It seems I may have gotten a little ahead of myself in my shower project and nevr consulted a plumber (my brother inlaw is one). God only knows why I didn’t check with him first.
Anyway, I started with a plywood floor, then cement board, then a mortar wetbed followed by tile. I haven’t begun the walls or grouting yet. My brother inlaw stopped by and toild me I should have put in a pan also. Cosidering that I’m alread past that step what should I do? Rip it out and chalk it up to a lesson learned or go along my merry ignorant way? :smack:
Unless you can guarantee that your floor, walls, and the continuous joint between them (plus whatever you do to raise the enclosure to at least 3" above grade, listen to the plumber - water and plywood go not get along well (to put it mildly).
IOW: remember the mass showers in the gym/pool, whatever? That’s what you need to duplicate (and maitain) - a pan is cheap insurance.
I wouldn’t sleep well without a pan under there. I’d go back and correct a mistake before living with one for a long time. Fixing it is still shorter than living with the mistake.
You need to be perfect, and tile and mortar usually develop imperfections, which are part of aging. In most apps, it is meaningless, but in a shower = major headaches later.
Good timing, this thread. I am going to turn the footprint currently occupied by my bathtub into a shower stall. The area will grow an extra 16" wider. I doubt I’ll be able to find a shower pan that’s 5’ long by 3.5’ wide, so what do I do?
Install a tub (I used a flush-mount, and built a short (tiled) partition to close it off), and a tub/shower enclosure. This may or may not leave the current floor intact.
Use a shower pan, then enclosure (I created a quite usuable (3/4) bath in a 6’-0"x6’1" space this way (corner shower). This will require ripping out the current floor down to bare sub-floor (or cludge it to match existing floor over the entire tub area, then do the pan, et. al. atop it).
Either way, you are going open up at least one wall - have another bathroom available while doing this. Hire a real, live plumber to do the DWV - and while he/she is at it, have them install the shower/tub-shower valves and shower head stub.
p.s. - you will probably need a building permit to do this - if not, at least beware that where I live, every housing unit MUST have a tub - if you want to piss off an inspector, ignore the basics of the building code - as a student, I lived in a butchered house - the slumlord had stuck a shower stall in the old reach-in pantry. I doubt if he could have gotten away with that in ‘real’ housing. I also lived in a house in which the wall outlets were hooked up with 16 ga. extension-core wire, but that is another story…
I’m not an expert, but I’ve seen that done by building the rough pan with a plywood floor and 2x4 side rails, then laying a sheet of heavy gauge (1/8"-ish) rubber sheeting across the floor and up over the side rails. The floor leveler or cement board, grout, and tile are then applied over that.
These rubber sheets are sold specifically for this purpose, so I’m assuming it’s code-kosher, at least where I live.