Custom curved shower pan

[LevelItUp]

Alright guys, I'm kind of out on a ledge here with this one. Lots of oddball stuff on this.

I'm rennovating a 73 sovereign airstream strailer and I'm to my most dreaded stage: the shower. Here are the details.

Would ultimately like to tile the straight wall (3/4" plywood) and the pan. Not too worried about the wall, was just going to patch it flat and redguard it. The pan is another story. I have a curved wall in there that is either going to require a boat load of relief cuts to make that curve with a PVC liner or im hoping someone else has a brilliant suggestion. I hear a decent number of boat guys make fiberglass pans, but it sounds like they dont tile over them.

The curved wall I was planning on using FRP (also with a bajillion reliefs cut as that wall is a dome, not just a single plane curve) and then use some sort of patching material over the seams and then get probably an epoxy paint for the walls.

As this is in a trailer 14' back from the rear axle, it sees a lot of movement going down the road. I'd like to hear is anyone has had any luck with adhesives vs mortar, as I don't think even a modified mortar would hold up to that. The RV guys on their forums all complain about their grout falling out even with urethane grouts, so I'm wonding if doing everything in silicone caulk is a reasonable option.

In summary, several things Im trying to find:
- Has anyone used adhesives to tile both on a wall and floor and their thoughts
- Using silicone solely as grout
- Building a pan liner to a curved wall
- And lastly, a non-cementious product I can use to build a pan slope that I can also glue the pan liner too (cant have the whole liner lifting off my bed and tossing the tiles everywhere)

Thanks for anything you guys may have! The RV guys are kind of more a DIY crowd and haven't had too much advice on this.

Colemann

Edit: Tile is a 2" hex tile just for reference

[jadnashua]

Don't think Custom Building Products would like the RedGard on plywood in a shower. You should call them. They allow it on a floor for decoupling, but then, it's not waterproofing.

If it were a simple curve like a cylinder, Kerdi or the KerdiBoard that is precut so it will bend probably would handle it, but don't know about a compound curve...never tried it. I suppose you could make additional cuts across the existing ones. Tiling, even with those smaller tiles on the curve might be challenging.

You could do this with one of the sheet membranes and waterproof the entire thing. You'd end up needing to make some cuts, and then the edges would overlap to follow the curve. When they weren't at least 2" overlap, you'd need to then band them.

But, not sure how much the exterior walls flex...my guess is that no tile would survive long-term, regardless of what you had underneath it. Fiberglass is sounding more viable, at least to me, and forget the tile.

[LevelItUp]

Jim

Just as a clarification the compound curved wall will not be tiled, it will just be painted. No tile pattern is going to look good on an arbitrary compound curve and besides that, that is waaaay over my ability level to get that to work.

As for manufacturer recommendations and warranties, no manufacurer will warranty anything in an RV/ mobile application. Especially airstreams where the walls are designed to flex and move in order to absorb some of the road stresses. I've found this is a world of best guesses and practices. The benefit of that is that there is less expectation for the longevity of these installs. There are plenty of people out there who use standard tiling practices in trailers, and it will last them 10 years or so, but I'm just trying to pick yalls brains and push things a hair past the comfort zone to see if there may be a better solution

Also, this is only my second post and I haven't figured out how to quote a previous post, so if anyone has a pointer on that as well...

Colemann

[nelsonkoehn]

Look up Bob Ault

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8lTsnTG1Me4

[jadnashua]

HOw are you going to tie that paint into the pan so water doesn't get down the edge of your pan? To me, fiberglass is looking better and better over the entire interior of the shower.