Happy Dad's Shower Project

[1HappyDad]

Originally Posted by cx

James, if you plan to make that entire area a shower, you really need to forget about using a traditional method of building the receptor. Strike that from your thinking all together. Even if you center the drain, which you really need to do, your traditional build shower floor is gonna be at least 3 1/2" high at the shower entrance. You can do that, of course, and build a high curb, but I just don't think it's practical. I wish you would start thinking seriously about a direct bonded waterproofing membrane-type shower construction.

Second thing I don't think is the least bit workable is the location of your shower controls. I prefer the control to be located such that you can turn on the shower without being in the spray, but still close enough to adjust while using the shower. Put the heads where you want therm, then locate the controls where you need them.

OK well I finally figured out how to quote now that I'm on a laptop this evening.

My goal at this point is to have this as nice and professional looking as possible; I certainly do not want a hack job by any means. Straight lines and cleanliness are next to godliness. lol

May we dive into the direct bonded waterproofing? I'm asking for guidance and help on this as I have no idea where to start and am rather intimidated. I know enough to be dangerous with the typical construction...I'm trying to put this together in my head from what I just quickly reviewed on Kerdi's site and google, but I am probably wrong here.

First, I will obviously need to move the drain to the CL of the shower floor. Once the drain has been moved, will the old recessed shower bed need to be filled in and leveled off with the existing slab?

Next, I'm assuming I will need to install a small curb and lay a pre-slope of 4:1 material set at 1/4"-ft slope through the entire shower area to get any water to the drain.

Moving on, the direct bonded membrane will be installed on top of the pre-slope with thinset and using a direct bonded flange drain system.

From this point it is basically ready for tile on top of the membrane sheet with thinset?


In regards to the controls; had this not all changed, we would have been able to stand off to the side and turn on the shower without being sprayed. Now with things moving around again, I'm going to offset the valves a bit more. My OCD got me again with everything being perfectly aligned. The light above is centered over the drain; control valves head and rainhead are all inline and centered as well.


Please accept my apologies for the continued questions -- you guys are much more experienced than I could ever dream to be on the topic of tiling and proper waterproofing. This project was unplanned, uninvited and on a budget which makes things tough. Add in the impossibility to find a competent contractor has made it quite difficult.

[1HappyDad]

Seems that everyone is set on a traditional pre slope, pan and mortar bed.

I had another contractor (contractor 2) come by late this afternoon and offered a completely different plan yet somewhat similar to the other company who wanted to move the drain:

- Fill in the existing drop shower area to match the slab grade.
- Leave the drain where it is
- Install a rubber pan for the entire shower area
- Install a small curb at the entrance - 2"-3" in height so the pan can have something to anchor to.
- Slope the shower accordingly at 3/8" per foot
- Slope the remainder of the shower area at 1/4" per foot towards the drain and the furthest point near the entrance would be about 1-1/2"


I asked about the tile lining up along the bottom and he was certain it would not be an issue where the other contractor (contractor 1) was dead set on moving the drain.

His proposed design is option #1 on my high quality sketch below.




Contractor 1 is very confident about moving the drain to the CL of the stall and sloping the entire area to the drain. Option #2 on the above high quality sketch.

Neither are familiar with bonded systems and have never done them.

My main goal was to have a shower like this:


I'm not so sure that is possible at this point...

[1HappyDad]

Not sure why I didn't think of this before, or if this would even be an option

Open up the slab and extend the drain to the wall and stub up

Fill the existing recessed slab and set a pre-slope
Set a wide linear drain
Slope from the left wall to the linear drain on the right.
Use a bonded membrane setup versus a preslope, pan liner and mortar bed
Shower valves stay where they are



Thoughts?

[HouseOfJoe]

I like that idea a lot. For as large a shower area as you have it makes sloping the floor a much simpler process. If you don’t use a linear drain you have to center the drain otherwise your pitch will be crazy in the shorter areas.

At the end of the day the location of the controls is your personal preference. Whatever you think is going to work best for you is what you should do.

