How do you repair a plastic bath?

[Bert]

We have just noticed a small crack in our plastic (acrylic?) bath. It is about 5 cm long and it is right in the middle (side to side) at the head end, where the base curves into the part where your back rests.
It does not appear to be leaking (yet). Any ideas for a repair? We are insured, but unless I am economical with the truth, I feel that they will say this is "fair wear and tear".

[carlton23]

You could try a tube of fibre glass filler on the outside of the bath until someone suggests a better idea I suppose.

[carlton23]

Failing my first post, try some nail varnish remover, which will melt plastic.

[spudqueen]

When we had a new boiler fitted a couple of months ago the heating engineer mentioned that he'd repaired a couple of cracks in baths. I think he said it cost �35. I remember taking a mental note because one of my friends has a crack in her bath.

[Spikey1]

As a plumber i would recommend a new bath (no people i'm not a rip off merchant).... reason being that if it does crack when you're in it its gonna cost a hell of a lot more to fix the damage it will cause and the insurance company still won't pay out for a new bath. can you afford to be without a bath for a week while the floor dries out ?

[Hymie]

Many, many years ago I suffered the same problem � I filled the split with epoxy resin.
Although it stopped any water escaping from the bath, the split grew over time, meaning that I had to regularly add more epoxy or remove what was there and start again.

I believe the reason for the split was that the cradle of the bath was not adequately supporting the structure � which lead to the split.

If you are very brave, you could relieve the split by drilling a small hole at each end of the split. This should stop the split growing (it is a well practiced engineering trick � used to limit cracks in materials), but you will then have two holes and a split in your bath.

My solution was to move house - without taking the bath.

[carlton23]

Instead of drilling holes in the bath, a scratch with a glass cutter will do the same thing and stop it going any further. I know it works with glass.

[Bert]

Thanks to all of you. I don't think there is enough of a crack to get any epoxy resin into - after all, as I said, it is not leaking (yet!). It may work, though, if I just cover the area with epoxy. The crack is not getting any longer, so I'll not try drilling holes at either end. The nail varnish idea has been suggested by a plumber, but I think that would spoil the appearance of the bath if I apply it on the inside, and I don't think I could see the crack from the outside, also it's right where the chipboard support ends.

[Natali]

Try using repair kit from NNREPAIR. They have different kits for different size of cracks and various colors. See http://www.nnrepair-online.com.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvsLmHERgPA