Neptune shower fixture installation

[Terry]

I have an awkward installation here. The brand is Neptune, out of Canada. The shower arm has a fitting with rubber O-Ring that set screws on the ten pound heavy shower arm and head. It's supposed to use two screws into the solid surface. Expecting large tile to drill into, what I found was rocks mortared onto the wall. Has anyone else drilled into rocks to secure a wall bracket like this?





Rocks mortared onto the wall.



This takes a wall plate. The plate needs to be sealed to the wall. These are the rocks that need to be drilled for anchors too.

[hj]

I have a Skil "XtraTool" drill that uses high frequency hits similar to a rotohammer, but less destructive. It works for super hard prestressed concrete beams and is advertised to work on stone. Something like that with a good masonry bit would probably make the holes. However, I might tell the "genius" who designed the wall to have the installer come back and make the holes so you are not responsible for any damage done, especially if you did not furnish the shower arm in the first place.

[jadnashua]

With no chance of cracking things, you may want to use a diamond core bit. You'd also need a spray bottle filled with water to keep the bit cool and flush the stone dust away. As to sealing around it...that gets tougher. You can buy grout color-matched caulk in both sanded and unsanded, but I'm not sure of the lifetime for this application. If you used something like a urethane caulk to seal it to the wall, you'd never get it off again. You might be able to use a thick closed cell foam gasket, but I'm not sure of the appearance.

[jimbo]

Drilling any stone scares the crap out of me because of the possibility of cracks.

[wjcandee]

Well it's not like there aren't a zillion unsightly cracks in the thing already in your close-up. This looks like something that someone dreamed up focusing entirely on the aesthetic and not at all on the practical. If anyone actually uses it, you have to figure it's going to look like crap in a couple of years anyway. (That is, of course, not an answer that is going to excite the client...)

Good luck!!

[johnfrwhipple]

Terry I would be using a coring bit like mentioned and first cutting through a scrap tile so you can hold that to keep the bit from wandering.

It might look nice to frame the mounting plate with a small square of the darker tile. Perhaps you can plunge cut with a diamond blade and set in a little square of the darker tile???

JW