Temporarily repurpose toilet drain for freestanding shower during remodel?

I have a problem: my house has one full bathroom upstairs, and a half bathroom downstairs. I need to demolish the full bathroom to the bare concrete and studs & rebuild it due to a major mold problem (the usual... drywall behind tile, plus a blocked exhaust fan that apparently blew hot, steamy air into the wall cavity instead), and I'd really like to use Kerdi & tile for the new shower+tub. The catch, of course, is that even if I hired a professional to do everything, I'd realistically be looking at at least a week of downtime with no shower... and I'm probably going to do it myself (translation: 2-4 weeks of downtime).

I was brainstorming last night, and came up with the idea of buying a freestanding fiberglass shower. They seem to cost around $250 for everything besides the actual supply and drain pipes, and would solve my problem nicely during the remodeling period. GETTING water to it is no problem... DRAINING it is another matter entirely.

So far, I've come up with two ideas that are kludgy, but might work:

1. Temporarily remove the upstairs toilet, remove the adjacent tile and drywall, then set up the shower directly above the toilet's floor drain so water from the shower goes straight down into it. If the toilet's drain is too close to one or both walls, I might have to build a ~6" wood platform from 2x6's and plywood to raise the shower and make room for additional bent pipe needed to shift the shower drain's output a foot or two. I'm not sure, but I *think* there's a trap in the toilet's drain (as opposed to relying upon the toilet itself to furnish the trap). I have access to a bad photocopy of my house's construction blueprints from 1982, if that info would be on it somewhere.

2. Put the shower next to the stairs on a wood platform to elevate it ~6", connect a decent-quality garden hose to the drain through the necessary adapters, then run the hose ~3 feet horizontally, ~10 feet vertically with ~5 foot horizontal displacement, and secure it so it dumps the water into the bowl of the second bathroom sink below.

Obviously neither solution is ideal for anything long-term... but we're talking about a period that's likely to be ~3-5 weeks, with one person (me) taking one or two showers per day. In this scenario, if I can make the temporary shower happen for $300 or less, it'll be worth every penny because it will enable me to take my time and do the bathroom's reconstruction properly, instead of being tempted to recklessly hurry things along (drying time, etc) or make last-minute compromises with long-term consequences because something I need to do the job properly is out of stock/unavailable *right that second* and I'm desperate to finish the job *asap*.

So... are there any non-obvious problems I'm likely to encounter with this idea (particularly the toilet-drain variant)? Or does this sound like a decent strategy for solving a major logistical problem?

Your toilet drain almost certainly does *not* have its own trap. This means that you would need to have a trap between the shower drain and the toilet drain otherwise you would be smelling sewer gas. To me, it seems like it will be a lot of hassle (and cost) for a temporary solution.

Here are a couple other possibilities:

1. Get a temporary membership to a local gym / health club that you can shower at.

2. Rig up a temporary outdoor shower (drain onto lawn, maybe cold water only from hose source, maybe a couple sections of cheap fencing for privacy)

Well... I did think about the backyard shower idea. The thing is, if this is going to be my primary shower for up to a month, cold water only just isn't going to cut it (I suffered through a week of cold showers after Hurricane Wilma before overcoming my life-long fear of 220v and making the Extension Cord from Hell(tm) so I could connect my water heater to the generator and enjoy hot showers for the remaining two weeks I spent without power). I priced out what it would cost to build an outdoor shower with hot and cold water, and it ended up costing *more* than a cheap freestanding fiberglass (ABS?) shower would. Plus, I figure I can probably get at least $50 or so for the shower on Craigslist when I'm through with it.

I did think of one possible compromise... temporarily replacing the aerator on the kitchen sink with an adapter intended for use with a portable dishwasher, then connecting a hose between it and a cheap outdoor shower normally intended for use with a garden hose. However, I'm not sure whether it would have enough water pressure to work properly, and being unable to easily adjust the temperature while using it would be kind of annoying (less annoying than cold showers, though...)

