I need to install Durock over a copper shower pan before tiling… not sure what to use for adhesive… also homeowner wants me to slope it towards middle drain by cutting it into pieces and shimming outside edges… doesn’t sound to me as though that would create a very solid base.. seems like you’d be better off making a slight slope with your thinset….. help!
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Replies
what?
Jeff
Buck Construction
Artistry In Carpentry
Pittsburgh Pa
Ya gotta love this place.yourcontractor@aol.com
Rut ro. Looks like I'm going to need to start tearing out a few large showers that have mortar beds. This is going to get REALLY expensive very fast.
You don't install Durock, or any cement board, over any kind of form-in-place shower pan. If you're even thinking about it, you're making a huge mistake.
You should put a cement mortar bed in there. It should be several inches thick, and pitched towards the drain. And since the pan is copper, you need to coat it with something so the cement doesn't eat the copper.
And you need to have some slope under the pan, too. That way any moisture that gets thru the tile and cement will make it to the drain, and not pool under the pan.
Once the mortar bed is in place, use thinset to install the tiles.
It sounds like you have a flat copper pan?
Whoever built that does not know what they are doing insofar as showers go.
Allowing the HO to specify how to build this shower wrong is not a good idea, and your post indicates you don't know how to do it either.
No offense, but showers have to be right, or they are wrong. No inbetween.
Time to stop and do some research before you waste a lot of time and money.
Look for a post by Mongo & Kerdi or maybe just Mongo and shower, that will get you started.
Joe H
Sounds like you're headed down the wrong road on this one. You might wanna head over to the John Bridge forum and do some research on shower bases. Durock, sloped thinset, etc. ain't gonna cut it.
Mike Hennessy
Pittsburgh, PA
Thinset has "thin" in it. Meaning it's not designed to be installed "thick". You want a different material for that.
The membrane need to be on top of the preslope. A flat copper pan is a code violation. Copper pans were the cadillac way back when, they are the weak point in showers with today's materials. Toss the copper. I know it's purdy and shiny and when you get to say "copper pan" people "ooooh" and "ahhhh" cause it's copper so it must be high-end construction.
But it's not gonna work.
Shimming a flat pan to be sloped won't work. Adhering durock to copper then tiling over the durock won't work.
What you and your homeowner are proposing is failure waiting to be ripped out.
Take the copper pan and hang it on the wall, or go outside and hang it from a tree branch and call it "art". People will "ooohhh" and aaahhhh" over that.
Mongo