It’s important to know the weight of an acrylic bathtub. Whether you’re doing some remodeling in your home or you just need to figure out the right type of acrylic bathtub for you, weight is the most important factor.
Let’s take a look at what different types of acrylic bathtubs weigh and why it’s important.
What Does an Acrylic Bathtub Weight?
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The average acrylic bathtub weighs 100 pounds before adding water. Acrylic bathtubs can weigh anywhere from 75 pounds to several hundred pounds depending on the style of bathtub. Once you add water, an acrylic bathtub can weigh up to 1,000 pounds.
Different Types of Acrylic Bathtubs
There are different styles of acrylic bathtubs. Each of these different types of the bathtub has a different weight. Let’s take a look at a few of the more common types of acrylic bathtubs and how this impacts their weight.
Freestanding
Freestanding acrylic bathtubs are the largest type of acrylic bathtub. There’s a good reason that they weigh the most.
Most acrylic bathtubs are not designed to be freestanding. They’re designed to be supported by the frame of the house itself.
This means that the typical acrylic bathtub does not support the weight of the water or the person in the tub. It’s actually the frame of the house that’s doing the heavy lifting.
Freestanding acrylic bathtubs break this rule. They’re able to support not only the weight of the water but also safely support the weight of the bay there as well. This means that they have to be built much more rigidly than other types of acrylic bathtubs.
This means that an acrylic bathtub is going to weigh somewhere between 300 and 900 pounds before you add the water.
Alcove
An alcove-style bathtub is the most common type of acrylic bathtub out there. You’ve probably seen these and hotels, and you might even have one of your time today. Your simplistic design causes them to be one of the lightest styles of acrylic bathtubs.
An alcove-style acrylic bathtub is going to weigh somewhere between 300 and 650 pounds. An acrylic alcove bathtub saves on wait because it only has one finished side that faces outward. The three other sides of his bathtub are going to be covered by the walls of the home itself.
Walk-In
Walk-in-style bathtubs or something, especially when it comes to figuring out how much an acrylic bathtub weighs.
You might not have ever seen a walk-in bathtub. These are taller than your average bathtub and feature a small swinging door that allows people to, as the name suggests, walk into the bathtub.
This style of bathtub is designed for individuals who have difficulty climbing over the edge of a bathtub and safely entering the water. By walking into the tub and letting it slowly fill with water, individuals of all different kinds of physical abilities can safely enjoy your bath.
It might surprise you to know that a walk-in bathtub typically weighs the same as an alcove bathtub. These models are slightly heavier due to the additional materials required to create the swinging door, but they’re typically not much heavier than your standard acrylic bathtub.
Corner
The corner bathtub gives the alcove bathtub a race for its status as the heaviest and fanciest style of acrylic bathtub.
A corner-style acrylic bathtub can weigh somewhere between 300 and 1,000 pounds. Why is the style of the bathtub so much heavier than everything else?
A corner bathtub is designed to fit in between two walls of a home which leaves two sides of the bathtub exposed. This means that the tub needs to be finished on two sides which adds plenty of weight.
The corner bathtub is also a luxury model. This bathtub typically features a triangular design and sports a lot of other additional features that you would expect in a luxury model. You can find everything from massagers to water jets in these bathtubs.
It’s all of these fancy extra features that add additional weight. A basic corner bathtub is going to be about as light as an alcove bathtub, but once you start adding features, that weight can quickly climb up to nearly a ton.
Drop-In
Drop-in bathtubs are fairly unique and a world of acrylic tubs.
A drop-in acrylic bathtub can weigh somewhere between 500 and 700 pounds. It’s the unusual design of these tubs that create additional weight.
A drop-in bathtub might look like an alcove bathtub to the untrained eye. However, despite having the same style, these two bathtubs have a completely different type of construction.
A drop-in bathtub is lowered into a frame that is built into the walls. It’s going to look like an alcove bathtub from the outside, but it’s actually going to be a freestanding tub sitting in a base.
There’s a lot of additional construction that goes on in creating a drop-in bathtub. It’s all these additional components that create the weight of a drop-in bathtub.
How Much Weight Does Water Add to Acrylic Bathtubs?
Now we’re getting into the real weight of an acrylic bathtub.
The bathtub itself is actually lighter than the water it holds. If you’ve ever had to carry several gallons of water home in your groceries, you know how heavy water can get. Let’s see how much weight water is adding to the overall weight of your bathtub.
What Does Water Weight Per Gallon?
A gallon of water weighs 8.34 lb. This is true no matter if the water is hot or cold, hard or soft, or from the tap or purchased at the store. The weight of water is one of those universal constants.
This means we can easily calculate how much weight water is adding to your acrylic bathtub.
The smallest acrylic bathtubs can hold about 35 gallons of water. This comes out to 291.9 lb of water. Add that to a lightweight bathtub, and you’re looking somewhere around 500 pounds.
The largest acrylic bathtubs can hold over 120 gallons of water. This is easily over 1,000 lb of water. This means that a luxury acrylic bathtub can tip the scales at over 2,000 pounds once it’s full of water.
Now we have a really big question to consider. Can your typical floor support this much weight?
Can My Floor Support an Acrylic Bathtub?
Right now, it’s pretty clear that even the most modest acrylic bathtub gets pretty heavy once it’s full. So, how can you tell if your floor can support the weight of a full acrylic bathtub?
All of the weight of a full bathtub is supported by the framing of the floor. This is true regardless of the style of bathtub you pick. It’s the floor that’s doing all the heavy lifting.
The average bathroom floor in the United States can handle roughly 40 lb per square foot. This means that your bathroom can handle roughly 2,000 lb for average square footage.
Your typical bathroom won’t be able to handle a luxury corner acrylic bathtub complete with water jets and massagers. That would tip the scales at over 2,000 pounds which means it would be the only thing in your bathroom, and even the weight of a single bather might compromise the structure of your floor.
Additional joists can be added to the floor to support the weight of larger bathtubs.
