custom tile shower pan technique ?
Hello, Maybe FHB has had an article relating to this exact subject matter . But how can i find which issue it is in anyone Know? Anyhow… I am remodeling my own First floor bathroom. We have removed everything. In place of the tub we will build a 48″ high knee wall to have glass above it reaching a height ob about 6-7′ or so. leaving a 26″ space for a full glass door hinged. with a curb under the door approx 4 1/2 ” high. Question is in doing all this I would hate to miss a step to ensure a watertight application. Should I line the entire rough framing with tar paper prior to cement board? Then at what point do i apply the membrane ? before cement board also?and what technique should i use to taper the floor toward the drain? Thin set? Mortar? What is the proper pitch? Etc. Lastly i will be installing limestone 12 x 12 tiles throughtout. any tips on keeping them all even on the face, perfectly even? Thanks for any & all comments. Shotsy
Replies
You need lots more information than you can get in short messages on this board. Get a book. Taunton publishes a very good one called "Setting Ceramic Tile", by Michael Byrd.
Yeah, you probably need the book.
Order for floor is subfloor, tar paper, lathe, pre-slope (1/4" per foot), membrane, setting bed (quarter inch per foot), thinset and tile.
My order is demo; poly over the framing; CBU half way down walls; pre-slope; membrane; rest of CBU, resting CBU quarter inch above membrane, curb, setting bed, tile.
Do not use limestone in a shower. It is very porous and will stain, and will get yucchy with soap, shampoo, etc very quick unless you wipe it down daily, like a maid in a Hilton. Use 2" mosiacs on the floor, and a tile, as opposed to a stone on the walls. You will thank me for this advice.
Boris
"Sir, I may be drunk, but you're crazy, and I'll be sober tomorrow" -- WC Fields, "Its a Gift" 1934
Speak to me Boris. I have a customer who is in the planning stages of limestone slab, perhaps tile for the walls in a custom shower. B/4 I pursue this further, is this a bad idea using limestone in a shower for the walls? Thank you.Remodeling Contractor just outside the Glass City.
Quittin' Time
I have seen nothing but problems with natural stone in showers. Think about it just for a moment.
Dirty, greasy water filled with soap, suds, shampoo, urine etc. Stays wet a long time.
A surface that has hundreds of holes, nooks, cavities that suck up all that stuff.
There is no friggin way I would want Marble, Saltillo Slate Travrtine or Limestone any where near a shower. It will stain and will be a mold magnet.
That having been said, customers really like the look of natural stone in showers and baths. I warn them about it, they insist, and sometimes I just say hire someone elese. One job a year ago the customers picked out some cheap a s s c r a p p y slate which I advised against, and it literally started melting after 4 months. Customer complained but acknowledged that I tried to talk them out of it, but nevertheless lost a good customer.
Pick some porceline. This is water impervious. It is the best stuff for showers. My two cents.
Regards,
Boris
"Sir, I may be drunk, but you're crazy, and I'll be sober tomorrow" -- WC Fields, "Its a Gift" 1934
I trimmed out a shower with a filled/polished limestone (door "jamb", casing, and curb) and sealed it with a very expensive sealer whose name escapes me (+/- $50/pint or something fraudulent like that). The curb and inner surfaces of the jamb/trim get wet every time it's used, and no problems at all after two years of heavy use--the limestone still looks brand new. The floor and wall tile are porcelain.
Agree that the original poster needs the book. It's not necessarily hard to do a full tile shower, but there are a lot of steps and you've got to get them all right! MB's book is essential. Anyone using it should know that the recommendation is no longer to embed the wall tile backer board (if used) in the floor mud--you complete the floor mud and then hold the backer board above it, with a silicone joint.
Aside from all the admonisions about using a porous stone in your shower, and to reinforce Boris' suggestion of using nothing larger than 2x2 ceramics on the floor (matte glazed) - you'l have a devil of a time setting a 12x12 unit on a compound sloped surface like a shower floor. The floor *must* be sloped and should be sloped at least 1/4" per foot.
Unless you carefully plan the drain location to be exactly in the center of the shower space you'll have corners of the tile sticking up all over the place. If the drain is located in the center you *could* create four sloped planes with distinct valleys between the drain and the corners of the shower but you'll still have a tough time getting a smooth floor at the drain itself.
If stone is what you really want, look into granite for the walls, only. Or a smaller granite tile for the floor.
There are some trick ways to build a shower floor using larger units but they go beyond simple plumbing and tile installation procedures.
Dennis in Bellevue WA
[email protected]
Beings how I can not find the one I was really looking for, I'll suggest these to ya Shotsy, in this order,,, Sept. 2001, # 141, Nov. 1995, #98, page 86, Jan.1995, #92. Best of Luck, and do not forget to have some fun while you are working. Jim J
Several replies have suggested using no larger than 2" porcelin tiles for the floor. That's good advice. With all of the grout lines you create a relatively slip resistant surface. I would be concerned about creating a skating rink effect using larger tiles.
Chip
I have set larger format tiles on a sloped setting bed but:
The tiles have to be cut along the planes of the slope, like cuts in a valley roof line. This is really really tricky and should not be attempted by anyone unless they have a lot of patience and an excess supply of tiles for screw ups.
If you try to set larger format tiles along the multiple slopes (remember the tile floor slopes in four different directions), the larger format tiles will have fairly large lips at the edges and will not fit flat.
