How about this one...

[Rob Z]

My friend Jim, who is an estimator for a very large tile company in the NoVA area, called me today with the following:

His guys got to the job today to mud a shower pan and do other tile work in the house. They call him on the Nextel and requested that he come by the job "real quick".

It turns out that the plumber that installed the pan laid the pan material on the flat only, cut back from the walls by an inch or so. Nothing over the curb. Nothing up the walls. Jim said the pan liner was glued to the subfloor.

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[LDavis]

What a relief! I was convinced we had the "hack" market cornered here in "my-neck-of-the-hills". I'll bet that plumber has relatives here.

[cx]

Mmmmm, you suppose that's why my tile man doesn't even want someone else installing the drain? Not even moi! "Just box around the drain pipe and leave it alone", says he.

OK, fine, says moi.

[Rob Z]

Oh yeah, I forgot to add that this guy put staples all around the perimeter of this pan.

Not that staples would leak more than having an inch of exposed wood all the way around!

To date, I have not gone to a single job where the plumber-installed pan was acceptable to use. I always have to tear it out. And like Kelly's tile man, I want to do the drain, because then the top of the drain is installed level. Ever tried to mud around a drain that's tilted?

[John Bridge]

<<Ever tried to mud around a drain that's tilted?>>

Are you kidding? They're all tilted, aren't they?

The plumbers who install the pans in the castles I work in do an excellent job. Artwork in shower pans, if that's possible.

On the other hand, I've got one with a sort of trap door cut through the bottom of it displayed in another area of this site. I'll find it and bring it over.
http://www.johnbridge.com/pics/showerpan.jpg
I have yet to figure this one out. The rectangle of material my helper is holding up overlaps the rectangular cutout in the original pan by about 6 inches all the way around. It was simply laid in with no glue or anything. You'll also notice the material didn't go up the wall very far, and it didn't cover the curb, not that any of that would matter. The drain flange is above the concrete subfloor (which wasn't pre-floated).

The shower area was depressed about 3 inches when the slab was poured, and that's not unusual around here. It seems for years that tract house builders have had the idea that water will go down into the ground instead of leaching into the plates, etc. Can't talk them out of that, it seems.

Fortunately, we got to this house only a couple years after it was built. There was not a lot of wood damage. The shower is adjacent to an outside wall, and the owners discovered the leak by observing water leaching out the weep holes in the brick veneer.

Rob, I've also run into pans like the one you described that only covered the floor. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

[Edited by John Bridge on 08-25-2001 at 11:14 AM]