Lifestyle and technology have changed. Today’s consumer demand “more pressure, more volume more often”
Shower control manufacturers have reacted with an extensive range of power showers, pumped showers, multi-head showers and instant showers. Our daily shower lifestyle, coupled with this new more aggressive high performance shower environment, demands a higher level of performance than possible from traditional sealing benchmarks.
Two critical challenges for any seal with expectations of lasting in today’s shower environment are durability (climatic stress) and flexibility (tensile stress).
Climatic stress is caused by the frequent exposure
of sealing material to a mixture of soaps, shampoos,
conditioners and other cleaning agents at elevated
and fluctuating temperatures.
Tensile stress on sealing material is most often caused
by wall/ledge joint expansion.
The combined effects of climatic stress and tensile stress and on sealing materials accelerate the seal material deterioration process.
Other issues now playing an ever more important roll in the mind of consumers are seal hygiene and aesthetics. Sealants tend to act as a magnet for shower bio-wash which tends to linger on surfaces and form an unsightly ‘slime layer’ that not only looks bad but promotes mould and mildew.