Improper Installation of a Steel Composite Tub?

is a shower head installed in the wall above the tub? That would make this a tub-shower, not a tub. The vapor barrier question relates to this. Is this a tub-shower?

New tool: Make a roll of paper that you use to probe under the tub instead of the slim ruler. This will give you clearer information about the height of space under the tub, and whether or not the space is even everywhere. The ruler might tell you that too, if you can slide it back and forth on the floor under the tub. You can make a second tube of paper whose diameter is so large it may touch both tub bottom and the floor below. All of this effort is just background information, which you may not wish to share with the Monday morning team, at least not initially.

Retiling the wall, straight: When the bottom row of tiles is removed, they will pry them off the backer. You will have kept the backerboard intact. Those tiles will be thrown out; new tiles will be laid. I'm not sure if I can see in any one of the pictures clearly why the tiles had to angle out at the bottom. Perhaps one more picture would help answer this. Using a grinder, one can reduce the backer by a 1/8"th so that its thickness doesn't push the tile out -- this is information, not a recommendation to do this. Much depends on little distances that the photos don't show. If the tiling flange of the tub is not inside, underneath and inside, the backerboard's outside edge, then you have another big problem. If the tiling flange is indeed inside, then the tiles didn't need to angle out for this reason but for some other reason. If the tiling flange is up against the studs, and the backerboard overlaps and that overlap causes it to stick out at the bottom, then you have a couple options. One is to notch the studs beforehand; too late now. Another is to cut the backerboard. Another is to grind down the backerboard.

AFAIK, Fact: If mortar ever shrank, then brick wall cladding would drop a few inches as the mason moved up a building's side. FYI, mortar is mostly sand. The cement is a glue, holding sand grains together. When cracks in mortar happen, that is not a shrinkage.

Dumbing down; perhaps to get "out": It is a complete lie, and a total fabrication of reality, to blame "shrinking mortar". My gut feeling is that this contractor is of the type who believes that the most far-fetched fabrication (a form of lying) is the best, since it gives him several ways out later, and it blasts the client into submission in a subtle psychological way, non-violently and without expressing any threat. One of the "ways out" is for him to become more and more apparently incompetent, so that you begin to believe that he just doesn't have the mental wherewithal to grasp the complexities. Some people dumb down because of intense stress; some people dumb down as a self-protective mechanism; some people use this process consciously after they have received most of your money.

Golly gee: Crane or any other company may very well fob off the installation "complexities" onto a "Your contractor knows" approach. This is what lee joseph 0 mentioned in different words. This is a common practice. At some point, after selling you something, any firm wants to get away from ever more post-sales questions. Telling you that the professional is the one who knows what is right depending on your circumstances is true, not false, but it ain't helpful. I am going through a similar situation with finding a little "flush elbow" to connect to a faucet's popup drain under a bathroom sink. All I get is "your plumber knows" instead of more information. FWIW, the Kohler web site describes how to set their tubs in mortar, so you can search there, and maybe even find a link to it from one of the threads here. So, in summary, the "golly gee, i don't know what you ought to do" approach after they get your money occurs in big companies too, as well as in small contractors.

Cautious approach: Probably a good idea not to educate the team or explain any more to them. Tell them they are the professionals. If you express any emotion other than respect, they can (or will) use it against you. You may be a fraction of an inch away from an ugly confrontation or a "sabotage" situation where they keep asking you to guide them while using your words to do something not quite right or even the opposite...

Editorial: If Consumer Reports looked at products that get attached to a part of the building (with bolts, screws, nails, cement or glue) they would have twice as much scope to their mandate. I would give them ten times as much credibility. CR only looks at things that once out of the box sit on a floor, countertop, shelf or clothes' pocket

David

Tub_Amuck said:

There could be ... clearance under there for all we know. All we have to check it with is a thin metal ruler. If I could get my fingers under there .... .
...different tub ... so if bailing on this product is what needs to happen, we can do so.

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I have a Kohler tub that cracks

We have a Kohler whirlpool that creaks terribly when you step in. It is set in a mortar bed. This is the only tub that does this. We had a Jacuzzi in our previous home that creaked like this. They could never get it done right so we had a cultured marble tub made which was much heavier and never creaked and squeaked. This builder will not put in a different tub and the problem rests with the manufacturer. We have waited nearly 3 months for Kohler and still haven't heard. This tub is sitting in a thick mortar bed. Why does it creaks still? Is this a design flaw and one the consumer will get stuck with?

