Hi all,
I have gutted my bathroom and will be replaceing the fiberglass shower pan with an acrylic one. The old pan sat directly on the plywood. I did a dry fit and the pan rocks back and forth. I’ve searched the archives and find several different approaches. Some say use mortar mix, some expanding foam etc. What are your experiences with this problem?
Thanks in advance,
Kevin
Replies
Foam won't have a lot of compressive strength. I'd buy a $5 bag of drypack and set it in that. Don't stand in the pan to set it--otherwise you're setting yourself up for flexing at that point.
Regards,
Scooter
"I may be drunk, but you're crazy, and I'll be sober tomorrow." WC Fields, "Its a Gift" 1934
The absolute best thing I have ever used for this is Structo-Lite plaster. It has the texture of thick cottage cheese when mixed, and is easy enough to compress so that you can just set the pan in it and push it down a little. Do not stand in it, as mentioned above. It sets up quickly and sets up rock hard.
Study the bottom of your pan before deciding how to lay out the plaster. Sometimes a thin coat over the floor works best. The last one I did I put out a couple of dozen blobs, like baking cookies.
Mortar is way too hard to compress, in my opinion. It's for setting things like rocks and concrete blocks.
So your saying to have several indivdual contact points, not a "soup" of the stuff with contact across the entire underside of the pan?
There might be instructions from the manufacturrer as to exactly where to place the blobs. But if not, put a blob about every 4-6" apart. The blobs should be about the size of a tennis ball. Then when the pan is put in place, it will squish down the blobs as far as needed. The space between the blobs allows the excess to squeeze out.
"When asked if you can do something, tell'em "Why certainly I can", then get busy and find a way to do it." T. Roosevelt