How do I take an old bath out?

Isolating and disconnecting cleanly, breaking the tile-and-sealant bond without wrecking the wall, and the safe way to get each material out of the room.

Difficulty: intermediate
Time: 2 hr
Read: 5 min
Safety: warning

Short answer

Turn the water off and drain the pipes, disconnect the taps and the waste, cut the silicone all the way round, then free the bath from its wall batten before you try to move it. Acrylic and steel come out whole or are cut up; cast iron is either a careful two-person lift or is broken up with a sledgehammer under a heavy dust sheet.

Getting a bath out is not hard, but it goes wrong in two predictable places: people pull the bath before it is fully free and take a row of tiles off the wall with it, and people underestimate what a cast iron bath weighs on a staircase. Both are avoidable by doing the disconnection and the freeing properly before any lifting starts.

Safety

Two real hazards. A cast iron bath is a two-person lift at minimum and it will break bones, tiles and floorboards if it slips — never take one down stairs alone, and never assume you can control it on a turn. Cutting an acrylic or steel bath up creates razor edges and, on steel, flying enamel chips: gloves, eye protection and a dust mask are not optional. Isolate the water before disconnecting anything.

What you'll need

Adjustable spanner and water pump pliers
A sharp trimming knife with spare blades
Gloves and eye protection
Buckets, old towels and a dust sheet
A basin wrench for tap backnuts you cannot reach
A junior hacksaw or a multi-tool for cutting seized tails
A reciprocating saw or a jigsaw with a coarse blade for cutting acrylic up
A sledgehammer, only for cast iron

Step by step

Isolate the water and drain down.Turn off the isolating valves on the bath tap tails if there are any; otherwise turn off the stopcock and, for a gravity hot supply, the gate valve on the cylinder or the tank. Open the bath taps and leave them open — this drains the pipes and tells you the isolation actually worked.
Take the panel off and look at everything first.Identify the tap tails, the waste, the trap, the overflow hose and the wall batten. Work out what will need cutting rather than undoing. Photograph it — you will want the pipe positions when the new bath goes in.
Disconnect the taps.Undo the tap connectors at the tails, with a bucket underneath. If a backnut is seized solid and you are scrapping the taps anyway, cut the tails with a junior hacksaw rather than fighting them. Cap or plug the open supply pipes as soon as they are free.
Disconnect the waste.Unscrew the trap from the waste tail by hand and expect stale water. Pull the trap off the waste pipe. If the waste pipe runs into a solvent-welded fitting, cut the pipe cleanly rather than trying to twist it out — you will be putting a new connection on anyway.
Cut the silicone all the way round.Run a sharp blade along both edges of the bead — bath side and tile side — for the full length of every joint including the ends. Then lift the bulk of the bead away. If the bath was tiled over the rim, the tile edge has to be released too.
Free the rim from the wall batten.Look for screws through the bath rim lugs into the wall batten. Take them out. On a bath tiled into the wall, run a blade or a thin scraper into the joint until the rim is genuinely free — this is the step people skip, and skipping it is how a course of tiles comes off.
Break the bath free before lifting.Push the bath away from the wall a centimetre or two first, along its length. If it will not move, something is still holding it: another fixing, adhesive on the feet, or a tile lip over the rim. Find it. Do not lever.
For acrylic or steel, decide whole or cut up.If it will go through the door and down the stairs whole, take it whole with two people. If not, cut it: acrylic with a jigsaw or reciprocating saw, steel with a grinder or a reciprocating saw with a metal blade. Both create sharp edges — gloves, eye protection, and tape the cut edges before carrying.
For cast iron, choose lifting or breaking honestly.A cast iron bath is typically well over a hundred kilograms empty. If you have two strong people, a clear route, no stairs and a way to control it, lift it. If any of those is missing, break it up: cover it completely with a heavy dust sheet or old duvet to contain the fragments, wear full eye and ear protection and gloves, and hit it through the covering. Cast iron shatters and the pieces are sharp and heavy.
Protect the room before anything moves.Lay hardboard or thick cardboard over the floor along the whole route out, including the landing and the stairs. Take the door off its hinges if the clearance is marginal.
Cap the pipes and check for damage underneath.With the bath out, cap the supply pipes properly and look hard at the floor and the wall that has been hidden for twenty years. Wet or soft floorboards under a bath are common and are far easier to deal with now than after the new bath is in.

Common mistakes

Pulling the bath before the sealant and rim fixings are fully released — The rim takes the bottom course of tiles with it, turning a bath swap into a retiling job.
Lifting a cast iron bath down stairs with two people and no plan — There is no way to stop it once it starts going. This is how people lose fingers and stair spindles.
Cutting a steel bath without eye protection — Enamel chips off in hard fragments at speed when the shell is cut or struck.
Not capping the open supply pipes immediately — Someone turns the water back on to use the kitchen and floods the bathroom.

Checklist

Water isolated and pipes drained
Taps disconnected and supply pipes capped
Trap and waste disconnected
All silicone cut on both edges, all round
Rim fixings removed and the rim confirmed free of the tiles
Route out cleared and floor protected
Gloves, eye protection and a helper for anything heavy
Floor and wall inspected once the bath is out