First Mud Job / Late night Deck Mud

[MB1973]

Hello all, great site and I can tell it is filled with very experienced tile folks.
I have layed alot of floor and wall tile but have a question on the mud job for a tiled in stand up shower:
Up here in CT many of my friends are omitting the pre-slope and laying the membrane atop of 3/4 plywood, i know from the "liberry" all say pre-slope but that adds another day for the plumber, and myself for general labor.

My real thought is to omitt and still use gravel to ensure that the weep holes within the drain not clog, well hopefully!!

Thanks for your thoughts....
Mike

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[muskymike]

Hi Mike, welcome! You NEED the preslope. With out it the water that gets in the pan will never get out creating a science project under your mud bed. Please put in the preslope. :cool:

[EEEO]

Ya gotta have a preslope. :nod:

[rickiroo]

I'm certainly not a pro (I'm slowly but surely getting through my own 1st shower project). However, the reasons I am re-doing this shower are:

1. The water was pooling around the perimeter of the shower because the tiles were pitched toward the walls instead of the drain.
2. Some of the tiles felt kind of loose.
3. No matter how much cleaning I did, I could not rid the bathroom of the mildew-y smell.

Having never tiled anything, I thought it might just need to be re-grouted... I thought grout was waterproof... So, I started the labor intensive feat of taking a grout saw to the shower floor. The problem is, all this really smelly water kept seeping out everywhere even after letting a dehumidifier run in the room for 3 days. At that point, I decided to start tearing it all up. Glad I did. The "shower pan" consisted of tile, lumpy mortar bed, PVC liner, plywood. The drain weepholes were also clogged with mortar. I won't even go into what was done to the curb. Not sure if this is normal or not, but the PVC liner (original color -orange) had turned black all along the section that goes from the shower floor and up the walls (mildew? still not sure and don't want to know). Before I started tearing it up, a contractor friend of my mother's (also, from up north) told me "all I would have to do to rebuild it was lay plywood, pvc liner, mud and then tile". I eventually found this site during the demo phase (thank you, John Bridge!) and after seeing what was under the mud, have decided that my mother's friend is full of it. I have since talked to him again and he insists that it's a waste of time to do the preslope. He says as long as the mud is sloped, it will drain properly. I don't think this is true. It just makes sense to have a preslope under the pvc liner. If the pvc liner is simply laid upon plywood it will be flat and the water that seeps through the mud will end up sitting on the liner with no place to go, regardless of how much of a slope is built on top of the pvc.

-Alena

[mctile]

Hey Mike-

If you think about it, it makes alot of sense. When you float your pan you use a dry-pack for a few reasons one being to allow any water that gets through the tile to be able to pass through and get to the pan liner. The slope on the dry pack will get most of the water to the drain but if water does get through and to the liner the only way for it to get to the weep holes is if the liner is sloped. This is why the pre slope is so important. This is not a step to be skipped and only takes a couple of minutes to do.

[Davy]

I agree with the others, it's needed. Most of us in this business have tore out many showers and we see the problem areas as we tear them out. Leaving out the preslope is one of the main problems along with clogged weepholes. Another one is leaving off the pan corners where the curb meets the jamb. That area catches alot of water and is one of the first places water gets past the pan liner. :)

[MB1973]

Hello all- just a little nervous, finished final mud eck at 1:00am, upon wake up east coast 6:00 am it is still quite soft, we had a pretty chilly night, house tem is around 65, any worries? mix was 5-1 by volume.

Thanks-
Mike B

[Tool Guy - Kg]

Hi Mike,
You have a common concern. If you thouroughly mixed it and used just enough water to make it into "sand castle" dampness, just hang tight and it'll firm up. :)




And I see that you have a couple threads on this same shower floor, so I combined them. Much better to keep questions on the same project together. :)

[MB1973]

Thanks all- Mud is solid and i can begin wall tilles!!

Mike