Just bouncing around an idea and would like your advice. I am going to add a shower in the basement and it will be in the corner of a concrete foundation with one foundation wall being to the exterior and one to the garage. I plan to use glass block for two walls and my general tought is to just use the concrete foundation walls as the other tile surface.
Given that I will be sacrificing insulation (I live in west central Illinois) and the tile will be a heat sink but we are only taking about maybe 70 sq foot +/-. (No exterior insulation)
The advantage in my mind is nothing to waterproof. No wood nothing organic. Just tile and concrete. I’m going to have to break up some floor for the drain so i might as well pull out the 5×5 slab and put back a sloped floor. I plan on two shower heads so I should have good coverage with hot water to offset the cooler tile wall.
Any thoughts.
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cuss
In many basements I've been in/worked on and showered in ..............a block shower with concrete floor and block damn at the door has worked well for many, many years.
It was a typical install in '20's on basements. Use was minimal, but if kept clean it was a viable way to add a shower to the home.
That you want to add tile to the mix certainly would work and be more pleasing to the eye.. I would concentrate on the corners of both the glass and block walls. Most of the above basements were unfinished (no finish floors) and the detail in the corners was probably caulking and any water that may have leaked under didn't make much of a difference. However, it's also a place where if damp could harbor mold and mildew.
Thats my general thought too. Why introduce framing and then have to do a whole kerdie thing to keep it dry (which despite how fantastic it is and how well installed, is likely to fail at some point.) As you state, the only place I have a real concern is in the corners where the glass block and tile/foundation would meet. Obviously, mold can live on the mortar or the tiles in the middle of the wall if you don't bother to clean it but as far as causing damage to the rest of the bathroom, the corner joint will be the critical weak point.
Any thoughts on running the plumbing for the shower controls? Any way to run it inside the glass block wall and not have it show?
to my knowledge
you'd have to drill out the glass block to do anything with pipes run down from above-and then the control and the pipe back up to the head.
Kohler makes a shower tower that holds controls (and presumably could hold the valve?) tho it too might just be a garish cover that means the controls and pipes still need space for rough in.
However, you could come down the garage block with a chase for it then tile that in. Defeats you anti framing deal but will work.
Most of those old style showers had all the stuff on the surface of the concrete block. The mixer was very simple, no pressure balance etc. Supplies down, shower feed up.