Air spaces

hi newmaison,

Open a thread to really discuss this, for the time it takes to post several times, answering each and every subquestion.

No-one has guaranteed you that the mortar actually touched the bottom of the tub across most of its surface underneath. If there is only a hairline space, it will cause a crunch crunch noise as the weight of the person and tub water move around.

This raises a point that is relevant to Tub Amuck, about the honeycomb under her tub. ---that air may prevent full contact between mortar and tub bottom. In each honeycomb pocket, some air will be trapped if the tub gets smooshed down, squashed down, onto a pile of mortar. In each and every honeycomb pocket. A solution is to trowel mortar into most of the air pockets while the tub is upside down, before it gets set

David

Tub_Amuck said:

There could be six inches of clearance under there for all we know. All we have to check it with is a thin metal ruler. If I could get my fingers under there I could tell you for sure. The 1/2 gap I know is there is just what I see from the outside. And even that wouldn't alarm me necessarily, since I'd assume the gap was there for the tile to slip underneath--but we can not hit any resistance with the ruler going all the way back to the wall. Our opinion is that nothing is there and that the guys just set it down and walled it in that way. If the tub hadn't squeaked loudly I guess we never would have suspected.

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Please pardon my misunderstanding. I had thought your 1/2" gap was under the actual tub bowl rather than between its skirt and an unfinished floor -- I had assumed you were somehow sticking a rule farther in and under the actual tub. In any case, and unless I have looked at the wrong spec sheet, the manufacturer's drawings indicate 1-1/2" between the bottom of your tub bowl and the floor below, and there simply must be a way to grout that void in without risking the even further expense (for whomever), setbacks and frustration that will undoubtedly accompany tearing everything back out.

Tomorrow Will Tell...

Tomorrow is the standoff with grumpy contractors and the extraction of the tub.

Will report what happens.

Yes, it is a tub with a shower head, or "tub shower."

-J.

you need a vapor barrier. This is serious.

If there is a vapor barrier, you might be able to salvage the situation by injecting grout as lee-joseph-0 as suggested, or even by hand, if there is space and the person doing it is truly competent. I might even feel comfortable with a combination of some foam and some cement type product... However I have not seen the space nor the styrofoam grid under the tub, so take what you want from all this.


David

What is Structurelite???

Now the tile guy is making recommendations to the plumbers (who all look extremely young) that they use something called "structurelite" instead of regular mortar to set the tub. What is this? Should we insist on mortar? We are in such a hell, here.

I gave up on moisture barrier for the walls (and the concrete boards are not thinsetted to the plywood either, for the laying of the tile floor--another thing we gave up on. They just used adhesive.) I wish we could fire these guys but I don't see a way out since we have a contract.

stop work

Tub_Amuck said:

Now the tile guy is making recommendations to the plumbers (who all look extremely young) that they use something called "structurelite" instead of regular mortar to set the tub. What is this? Should we insist on mortar? We are in such a hell, here.

I gave up on moisture barrier for the walls (and the concrete boards are not thinsetted to the plywood either, for the laying of the tile floor--another thing we gave up on. They just used adhesive.) I wish we could fire these guys but I don't see a way out since we have a contract.

Click to expand...

you can stop a contract when the service is not to par, to code, to spec, to expectations, not good enough. You can even decline to pay for a meal eaten if you are unhappy after the fact. In this case you have not even eaten half the morsels of inappropriate, unsuitable product and methods.

Good plumbers know a huge amount about other fields; plumbing is the most difficult trade since it overlaps into many fields. Not all plumbers know structure or support. These guys are young. I get the impression you are not comfortable with the change in your personality it will take, for you to ask them for their credentials.

I searched the web a bit in the last ten minutes. Structolite is plaster for surface finishing. Not good. Structurelite is used to make squishy foam car seats and headrests? UH-OH!

The first person who told you of "struct..." is the right person to tell you where he first heard of it, and why he wants to use it here.

Now that you have found out the vapor barrier is missing and that the CBU was glued, you must stop the next hack disaster from happening, i.e. a tub floating on top of squishy foam that will get compressed. The idea of support under the bottom is that it is to be incompressible. A partial support as it sinks down to where finally comes to rest, is known in mechanical terms as uncontrollable, meaning unmeasurable and not determinable in advance, i.e. that one can never know how much counter-force it finally provides after it is made.

