Patent Application
20060230523
The invention relates to a support for retaining shower accessories to a shower wall. More particularly, shoulder supports are formed in a shower wall and support various shower accessories.
Shower enclosures are commonly formed as a solid piece, or several solid pieces that can be joined together on site to form the enclosure without requiring large amounts of sealing. However, the solid wall can make adding in supports for shower accessories difficult.
Users often desire to have shelves, towel racks, mirrors, or other shower accessories added to the interior of the enclosure. Adding accessories after manufacture of the enclosure walls often requires drilling. Drilling creates a joint that must be sealed to prevent water leaking behind the enclosure walls. Alternatively, shower accessories may be attached to enclosure walls with temporary means such as gluing, or suction cups. However, over time the temporary nature of the attachment can lead to retention problems.
To avoid the need for drilling or use of temporary attachments some shower enclosures are manufactured with built in shelves or other accessories. This can be a problem when the selected shower accessory is not what is desired by the user. Additionally, the users needs may change over time and different shower accessories may be desired at different points in time.
A shower enclosure that provides a permanent support for holding shower accessories without requiring drilling or restricting the user to one type of accessory chosen by the manufacturer would be desirable.
The present invention provides shoulder supports for mounting shower accessories in a shower enclosure. The shoulder supports are preferably molded into the shower enclosure wall such that drilling is not necessary to attach a shower accessory
The shoulder supports extend from the shower enclosure wall and provide a top surface and attachment structure on a side. The attachment between the accessory and shoulder is preferably a male/female connection. As disclosed, the shoulder supports have a female indentation and the selected shower accessory has a mating male indentation. Of course, the reverse could be utilized. Preferably the connectors are on each of two ends of the accessory correspond to two shoulders extending from the enclosure walls. The indentations provide a non-permanent attachment of the shower accessory to the shoulder supports so that the chosen accessory may later be removed and replaced if desired. However, the shoulder supports are permanently formed in the walls of the shower enclosure to provide secure support.
The indentations preferably have a non-circular shape to prevent the chosen shower accessory from rotating once attached to a shoulder support.
These and other features of the present invention can be best understood from the following specification and drawings, the following of which is a brief description.
The enclosure 10 shows a shower accessory 18 attached to the second side wall 16, the dry wall in this embodiment. Although, the shower accessory 18 is shown of the second side wall 16 it may also be placed on the first side wall 14, or the back wall 12. The location of the shower accessory is determined at the time of manufacture of the shower enclosure. In addition, the enclosure can be manufactured to accommodate more than one accessory.
Referring to
The first shoulder 20 has an inner surface 21 with a support opening 26 for attachment of the shower accessory 18. Likewise, the second shoulder 22 has an inner surface 21 and an opening 28. The openings 26 and 28 face each other. The shower accessory 18 has two mating portions 32, one on each opposing end, to correspond to the support openings 26 and 28. Although the embodiment shown discloses a female portion in shoulder supports 20 and 22 and a male portion in shower accessory 18, the female and male portions may be reversed.
A shower accessory 18 may have the configuration shown in
Although a preferred embodiment of this invention has been disclosed, a worker of ordinary skill in this art would recognize that certain modifications would come within the scope of this invention. For that reason, the following claims should be studied to determine the true scope and content of this invention.
