Installing a Nautilus RV shower door
Installing a Nautilus RV shower door
We replaced the glass shower door in our RV with a Nautilus Shower Door. After my days in the warranty world watching people’s glass shower doors just shatter and just being less than excited about large unnecessary pieces of glass in an RV we made the jump and we’re thrilled.
What is a Nautilus shower door
A Nautilus shower door is essentially a large window shade-like system set on its side. When you close the shower door you’re essentially closing a large plastic blind. Like a roller blind, the shower door is under tension.
The door rides in an upper and lower metal frame with a metal edge that snaps into the metal side of the door assembly when you close it.
As you open the door a built-in squeegee arrangement wipes the water off. You could just open the door and leave it retracted, we choose to extend the door after stepping out of the shower just to help it dry off a little better.
To us the advantage is that there’s no glass door but also the entire opening of the shower is available to step through when getting in and out. Further, since the shower was close to the toilet, it also gives you a little more space when you’re sitting on the toilet as well.
What we didn’t expect, but which is the biggest consequence, is that the Nautilus door really makes the bathroom feel significantly larger. Even though the old door was glass somehow this new arrangement really opens up the bathroom.
The unit we got is a bit taller than the old glass enclosure but I don’t think the bar being a bit higher is what causes the open feel.
Our RV
Our RV is a 2025 Rockwood Mini Lite 2506FK which puts the bathroom in the middle of the trailer bisecting the rig and giving the bedroom and really separating the bedroom from the main living space. It works well for us as Peggy and I are on very different sleep schedules.
Installing the Nautilus Shower Door
Installing the Nautilus Shower Door couldn’t be simpler. Really it’s removing the old shower door that was a bigger pain.
In our case; however, it wasn’t all that bad. All that was required was removing a few screws as the shower door is a big metal square with the glass doors riding in a track along the top metal bar.
Once the screws were removed you use a spudger to take off the silicone sealant that was put there by the RV company. Depending on the RV company that’s where you’ll find differing levels of difficulty. Ours was relatively new and came right off rather easily.
Next was cleaning and it’s a big surprising how dirty the space is under the lower track of the shower door. Goo Gone and some residential cleaner were the recipe along with a lot of paper towels to get the area clean.
Then silicone sealant was used to cover up the holes where the screws were that held in the glass enclosure.
Finally you measure the upper and lower width and cut the horizontal rails to fit. This is one of many reasons we didn’t DIY this project - I know how uneven this would have been had I been put in charge of cuts.
The vertical bars are simply attached to the walls of the shower with double-sided VHB tape (which was included) and then the horizontal bars are there to add to the structure. It’s a really fast installation.
Also, all the pieces you need come in the box. Everything from the VHB tape to the vertical and horizontal pieces to, of course, the shower door itself. The only thing that you’ll have to provide yourself is the sealant that you use which you’d choose based on the type of material your RV’s shower enclosure is made of.
To be honest our friend Justin was the one who installed this and has done quite a few of these as was evidenced by how effortlessly he did the installation.
He mentioned that not everybody runs a bead of sealant along the base of the railing because the tub’s upper lip is angled to allow water to drain into the tub, but he did place a bead of sealant there. Another tip - if you do choose to seal the lower edge look at the slope of the shower enclosure and seal the higher side so water can drain down into the shower pan.
Broken shower door glass
Funny thing - as I was getting ready to share our new shower door with you a participant in our Rockwood-Flagstaff Facebook Group shared their own experiences with a broken shower door. The responses came in quickly.
Of course there’s always a chance that a shower door shatters as your driving down the road - this is a relatively large, flat piece of glass.
But a few respondents said that they suspected that the heat from the skylight was the culprit as their shower doors shattered while the RV was just sitting. In fact my friend from the RV dealership, Manya, had exactly this happen to her shower door in her camper.
Final thoughts
I don’t know why these aren’t more popular although I guess a glass shower door might seem more upscale. But this is a moving vehicle and huge pieces of glass just rub me the wrong way, especially since I had to replace a few of these when I worked in warranty service at the RV dealership.
You know you’re not going to get all the tiny shards of glass up no matter how thorough you are but you will absolutely find them in the middle of the night when you’re barefooted.
This isn’t the first time we’ve done this, either. In one of our 2205s Mini Lites we just took out the shower door ourselves and fashioned a curtain to replace it. In another one we simply took out the entire enclosure and I built a new curtain rod system using PVC and PEX pipes. In both cases those were radius (curved) shower doors for which Nautilus doesn’t make an enclosure. In our current rig the options are much simpler.
We’d also like to thank Justin for taking the time to install our shower door - he did a super job.