What you want and need is an incompressible substance. It accepts weight (water, person, tub) and supports it exactly as you expect it to. It's controllable; measurable, and can be determined in advance. It is designed only for that purpose.

If this notion of using only things that you can determine in advance what effect they will have, is new to you, that is normal since you donT' build things every day. For a team leader not to know this idea, or understand this idea, is not forgiveable, and so the guy is only good as a follower doing what someone else tells him to do. Maybe he called a friend for advice.

Do not allow work to progress, imho.

David

p.s. even a plaster product is not right, since it can crack up over time. Plaster is designed for everything else except to receive large weight and especially NOT weight that is dynamic, i.e. moving a bit. Tub, water, people, move a bit. When plaster cracks, it falls apart through and through. Not like sand grains and cement glue (known as mortar, sand mix).

Stucolite is used by people with success to bed tubs. I think mortar is better, but I don't have the experience to give you long-term reliability.

CBU is not waterproof, and in a shower situation, should have a vapor barrier behind it to protect the wood structure. Also, it should come down the wall and lap over the tiling flange.

It appears that they did not furr out the studs and when they attached the cbu over the tiling flange, it bowed out. There are two ways (well three, depending on the height of the tiling flange) to correct that: notch the studs to recess the tub slightly so it is in plane with the studs, shim the studs out so it clears, or, if the gap isn't too big for the tile you are using, stop it above the flange, and let the tile overlap with thinset support (it won't stick, but it will support a tile if you have more than half of it on the cbu).

Beaten into Submission

The tile guy shrugged when I asked if there was a vapor barrier behind the tile. I couldn't see any evidence of it when I looked down at a cross section of the knee wall part of the shower enclosure so my belief is it is not there. But I am just exhausted from all of this. I would almost rather have them finish the job, save up money, and then hire a contractor who does know what he is doing to demo the tile walls and redo them. (How badly must I want these guys out of my house to feel this way??) I rationalize by telling myself that the old tiles installed in 1927 didn't have a moisture barrier behind them either (admittedly the grout lines were pencil thin and the tiles themselves were almost an inch thick!) I rationalize by telling myself if they didn't know how to install the vapor barrier (I've no faith in their skills at this point) so it wasn't in direct contact with the durock then the durock couldn't breath which might cause condensation and mold.

I know--rationalizations: bad; getting the job done right: good. I'm just exhausted from it all.

They did reset the tub in mortar and we had them fill the tub with water so the tub would mush down into the mortar (which I hope was the right thing to do.)

They also, when they did our floors, did not put thinset between the cbu and the plywood subfloor, gluing it with adhesive instead. But see "exhausted" above.

This is our first major remodeling project and I want to say that the lessons we have learned have been many, and painful!!! (And expensive.) I guess that's how it goes. I guess ignorance is bliss since this company has done tons of work in even very nice neighborhoods near where we live. Improperly installed tile work, all over town... (and happy customers who don't know any better NOW, but maybe on down the line...)

I'll report back whether the mortar set solution stopped the creaking and flex.

Tub_Amuck said:

They did reset the tub in mortar and we had them fill the tub with water so the tub would mush down into the mortar (which I hope was the right thing to do.)

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Possibly not. If they put in more than just a couple of inches of water, the bottom likely flexed below where it naturally would/should have been.

you did good.

we all learned something from this thread. Thank you!

Setting the tub with water in it was a good thing to do; nobody walks in a tub when there is no water in it; you fill it up a bit and then you put yourself in; the total weight is in the same range as what you had when they set it. Ta- da!

You definitely do want water in it when the caulking goes around the edges; there the flexing works for you to make the caulking grip the two edges of the gap when the gap is at its largest.

Tub_Amuck said:

The tile guy shrugged ....

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david

geniescience said:

Setting the tub with water in it was a good thing to do; nobody walks in a tub when there is no water in it; you fill it up a bit and then you put yourself in; the total weight is in the same range as what you had when they set it. Ta- da!

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Ah, now think about that just a bit longer, David. Prior to the addition of mortar, the tub bottom flexed down to where the mortar might just now be waiting for it to again arrive if the water has since been drained ...

yes, i see that, and we'll never know how much that tub flexed prior to...

geniescience said:

... and we'll never know how much that tub flexed prior to...

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My suspicion is that the creaking and squeaking might now be at least temporarily gone even though the bottom of the tub (when empty) might not be setting hard or solidly on the nevertheless-limiting mortar.