As far as the sewer gas from the toilet drain goes... how bad is it really likely to smell if there's no trap? Bad enough to be worth seriously contemplating the alternative (a hose running downstairs from the shower's drain and dumping into a sink), or merely bad enough that it would be intolerable if it were permanent, but probably qualify as a lesser evil if it were just for a couple of weeks? Would leaving some kind of relatively impermeable object (say, a big balloon full of sand) on top of the shower's drain between uses (mostly blocking it) help enough to be worthwhile? Is sewer gas just foul-smelling, or does it contain enough methane to be a real fire/explosion hazard? (idea: if it's not a fire/explosion hazard, would leaving a burning candle or two on the floor of the shower between uses help burn it off?)

You're going to remodel the full bath whilst working around this "contraption" you invision for a shower¿ And the candle thing...¿ Have you acquired a permit for the work you are planning¿ Get some on-site professional plumbing expertise on this one, buddy.

> You're going to remodel the full bath whilst working around this "contraption" you invision for a shower¿

Why not? The critical path is the shower's demolition and reconstruction. Once the shower has been rebuilt, I can ditch the temporary freestanding shower and do the other half of the bathroom. It's just that that one particular subproject is likely to take several weeks, because the homeowner's association only allows me to work until 8pm M-F, which realistically leaves me with roughly an hour per day to do as much demolition or tile-cutting as I can after work. The only time I can work more or less unfettered is over the weekend. Ergo, the 3-5 week timeframe for this subproject.

> And the candle thing...

Have you never left a burning candle in the bathroom when you KNEW someone was going to engage in a particularly dreadful act of "number two"? Try it sometime. It really works.

> Have you acquired a permit for the work you are planning¿

Of course not.

1) Inspectors don't work nights or weekends. I'm a contractor with no paid vacation, so every day I take off from work is unpaid and literally costs me around $300.

2) I'd be required to upgrade all the bathroom's power to AFCI compliance, adding at least another thousand dollars (for a new breaker box) to the total.

3) I don't want to open a can of worms. I've been warned that the inspector could legally come to inspect the shower work, realize there's no working tub or shower in the house *at that instant*, and temporarily revoke the house's occupancy permit (causing the power and water to be shut off, among other things).

As it stands, the layout of the new bathroom will be identical to the layout depicted on the blueprints. A future inspector might be able to figure out that I retiled the bathroom and replaced the vanities (the tub will look almost exactly like the original), but the true scope of just how much work I did (tearing it down to the studs and bare concrete walls, replacing the moldy drywall with cementboard & kerdi) won't be readily apparent. Worst case, I end up looking like yet another homeowner who spent $2k at Home Depot and renovated the bath without a permit. The mold remediation will be my own little secret.

> Get some on-site professional plumbing expertise on this one, buddy.

Well, like I said... the kludgy nature of the proposed temporary shower is due to the fact that it IS merely a temporary solution that will never be used by children, the elderly, the handicapped, or anyone besides me. When it's served its purpose, it will be disconnected, moved to the back porch, and either be sold to someone on Craigslist or junked within a month or two.

That said, I've pretty much eliminated the toilet drain idea from the list of possibilities. The original appeal was the belief that it was 16-1/2" from both the rear and side walls (enabling the shower to drain straight down into it) and had a trap in the line itself. Since both of those assumptions seem to have been proven wrong, it no longer seems like an obvious place to put the shower.

My current plan is to put the shower between the laundry room and cat door leading outside. It'll sit on a 3x3 foot plywood platform framed with 2x8 lumber on the underside, with the drain leading to a hose that runs ~6 feet horizontally through the cat door to the back yard, and hijack the washing machine's hot and cold water supplies. I figure 8" will give it enough height to keep the water from rapidly backing up into the shower during use, and the ability to use the washing machine's water supply means I won't have to hack, then re-hack, a water supply line -- I can just use screw-on hose connectors.

For the drain, I would consider using standard 1.5 or 2" PVC (cheap and easy enough to glue together a few fittings) through the cat door to the backyard to avoid backups. I suspect the hose may back up pretty quickly.

How my wife and I did it when we tore off our kitchen and only bathroom (3 months):

Camping portapotty in laundry room. Do your #2 at work or you have to clean it! Your lucky, you have a second toilet.

We got a membership at a local aquatic centre. That worked out very very well.

We also had a permit and building inspector. No problems with losing our ocupancy. He also did stop by after hours. All in all it was worth it.