Regards,
Boris
"Sir, I may be drunk, but you're crazy, and I'll be sober tomorrow" -- WC Fields, "Its a Gift" 1934
The new FHB Kitchens and Baths issue has a little blurb on a premade shower pan on which you can place tile directly, standard size 36X36, custom sizes available. I assume this cuts out the sloping and waterproofing hassles. I don't know anything about these kinds of premade pans, but maybe someone else here has used them.
Yes.
Bonsal and now I believe Noble Company has sold them. They run about $400 for the typical 4x4 shower. They are presloped and ready to tile. They eliminate the necessity of tar paper, preslope, membranes, and a setting bed. You just tile right on them.
They are best used for new construction. Remodels are impossible to fit with these, unless the size is fairly exact, which is never the case.
Still wouldn't use limestone or a large format tile on them. They are still sloped from all sides, right?
Regards,
Boris
"Sir, I may be drunk, but you're crazy, and I'll be sober tomorrow" -- WC Fields, "Its a Gift" 1934
We did a job recently that had a 5' square shower with the floor made from a single piece of 3/4" slab granite. The slab was sloped towards the plumbing wall and where it met the wall we fabricated a custom stainless steel gutter with a drain in the center, sloped to the each end. The gutter was flashed and sealed into the WP membrane below the granite and mud bed.
Looked pretty nice but not nice enough for all the fussing around it took.
...........
Dennis in Bellevue WA
[email protected]
Shotsy -
Nobody seems to have adressed you primary question that much regarding the waterproofing issue. Tar paper is *not* a waterproof membrane!!!! You need a continuous PVC type sheet membrane, folded carefully at the corners and with as few as possible seams, preferably none. This membrane needs to extend at least 6" above your curb *all the way around* the inside of the shower/tub. When you nail up the wonderboard or whatever tile backer you intend to use, *do not* nail or screw below the top of this membrane anywhere around the insid perimeter of the tub/shower.
Once installed and the shower drain clamping flange has been properly secured over the membrane, install a test plug in the drain and fill the pan with water, preferably up to the top of the curb or nearly so. Let it stand for 24 hours.
No leaks - you're in business. Leaks - much easier to fix now than when the job is finished and you discover rot, mold and mildew a few years down the road.
Once you start your finish work, protect the membrane with old carpet, heavy corrugated cardboard or such other stuff you might have lying around.
There are also liquid applied membranes, with or without a srim or mesh reinforcement, but I don't have much/any experience using them to offer any advice therewith.
Dennis in Bellevue WA
[email protected]
You might also want to check out a system I'm currently installing from Schluter ( http://www.schluter.com/english/products/2002/sectionf/overview-f/section-f.html ) which uses their membrane (similiar to Noble's CPE) as the LAST layer on top of the sloped floor. The tile is then thin-set directly on top. There are two things that are unique. The biggest one is that their floor drain is used with the system, and it drains from the top. There are no weep holes at the bottom. This makes much more sense to me, as putting the pan under all that deck mud means that if there's a leak, all that mud will get saturated before it gets down to the liner and working its way (hopefully) toward the drain. That's a lot of heavy, mold growing media lying around...
The second feature that's different from others is that they use the same membrane on top of all the walls of the shower. It again makes sense to me, rather than soaking a bunch of cement board (if there's a leak) and then hoping your felt paper or plastic film (both of which are shot full of staples and screws) will hold out the water (which also has no place to go, at that point). Instead, they recommend constructing the walls with standard drywall (easier, cheaper, faster) and then waterproofing with their membrane, which again is applied with thinset, building up corners just like one would do with felt paper.
One of the things I like about this method for the walls is that if there ever was a leak that escaped the membrane, the standard drywall would get spongy pretty fast, warning you of a problem. With cbu's, you would never know until the studs/joists were already well on their rotting way.
And finally, for your shower floor, there's another pre-sloped product you can buy from CurbBlocks (http://www.curbblocks.com) that is made from EPS and available in a large size. For my 4 by 8 foot shower, I figure it saved me and my floor from mixing, carrying, and placing about 530 pounds of deck mud. I'm just getting ready to put this down, and the only problem I can forsee is that it's fragile stuff until the tile goes down; it will dent, so I'll have to put down some combo of cardboard or plywood to spread my weight as I work my way out laying the membrane, and then the tiles.
>a system I'm currently installing from Schluter
They've also just come out with a pre-formed foam drain pan. Don't have to do the sloped floor. Just create a flat floor two inches lower than finished, dropin the foam pan, and cover with Kerdi.
I think it's only available in a 42" square, though... I needed something bigger!
It's amazing to me how well the Schluter products have taken with the local tile setting community where I live. I don't know of any contractors here that are not using it. That wasn't the case two years ago.
We have a two year old shower here that went into new construction, using the Kerdi membrane and Kerdi drain. I would not do it any other way.
One tile guy I know here keeps water in an OSB box he lined with Kerdi. A plugged Kerdi drain is in the bottom. When evaporation lowers the level, he adds more. With at least an 18" head, there has been no seepage for a year and a half.
They have 3 sizes, a 36 sq a 42 sq and a 3' x 6' or something close. Plus a way to extend beyond according to the tech. Haven't seen it personally, so just going by what he told me.