The Form
In plan, a corner entry enclosure is a rectangle with two sides on the room's walls and two sides in glass. Each glass side is a fixed panel at the wall and a door toward the corner. In the sliding version, the most common, each door slides back behind its fixed panel, so the corner opens without anything moving into the room. In the bi-fold version, each door folds against its fixed panel; in the hinged version, each door swings, usually outward, and the two part at the corner. The sides can be equal, giving a square enclosure, or unequal where one wall run is longer. The doors are a mirrored pair, and the fixed panels sit in wall profiles that take up wall variation, so the doors, not the walls, decide the line of the corner.
- Fixed panel at each wall, door toward the corner on each side
- Sliding most common; bi-fold and hinged versions exist
- Equal or unequal sides; the doors are a mirrored pair
- Wall profiles absorb wall variation
Quadrant and Hinged Corner Compared
A quadrant enclosure also sits in a corner, but its front is a curve, a quarter-circle in plan, and its doors slide along that curve. It removes the outer corner altogether and so takes less floor in front of the opening; its glass is bent and its tray and parts are specific to the radius. A corner entry keeps the outer corner and flat glass, and gains a wider entry and a square showering area. A hinged corner enclosure keeps the square plan but puts a single hinged door on one glass side, with the other side fixed; it gives a clean fixed corner and one door to maintain, but a narrower entry that needs swing room. The choice is a floor question: a quadrant where the room in front is tight, a hinged corner where one side has swing room, a corner entry where the space is square and the diagonal entry is wanted.
- Quadrant: curved front, doors on the curve, less floor in front
- Hinged corner: one door on one side, narrower entry
- Corner entry: flat sides, doors meeting at the corner, widest entry
- Decide by the floor in front and the shape of the space
Tray, Hardware and the Corner
The enclosure stands on a square or rectangular tray of the same side lengths, or on a formed floor with its own upstand and fall to the drain; the tray edge is where the fixed panels and door tracks sit, so tray and enclosure are specified from one drawing. The hardware is doubled: two sets of rollers and tracks, or two sets of hinges, one per side, in one finish. The critical point is the corner where the doors meet. There is no wall to seal against, so the doors close on each other with magnetic strips or an overlapping seal, and the corner has to be plumb and the tracks level for that seal to close along its whole height; an enclosure out of true shows a gap at the top or bottom of the meeting edge. Those corner seals wear first, so a project holds spares. WNS Global makes corner entry enclosures in its Foshan factory and confirms side lengths, door type, glass and hardware on a dimensioned drawing before production.
- Square or rectangular tray, or a formed floor
- Doubled hardware, one set per side, in one finish
- Doors seal on each other; corner plumb, tracks level
- Corner seals wear first; hold spares
