exist with side drains, it is difficult to design water to flow toward a side drain rather than a center drain.

General Location

• The most common area for a drain in a precast shower pan is the center of the shower pan. This is because it is much easier for a manufacturer to slope the pan to the center where a drain is located rather than try to slope everything toward one side or another. For this reason, drains are almost always located in the floors of showers, not on the sides.

Custom Shower

• Custom-built showers can be customized to your own unique design plans, so you can have a side drain if you want one, but the same rules apply: The floor must be sloped to the area where the drain is located, and the drain needs to be at least partially below the level of the floor so that the water can escape through the drain. The most common type in these situations is the trough drain, which is installed along the side of a shower and has a trough that funnels water to a drain, which is located below in the floor.