Planning an accessible guest shower bathroom

Hello everyone,

we are currently planning a new single-family house and want to have an accessible guest shower bathroom on the ground floor, since my girlfriend’s grandpa uses a wheelchair and will often be with us. Besides, you never know what might happen, and it’s good to be prepared for the future.

But whether it is really as accessible in real life as it is on paper is another question. We have received a floor plan where it is planned like this; what do you think? Is it okay for a wheelchair user to get to the toilet, wash their hands, and shower or be assisted with showering? (No shower tray but an open shower with floor drain and possibly a folding wall or curtain towards the toilet. The room would get larger if the utility room were reduced.)

Best regards

We have received a floor plan where it is planned like this, what do you think? Is it okay for a wheelchair user to get to the toilet, wash their hands, and shower or be showered there? (No shower tray but an open shower with a floor drain and possibly a folding wall or curtain towards the toilet.

Didn’t you tell your planner that the shower bathroom has to be accessible for disabled people? If you are planning a disabled-/wheelchair-accessible shower bathroom, a radius of 1.50 m must be possible for the wheelchair user (see example of a disabled-accessible granny flat). The clear width of the interior door must also be widened. Kind regards

Well, we said that someone who uses a wheelchair must have the possibility to go to the downstairs bathroom and shower, and of course also to get into the living room and guest room, but it is not an everyday situation. So it should not be accepted or approved as a barrier-free ground floor, but rather to make visiting in a wheelchair easier (for everyone involved). If you yourself were ever to sit in a wheelchair, which of course is not hoped for and is rather rare, you would definitely have to make modifications. But just in case, we do not want to finance extra money for that, and your grandpa just has to expect that not everything is tailored to him when he visits others. But this gives me a guideline as to how much the guest shower room would need to be changed. There is still potential; the utility room could certainly be smaller since, for example, we will only have a heating system there that requires little space and basically only necessary things like a washing machine, dryer, and garden clothes.