Disassembling shower cabin glued together with silicone seal

[Jamp]

Hi All

I've got a right mess to sort out at my mum's house where numpty tradesmen have been let loose 'installing' a steam shower cabin: http://www.indigoshowers.co.uk/cabs701sn.htm

Long story short: they've thrown it together and put it in the wrong place, the wrong way around, having not assembled it correctly and not made it square and true. I therefore need to disassemble it, make good the decoration, then put it back together properly.

That should be easy enough, but the cabin has been siliconed at all the joins so is effectively glued together. Each glass panel has an alu frame which slots into a channel in the extruded aluminium corner pillars. These are a fairly tight fit and make contact on three sides, so the silicone in those joins is able to glue the thing together pretty securely!

I've tried just pulling the thing apart but I'm worried about bending the aluminium pillars and nothing is budging anyway. Running a craft knife down the joins to split the silicone on two of the joined sides seems to work to a point but I can only access some of the joins in this way and it's still not coming apart.

Is there some kind of solvent that would dissolve, or at least soften, the silicone to ease disassembly?

Is there a tool like a sash cramp in reverse which could be used to spread the pillars and release them from the glass panels? I'd be worried about damaging the pillars then, but this might be the only way.

I'll see about getting some pics together so you can better understand what I'm up against, but any advice would be welcomed!

 

[lifesagasman]

you'll be soooo lucky to take it apart without bending/breaking anything. silicone is a superb glue and i don't know of anything which will dissolve it, especially in hidden joints.
if it's so bad get the installers to fix it or return your money

 

[Jamp]

I'm trying to persuade the homeowner to pursue the installers for damages but she's reluctant to have any further involvement with them. I advised her to get rid of them when I saw what a mess they were making of it, but I never had direct contact with them. I have photo evidence of their bodges but they didn't accept that there was anything wrong.

In any case the main issue is getting the shower working. Unfortunately the cabin was sourced from the distributor directly rather than via the installers so that will remain our problem in any event. The thing has got to come apart to be carried out to the skip, if the worst comes to the worst..!

 

[lifesagasman]

your contract for assembly/installation was with the installers, i presume, so they are liable for any bodges. proving poor quality workmanship is the stumbling block but if they were reputable they would own up.
persist with knives and blades if you want but even if you can disassemble the beast you'd have to clean off all the old goo before you could re-assemble it---major pain. it looks expensive as well.....

 

[Jamp]

Yes it was expensive so I am keen to salvage it. The trouble is I have no confidence in the installers ability to resolve the situation; they won't be able to get the thing apart any more easily than I can, and they have already proved their ineptitude. By rights they should be buying a whole new cabin and installing it properly, but to achieve this would probably necessitate a legal battle and so if I can just sort the problem and forget about it instead then that would be preferrable.

 

[lifesagasman]

there are silicone dissolvers on the market but i've never had much success with them, and that's on accessible areas. maybe someone else knows something i don't.
wish you luck but think you may be doomed to failure on this one.

 

[Jamp]

Thanks. I've emailed the distributor to ask about spares availability on the aluminium pillar bits. Will let you know how I get on.

 

[Jamp]

To update this, I did manage to get the damned thing apart without too much damage. In the end I got hold of a metre long length of 10mm steel rod, which a blacksmith ground a blade/flat screwdriver bit onto the end of. I drove this down into each channel thus slicing through the silicone on the butting face and wedging the frame out of the pillar channel. This worked very well and caused minimal damage. It was definitely a much better way of doing it than a sash cramp would have been, as I'm sure that would just have bent the pillars around themselves as the frames and channels were stuck fast.

Cheers,

Jamp