Moments earlier, while enjoying the steamy pleasures of a very hot shower, I'd felt the "oor of the bath give under my heel. The crack's serrated edge scratched the skin of my foot, but neither the sight of blood nor a short stab of pain woke me up to the unlikely reality of what had just happened.

I mean, apart from in some kind of comedy show, who has ever heard of someone putting their foot through a bath? I'm not obese. I'm not even overweight, and the bath in my apartment was less than a year old.

It was several seconds later before I was suf"ciently composed to think of turning off the tap and stop the "ood of water pooling on the "oor under the bath.

My immediate concern was that the water would seep down into the apartment directly below mine, but a large bundle of old newspapers soaked up most of what at this stage seemed like a small lake extending over the entire bathroom "oor.

Later on, towel-dried, dressed and a little more composed, I examined the damage. The crack was roughly L-shaped and about three inches in length. By removing the bath's side panel and reaching underneath, I was able to press the depressed "ap back into alignment.

With the gaping hole no longer visible, the damage looked less irredeemable and the use of some type of commercial sealant seemed a possible stop-gap solution which might allow me continue using the shower until I had the bath replaced.

At Woodies, a helpful sales assistant recommended UniBond all-purpose sealant, which is waterproof and which "exes with movement. It worked a treat. I needed to place some newspaper on the "oor under the site of the damage to establish any evidence of a continuing leak.

Thankfully, there was none.

However chuffed I might have felt over the successful outcome of my DIY endeavours, I did realise that the solution was a temporary one.

"If you get a crack in your bath, you're in trouble, ' says Martin O'Reilly, marketing manager with the company that supplied the baths for the apartments in our development. "Using sealant sometimes offers a temporary solution, but it's never a permanent job. Sooner or later you're going to have to get a new bath."

The cheaper acrylic baths usually installed in modern apartments are not suitable for use in conjunction with shower units, he claims.

"Builders usually opt for them because they're cheap, light and easy to manoeuvre. You can quite comfortably throw one over your shoulder and walk around with it."

The cheapest acrylic bath available . . . which is what was installed in my apartment . . .

costs around 100 and is regarded as adequate for use in the normal, standard fashion.

"At just "ve millimetres it's really not thick enough to stand up to prolonged use if you're going to be standing in it to use it with a shower, " O'Reilly says. "A better option is the eight-millimetre version which costs from 200 upwards and which is more suitable for that purpose.

Better still would be a heavyduty steel bath, " he said.

"They're very popular and not any more expensive. A 1.6millimetre steel bath costs around the same as the cheap acrylic ones, but is much better suited for use with a shower. It's more robust and will stand up to more rough treatment."

According to O'Reilly, builders are disinclined to opt for steel baths because the extra weight means they're harder to transport and then to manoeuvre during installation.

He also claims that manhandling baths on site prior to installation sometimes means your bath can actually be damaged before you ever get to use it. You might have workers using an upturned bath as a makeshift table, or if a carpenter dropped a hammer onto the bath it could be weakened without there being any visible damage.

Today I have a spanking new steel bath. But when it's shower time I make sure to tread carefully, just in case.