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Originally Posted by CarlR33
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I love soaking in a hot bath (not too hot). However, I’m 6’3”, and standard bathtubs are not satisfying. I want the water to cover my shoulders completely and ideally up to my ears, and to get that in the standard Villages tub I have to lie on my back with my legs in the air. For 30 years I had bathtubs that were a full six feet long and extra deep. They were rectangular, not oval, because oval is a waste of space and water. They had to provide back support when reclining, rather than have the back wall at a 90° angle. I didn’t want whirlpool features, as they are too loud to allow relaxation. I got up early every morning and took a long bath while enjoying my coffee and reading, then went to work.
Walk-in tubs sound like a good idea, but they aren’t. They are wider than normal tubs, and they take a lot of water. One sits in them. The water only comes up to the lower chest level. I need my shoulders in the water. You have to drain all the water before getting out. They are hard to clean. They can leak.
My late mom loved baths and disliked showers, but in her 80s she found getting out of the tub difficult. One side of the tub provided a good hand hold, but the other didn’t. If she sank down to warm her shoulders, it could be hard to pull herself back up.
When houses are built, contractors should install 2x6” supports horizontally behind the tub walls and install sturdy ADA compliant grab bars. I’ve installed such bars in my own shower and bath here in the villages, but it isn’t easy to screw them into the vertical studs. (It works for vertical grab bars, but for horizontal bars, the length of the bar must allow screwing into studs. The same goes for towel bars outside the bath.) Putting in the horizontal 2x6” supports requires quite a bit of extra work, and the sturdy bars aren’t cheap.
While I have your attention, if you install a pool or hot tub, it is really important to install sturdy grab bars. Steps into a pool without a good railing well-anchored from outside the pool down to the bottom can be a death trap. I had a pool my first two years in The Villages. It seemed that most of the people who used it had some mobility issues and could not have gotten into or out of the pool without a railing. In hot tubs here, railings are rare, yet it is hard to get into or out of a hot tub. Often the seat one steps on getting into is slippery. There is also often a long drop from to rim of the tub to the floor. The steps can be hard to find in the day, much less the night, and if one misses the step? Last time I was in a hot tub, getting out, my foot slipped off the step and I fell to the ground. Fortunately, I didn’t break anything, but I had a sore back for a few days and a big bruise on my hip for three weeks. There are some sturdy hand rails for hot tubs that can be slid under the tub when it is empty, so the water weight can keep them in place, but they aren’t cheap. A lot cheaper than surgery, though.