Easy shower system
MasterTrack ST from Bohle brings a unique hydraulic damper system to shower doors, simplifying installation and delivering ultra-smooth operation, according to hardware specialist Jordan Scholes.
Bohle launched MasterTrack ST in the summer, which draws down on the same carriage and unique hydraulic damper system as the popular MasterTrack Internal Sliding Door, and is applied to a shower cubicle system.
In doing so, it eliminates any requirement to process glass on site, simplifying installation, and is something that Bohle hardware specialist Jordan Scholes, argues delivers a new opportunity to glass processors and home improvement specialists.
“MasterTrack ST is one of those products that you only have to fit once to grasp all of the benefits that it delivers,” he said. “There’s no glass processing on site; operation is incredibly smooth; and you can configure it to accommodate almost any application.
“The carriage and damper-system are a step up from anything else that I’ve fitted, in how easy they are to work with and then how they perform.”
Suitable for residential and commercial applications, Bohle unveiled the MasterTrack internal sliding door last year. This uses a smart-clamp system to ‘grip’ the glass so that there is no requirement to process it on site, clamps simply slide into position and are tightened.
Accommodating glass thickness from 8mm to 12.76mm and maximum weights of 60kg, 80kg, 120kg and 150kg, as either a wall-mounted or ceiling-hung system, it can be fitted in as little as 10 minutes.
“There’s no compromise on design flexibility,” Jordan said. “The MasterTrack internal sliding door carriages can run to 150kg, so you can go some pretty big doors, which is why it has a commercial as well as residential application.
“MasterTrack ST concentrates and distils that technology down to a smaller but still highly engineered solution for shower enclosures.”
And as such, MasterTrack ST is suitable for installation as either a barrier-free or low threshold system. It can also be configured to either two-sided corner applications, recess applications, u-showers, and one-sided corners.
“There’s a lot of flexibility in the system,” Jordan said, “so you don’t have to hold a lot of stock to deliver different configurations. MasterTrack ST also runs to 2m, so you can accommodate some pretty substantial installations in addition to standard sizes.”
Depending on the configuration of the shower, once the channel has been fixed to the wall or the ceiling, and where used the barrier has been fitted to the floor, MasterTrack ST is installed in minutes. The carriages are aligned with the edge of the glass and simply tightened, gripping the glass using a patented cork system.
The door is lifted into the channel, adjusted with an allen key +/-3mm as required, and then tightened, ahead of fixing an anti-jump mechanism into the head to secure the carriage into the track. The damper is then activated before adding a cover to complete the job.
“What’s interesting is the market potential for this product,” Jordan said. “Its potential in high-end applications is clear: you can deliver large and complex projects simply and easily, which gives you more margin.
“With a system like this, there’s an opportunity to push into a far larger market, because the efficiency gains you get in installation eliminate so many labour costs. You’re in and out, which increases affordability and reaches into a potentially far bigger market.”
Figures from Money.co.uk, for example, show homeowners spent on average £4,000 on home improvements during lockdown, with bathrooms coming in as the third most popular home improvement after garden projects and upgrades of living room décor.
“We’re in for another good few months of limitations because of Covid-19, so it’s reasonable to expect that as long as incomes hold up, we’re going to continue to spend on our homes,” Jordan said.
“That would suggest that bathroom products will continue to attract our spend.”
