The towel bar beside our tub is not a grab bar. I have known that since we bought this house in 1988, and Marge has known it longer than I have. For a couple of years it was still what she reached for when she stepped over the tub wall. One hand on the bar, one hand on the tile, one foot up and over, then the pause before the second foot came across. I would hear that pause from the hallway and stop what I was doing.
In April I ordered a Drive Medical tub transfer bench and put it together on the bathroom floor. It has been in that tub about seven months now, and Marge uses it every time she bathes. The bench did not fix her knees and it did not teach her anything. What it did was take the step out of the bath, and that turned out to be the whole problem. Here are ten reasons it beats stepping over the wall, in the order I would tell a neighbor.
The step over the tub wall is the one part you can remove
The Drive Medical Tub Transfer Bench straddles the wall so you sit down first and slide across second. Two legs in the tub, two on the floor, and the seat height sets to your tub.
Amazon Check Today's Price on Amazon →You sit down before a foot leaves the floor
The order of operations is the whole argument, and I did not understand it until I watched her use it. Stepping over a wall means standing on one leg while you swing the other one across a hard edge. This bench means your weight is already on a seat before you lift anything. Same bathroom, same tub, same woman. One version has her balanced on one leg and the other does not.
Two legs inside the tub, two legs on the bathroom floor
The bench straddles the wall. Two legs sit down inside the tub, two sit on the mat outside it, and the seat runs across the top. That is what keeps it from behaving like a chair balanced on a wet ledge. When Marge shifts from the outside end to the inside end, the load moves from the floor legs to the tub legs and nothing tips. I am not a physical therapist and I will not pretend to know the engineering limits, but I know what a thing feels like when it is loaded wrong.
The seat height sets to your tub, not the other way around
The legs on the Drive Medical bench adjust, and the seat sits between 17.5 inches and 22.5 inches off the floor. I set ours so the seat lands just above the tub wall, which means Marge is not climbing up onto it and not dropping down into it. She sits, slides across, and her feet find the tub floor on the inside. If your tub sits differently than ours, you set the legs differently. I did it once with the bench upside down on a towel.
A 15.5 inch seat depth gives you somewhere to slide
A seat that is too shallow turns the slide across into a scoot, and a scoot on a wet surface is the part nobody wants. The seat here measures 15.5 inches deep, enough that Marge can sit down on the outside end, lift one leg and then the other, and still have a hand's width of seat under her. She is 5 foot 4 and about 150 pounds. For a much larger person I would measure before ordering rather than guess.
About 10 pounds, so it moves when I want the tub
The whole bench is listed at 10 pounds. I lift it out and lean it against the wall when I want to shower, then put it back when I am done. I am 74 with a replaced right knee and I do not think about it. If it weighed what the tub does I would have bolted it down and turned the hall closet into a second bathroom. Ten pounds is why the thing gets used instead of parked in the garage.
Aluminum frame and a plastic seat, so it wipes clean
The frame is aluminum and the seat and back are plastic, which matters in a bathroom more than it sounds. There is no wood to soak up water and no steel at the leg joints to rust. Once a week I wipe the seat with the same cloth I use on the tub, and after a mildew spell in July I carried the whole thing out to the back patio, hosed it off, and let it dry in the sun. Seven months of daily use and it still looks like April.
It fits a standard tub-shower combo without rebuilding the bathroom
We have one bathroom, a standard 60 inch tub-shower combo, and it is the only tub in the house. The bench sits in it without the wall being opened up or a bracket run through the tile. In a house from the 1950s with original tile, that is not a small thing. I spent 38 years taking other people's houses apart, and I can tell you the fix that needs no demolition is the fix that actually gets finished on a Saturday.
A handheld shower head finishes the job
The bench alone does not solve rinsing. Marge cannot stand under the fixed head and reach everywhere, so the same weekend I put in a handheld shower head on a hose. That was the only extra thing we bought for this setup. The hose reaches the outside end of the bench where she sits, so she rinses before she slides in or after she slides out, whichever she likes. I put it on the existing arm with a wrench and a roll of tape and it has not leaked.
She bathes on her own schedule again
Before April, a bath meant waiting until I was in the house and within earshot. Nobody said so out loud. It is just what it comes to when the wall is the hard part. Now she goes in when she wants, shuts the door, and takes as long as she takes. I will not sit here and claim a piece of bathroom equipment gave my wife her dignity back, because that is her business and not mine to hand out. I will tell you she stopped asking me to stand in the hall.
A limited lifetime warranty on something used every day
The Drive Medical bench carries a limited lifetime warranty, which I read the way I read any warranty, as a sign the maker expects the frame to outlast the bathroom. Nothing on ours has cracked, bent or loosened in seven months of daily use, and I check the leg height about once a month out of habit from all those years of service calls. The paperwork lives in the folder with the water heater manual. For a bench we bought once, that is the right kind of boring.
What I'd Skip
I would skip the shower chair, and I say that having read the listings rather than owning one. A plain shower chair sits inside the tub, which means you still cross the wall to reach it, and the crossing is the part we were trying to get rid of. I would skip treating the towel bar as a grab bar, because ours is not one and I have known that since 1988. And I would skip waiting. This bench was not complicated. If I were you I would ask my physical therapist how the getting in and out should go, ask our doctor the balance questions, and leave the leg height to whoever is handy with a wrench.
Two legs inside the tub, two on the bathroom floor, and she is sitting down before either foot leaves the ground. Everything else about this bench is just leg height.
Seven months in, it is the first thing in that bathroom I would buy again
The Drive Medical Tub Transfer Bench has been in our one bathroom since April, legs set so the seat sits just above the tub wall. About 10 pounds, 15.5 inch seat depth, and Marge uses it every time she bathes without anyone standing in the hall.
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