As for the GFI you should have that any way. Unless you have some strange code I can see no reason you can't just put in GFIs at the outlet box. $10 for the first one in the line.

If you have a washing machine hookup, you could run hot/cold water from that to your temporary shower. I ran hot and cold to a hose, and just used a spray nozzle on the end of the hose. A Y-adapter to get the temp set shouldn't be too hard to find, and you'll spoil yourself with the unrestricted flow!

> As for the GFI you should have that any way. Unless you have some strange
>code I can see no reason you can't just put in GFIs at the outlet box. $10 for the first one in the line.

The problem isn't GFCI... it's AFCI -- arc fault circuit interruptors. Basically, they interrupt the circuit if it arcs inside the receptacle box.

For new construction, they'd be a no-brainer even if they weren't required by code... it adds almost nothing to the cost of a NEW box, and makes fires a little bit less likely to happen (particularly from DIY electrical projects that stuff too many wires into too small of a box). The problem is, the powers that be made it part of the life-safety code, which means that there's basically no grandfathering of things that were legal at the time they were originally built. If you do ANYTHING that involves a modification to an existing circuit, the entire circuit has to be brought into AFCI compliance. Even something as simple as adding a light over the shower (something not required in 1982, but required now). The problem is, there IS NO cheap upgrade to retrofit AFCI compliance onto a non-AFCI breaker box, so you have to replace the whole thing.

Actually, that reminds me of another requirement. I believe the current code requires not only a light above the shower, but the exhaust fan intake as well. The problem is, my existing exhaust fan is on the opposite side of the room, and my ceiling is a reinforced-concrete suspended slab. Running a new vent to the roof is beyond my abilities (god knows, if it were cheap/easy, I'd be putting a tubular skylight in the bathroom too), and trying to vent it 10 feet horizontally through a duct inside a new soffit to use the existing exhaust duct the remainder of the way to the roof would make things worse by any objective standard (steam would condense inside the duct, and create an even bigger breeding ground for future mold). I think THIS requirement would be waived in my case since it's a pre-existing home with existing exhaust that was legal at the time, and it's NOT a life-safety code matter, but it's another example of something that's a good idea in general that could become an expensive nightmare if blindly and unwavering carried to its logical extreme.

> For the drain, I would consider using standard 1.5 or 2" PVC (cheap and easy enough to
> glue together a few fittings) through the cat door to the backyard to avoid backups.

Hmmm. The only problem is that a hose can be pulled back inside when I'm finished, so the door can close (it's a hard plastic panel that swings both ways and has a magnet to hold it in position when the cats aren't passing through it). A pipe would keep the cat door propped open for the project's duration. More importantly, it would effectively turn it into a one-way door since it couldn't swing in the opposite direction if the pipe were passing through it.

I wish there were some cheap way to stick a pump between the drain and wherever it dumps. Then I could just run a pipe or hose up and into the laundry room's sink & have the shower dump its water there, the way a portable dishwasher or washing machine would. Unfortunately, the cheapest pump-based solution I can think of would add AT LEAST a hundred bucks to the temporary shower's cost.

In our location, AFCI is required only on bedroom circuits. Bathrooms only require GFCI here. Are you sure about the code requirement where you are?

Are you sure that there are no AFCI breakers compatible with your current panel? In our house, adding AFCI protection to a bedroom circuit was not harder than replacing the existing breaker with a AFCI breaker (done to code and inspected). There really is no such thing as an AFCI breaker box. All that matters is whether a manufacturer makes an AFCI breaker than fits in your current box.

If you needed to add an AFCI circuit, and your current breaker box could not accomodate one, you could add a small sub-panel box to accomodate it. I don't see why you would need to replace the whole existing breaker box (unless you are required to AFCI the whole house). The parts (including a small subpanel box and 1-2 AFCI breakers) should be less than $200. An electrician couple do it in a couple of hours.

I agree with the AFCI Unless you have an odd pannel you should be able to just put in the proper breaker.

Where I live (WI) they specificly excude the requirement for AFCI from the electrical code. I opted not to put them in due to nusance tripping as well.

Also since you are in a bathroom the requirement is GFCI not AFCI.

