drain pain

Here's the deal sparky.

Bathroom remodel, old ceramic tile shower, rotted out liner, 3"cast iron(i think 3"OD) riser, not centered in shower(I know the answer to this one, but typing on a forum is much easier, I think I can live with it if the obvious challenge of slope can be overcome with time and labor.

Big question, after removing the bolts from the base, (have you ever used PB Blaster to loosen rusted stuff? Works great!!) the threads in the base have disintigrated. Can I drill these to a larger size and tap the? Will I be able to find a strainer/top flange for the liner installation?

A picture is worth a thousand words.

Where should I go from here? I plan on using a mortar screed to slope the pan, pvc pan, mortar tile bed. Would like to use a newer style drain that will give me some wiggle room on the mortar thickness.

Thanks in advance for your help.

How old is the cast iron? Since you are tearing things out, you might want to think about replacing it and the trap, centering things, and go from there. You have the general scheme correct, but a good end result is in the details. A good place to get help with the details is www.johnbridge.com. If you haven't looked at it, consider Kerdi from www.schluter.com The drain is unique, and quite flexible. You only need a single sloped mudbed and can use plain drywall to make the walls. Neat stuff...I've used it a couple of times now. The nice thing is you tile directly on the waterproof membrane, so there is very little to dry out after a shower.

CurtisD said:

.... rotted out liner, 3"cast iron(i think 3"OD) riser, not centered ..... screed to slope the pan, pvc pan, mortar tile bed...

Click to expand...

Drains have wiggle room for mortar thickness. All shower drains.

"Screed to slope, then PVC liner, then tiles." Good, you are doing fine! Waterproof up the walls too. __-- What do you mean when you say the old liner rotted out?

Since the cast iron is that old, why not go a little farther and put in new? A new P trap at least, it'll last decades; the old may not. What diameter is it again? ID 2"?

Yes, you can tile any odd non-symmetrical inverted cone, with time and labor. Has been done a million times before. The longest direction gets the 1/4" slope; the other directions get sloped even more to compensate; same drop over a short distance; that way the outer rim is all at the same height, the walls all start at the same horizontal line, and they all look straight. Use small tiles to handle the changing curvature. Like Bisazza. The more expensive the better, because then nobody will criticize the lack of symmetry.

If you can't center the drain, maybe you can place it near the wall and make a long drain channel. Inside the drain channel, put two slopes letting water slide to the drain wherever it is located inside that channel. Outside the channel, make a single flat plane sloped to it. Your drain can be any square or round drain made for floors, showers or rooves, or any roof-edge scupper drain. Very elegant. Charge more for the house when you sell it. Use large tiles.

david

tear it all out or suffer the consequences

you realy need to change out that whole concrete pan and
start over with a new PVC shower pan drain.....

take it down to the wood underneath that concrete....

perhaps install a new sub floor 1/2 plywood over the old stuff perhaps tapering a slope to the center drain


then install a new pvc shower drain....

then install the membrane

and then the concrete with fall to the drain
and then the tile...



you would have to be crazy to re-use that drain

The drain is out!

I knew I was fooling myself to think of reusing the old drain. I am so glad I didn't try. The old ptrap fell over when I took out the last piece of cement. Worse than that it had a hole in the bottom and had just been draining under the floor!

Huge depression under the cement when I initially broke through I could see the entire ptrap through the hole!. Looks like somebody? (surely not a plumber) tried to open an clogged drain and knocked a hole in the trap. Wala, everything drained! The picture of the bottom of the trap reveals rusted pipe wall, only one half of the pipe is fresh break from my removal. I have been in house two years and never had a drain problem. (That I was aware of anyway.) This shower floor was built below grade, so no water ever appeared.

Anyway, I am going to center the drain and put in a uniform slope.

What are your experiences with Kerdi?????????

Let the fun begin!!!

Check out the pics

Concrete Pan?

That's not a concrete pan. That is the pour below grade. Liner disintegrated means it was some kind of fiber paper with a clear plastic type film on it. It just fell apart as I was demo-ing the mud slope above this now exposed layer.

There was no PVC, no hot mop nothing but black stringy paper. Looked like the same stuff the walls had in them behind the perilite. And yes that was fun demo-ing those walls.

Thinking very strongly about using Kerdi for the go back. Would appreciate any pros-cons, (No I don't mean hookers and plumbers. ) concerning Kerdi

I used Kerdi in my tub surround (with Dilex at the tub) and did a Kerdi shower for my mother over Christmas. Try it, you'll like it. The big advantage is that, while in a conventional shower there's a bunch that can get damp, in a Kerdi shower, the waterproofing is right under the tile. Things dry out much faster which keeps the grout drier, the pan drier, and because of all the dry, much less likely to produce mold (or leak).

For those who don't know, Kerdi is a tileable, waterproof, hygroscopic, membrane. It has sort of a fleece on each side that embeds it into the thinset. If you overlap seams at least 2", it will be waterproof. You can install it over drywall (which is the recommended substrate for the walls and curb). Once I had the walls and drain ready to start, I went from no waterproofing or pan, to a tile-ready, waterproof shower with curb and niche in about 5-hours. This included measuring and cutting all of the Kerdi from the roll, making the corners (it came with some, but I had more for the niche that I made), setting the drain and pan. Neat stuff. www.schluter.com