Bathroom pods — one module, repeated four hundred times.
SMC and panelled bathroom modules for hotels, apartments, student housing and camps. The awkward thing about this category: a pod is not a product you buy once, it is a product you buy again and again — and the second hundred must be identical to the first. Everything here is about holding that.
What we buy
- SMC modular pods — compression-moulded ceiling, wall and floor panels with an integral floor tray, sealed as one shell.
- Panelled / assembled pods — tile-faced or panel-faced walls on a steel or aluminium frame, built up around a waterproof tray.
- Floorless pods — for projects where the pod sits into a pre-formed recess and the site screed becomes the floor.
- Sanitary ware and fittings — WCs, basins, mixers, shower sets, accessories, selected to the project's own specification rather than the factory's default.
- Pre-plumbed wet walls — waste, supply and ventilation set out to drawing, tested at the factory before shipment.
- Accessories — thresholds, ramps for accessibility, extract fans, mirrors and cabinets, drainage grates.
The thing that actually goes wrong
Pod forty-one is not pod one. Same drawing, same factory, same nominal product. But the tray has been changed to a slightly different mould, or the tile layout has shifted by half a course, or the waste position has moved because a different jig was used that week.
On site this is not a cosmetic annoyance. It means the riser no longer lines up on that floor, the tile pattern breaks at the corridor, and the accessibility ramp that was made for the original threshold does not fit. A pod project is only as consistent as its least consistent unit.
How we handle it
We treat pod one as the master. It is produced, photographed at every face, measured at a fixed set of points, and where the project justifies it, shipped to you for physical approval before the run begins. Those measurements become the acceptance criteria for every pod after it — not a general "as per drawing".
Before production we close four things that pod drawings usually leave open: the exact waste and supply coordinates, the tile or panel layout including where cuts fall, the threshold height and the direction of fall, and the ceiling height against the finished floor level. These are the four that generate site problems, and none of them is reliably specified on a typical drawing set.
During the run we check at a fixed sampling rate — every unit for the shell and the water test, a sample for the finish and the tile layout — and we compare against the master rather than against memory. Water test results are recorded per pod, with the serial number, and the record travels with the shipment.
Questions specific to this line
SMC or panelled — which should we specify?
+SMC gives you a sealed shell with no tile joints to fail, faster site installation and a very consistent repeat. It also fixes your finish at the factory, so a late design change is expensive or impossible. Panelled pods tolerate design changes better and can carry a tile finish your client has already approved, but they have more joints and depend far more on the installer's discipline. Most hotel projects we see choose SMC for the repeatability; most residential projects choose panelled for the finish flexibility.
How much site tolerance can a pod absorb?
+Less than people expect, and in one direction only. A pod can bridge a limited gap at the head and at the sides with a trim, but it cannot absorb a structural slab that is out of level, or a riser that is out of position. We ask for the site survey dimensions before production and compare them with the pod drawing — if the two do not reconcile, the problem is cheaper to solve before the mould is set than after the pods are on the water.
Is the water test done at the factory or on site?
+At the factory, before packing — a pod that leaks in Foshan will leak in your building, and it is far cheaper to find out there. We record the test per serial number. That said, a factory test does not replace the site connection test: the joint between the pod and the riser is made on site and is outside the pod's own integrity. Make sure your MEP contractor understands the sequence.
Can the fittings be our own brand?
+Yes, and we would usually recommend it. Pod factories often default to a cheap sanitary set that undermines the whole module. Specifying your own WCs, mixers and accessories — or a named equivalent — keeps the pod at the level the rest of the project is being built to. It also means the spares you hold on site are the same parts you already stock.