I'd recommend getting a big metal tub and filling it with hot water even if you heat it on a stove. Wash your hair in that and sponge bathe during the week. Borrow a buddies shower on the weekends. I've had this situation a few times, also lived in other countries where I had no shower and water access for only 1 hour a day.

I once considered (but rejected) doing the same sort of thing. My plan was to frame a platform under which a large plastic bin about 10-inches high would sit. The shower would drain into the bin, and the bin would have a submersible sump pump sitting in it. The pump would lift the water in to the existing utility sink. My water was going to come from the washer hookups and the whole thing was to sit in the laundry room.

In the end I had a second 3/4 bath done professionally in the basement, then ripped apart and re-built the main bath at leasure.

Sadly, I do have a weird breaker box... it's Zinsco. I guess the builder didn't save enough money by using REGULAR DRYWALL behind the shower's tile, and had to find a few more areas where he could cut corners (not that greenboard would have ultimately made much difference to my mold problem today).

I'd love to turn the half-bath into a 3/4 bath, but there's no basement, and the half-bath is 3x6 feet and located under the stairs. Short of treating it like a boat or train and putting the sink inside the shower, I can't really think of any way it could viably be done.

Consider this approach to dealing with your Zinsco panel.

http://www.inspect-ny.com/electric/Zinscoreplace.htm

For the shower:
No neighbors who are friends? Borrowed tools from you? Been helped by you?
Reconsider your plan 2, tempered with Jim's suggestion for a water supply source, and keeping in mind that your home layout may mean pumping after the shower is done may be best. Also, no garage? That would be a good place for a temp setup in summer weather. Drainage should drive the location, as it's easy to get supply there using garden hoses. Just be sure to use shutoffs at their source (like the washer supply).

^^ Bookmarked... definitely might come in handy someday

I did have an electrician look at the panel a couple of months ago. His general opinion was that he'd never recommend against replacing a Zinsco, but agreed that if it came down to spending finite cash resources on a new panel vs spending the money to buy hurricane shutters, he'd buy the hurricane shutters, because my panel seems to be fine (no heat, signs of oxidation, or any other evidence that it was more at risk than any other brand). He admitted that Zinsco's record is a little worse than others, but opined that the historical lack of new replacement parts driving a thriving salvage market was probably at least as big of a factor as any inherent defects. Apparently, Sylvania took advantage of patent law throughout the 80s and 90s to actively prevent anyone ELSE from making compatible replacement breakers, and it wasn't until VERY recently that aftermarket compatible replacements could legally be made and sold by others.

The main reason (besides wanting hurricane shutters first) I've held off right now is because someday I'd like to move the panel ~4 feet to the left, and turn it around to face into the room on the other side of the wall. When the house was built, the dining room was located in that spot (it's now where the family room used to be), but a previous owner enclosed it into a den (which I use as a storage room/faux basement), so it would be a perfect place to hide the breaker panel. It's not high on the priority list, but I'll probably get around to doing it ~10 years from now (after rebuilding my bathroom, getting hurricane shutters downstairs & impact-resistant windows upstairs, redoing the kitchen, buying a new central AC unit, and re-tiling the downstairs).

Unfortunately, I barely know any of the neighbors (I just moved up to SW Broward from Miami after living there half my life). My nearest friend is ~25 minutes away.

On the other hand, I've narrowed the scope of my upcoming bathroom project considerably since last week, so my downtime is now looking more like 2-3 weeks. I originally planned to build a walk-in shower with adjacent small, deep bathtub. Then I found out how ungodly expensive it would be to re-do the plumbing (it's all buried in a reinforced-concrete suspended slab that wouldn't be cheap or trivial to open up), discovered that the tub alone would cost over a thousand bucks to replace, and at this point have mostly decided to leave the layout as-is, and recycle the tub unless either the cost of replacement ends up considerably lower or I find some compelling reason to replace it anyway (it's not in new condition, but it's not really bad either... one of those things where I'll be kicking myself 10 years from now, but is an easy way to save a huge amount of cash right now). The old tub is a 6' x 42" acrylic soaking tub in a decent color (slightly yellowish almond), with no real problems to speak of (it's the walls surrounding it that are festering mold colonies).