[1HappyDad]

Just a quick update. I got side tracked and ended up finishing up my drywall work outside of the shower area. Textured, primed and painted as well as finished up the lighting.

So back to the shower fiasco.

My wife is set on a curbless design; there was just no way it was going to happen and obtain the proper slope on nearly 8' long x 6' w shower without screwing the bottom tile cuts up.

Anyways, I found a concrete crew on a project I was working on last week and we struck up a conversation regarding the slab. They gave such a good price I couldn't turn it down.

They came and had the raised slab out in about 1.5hrs with all of us working. Now I'm open to the soil below and can move the drain where necessary with minimal work at this point.

We setup a negative air system in the bathroom, sectioned off the shower area with heavy plastic and got to work. Used a garden hose to control the dust from the chop saw and a shop vac to keep the area reasonably clean.

I cleaned up and have the fans on for the next 24-48hrs to make sure everything is dry. Once it is dry and the drain is moved (if necessary at this point), I'll apply a termiticide, lay down new visqueen and go from there. Tile crew will most likely have to set a bit of concrete to build up where the final grade will need to be, but I'll most likely help with that.

I'll have some pics later on

[1HappyDad]

Turns out I may be very lucky on the drain. I dug down about 5" next to the vent stack in the wall that goes to the roof. The 4 inch stack coming from the roof does a 45 and goes to the center of the shower stall. There is a street sweep/wye where the 4 inch continues to the toilet waste line and the other reduces to 2" and is in direct line with the shower drain.

In the attic there is a 2" vent pipe coming up from the cinder block just to the left of the window that ties back into the 4" stack in the attic.

I ran a camera down the shower drain and the P trap sweeps back up and is connected to the 4" stack at the reducer.

Now that I have the slab out, I could technically move the drain if I really had to. I'd rather keep it where it is or put a linear drain on the wall under the window.

At this point I'm waiting on an estimate from a fellow forum member that I reached out to and will go from there.

[HouseOfJoe]

Wow, congrats on taking the bull by the horn‘s and getting the concrete out of there. Now anything you want to do will be a whole lot easier. That’s fantastic!

My vote is certainly for a linear drain under the window, I think that would look great and then you can slope the entire floor towards the window wall. Having an essentially flat floor (though still sloped) opens up a lot of choices on what tile you can use on the floor as well.

[1HappyDad]

I'm back at it again and have a quick question in regards to the drain that has been a thorn in my side.

As shown above, I now have the slab up and mostly have access to the 2" shower drain pipe before it goes under the existing 3" shower concrete slab.

This is a layout of the drain pipes


The 2" line coming from the P-trap is going uphill at 1/2+ climb for 3' where the pipe size increases to 4" at the T connection.

The soil stack is 4" and exits to the vent stack on the roof.
The 4" line at the T continues toward the toilet. The toilet is removed; the waste line for the toilet continues in the same direction to the kitchen.

Now this drain / pipe have been in place since 1999 when the home was constructed, long before we owned it. It worked before and I'm assuming that it will continue to work. I put a 1/2" garden hose in the line to flush it prior to poking around and it drained just fine.

I'm not a master plumber, but shouldn't a drain have a 1/4" fall per foot?

[cx]

The 2" drain line must have at least a 1/4" per foot slope to drain. The 4" drain line must have at least a 1/8th" per foot slope to drain.

My opinion; worth price charged.

[1HappyDad]

Just a FAST update -- I'm about 90% complete with the project now.

Once I'm finished up expect to see some photographs and a good long read of the adventure.

Not mentioning names just yet, but I reached out to a forum member who I ended up hiring after dozens of local folks were simply overwhelmed by the project. He did fantastic job and the attention to detail was great!

More to come!

[cx]

James, you'll note in posts #62, 63, 66 and 68 the reason we want you to attach your photos from storage on your computer, not by linking to third party storage.

There's certainly no reason for you not to tell us who did the work unless that person doesn't want us to know.