Hey, a cat fight!!!! Good, I'm a Polack, I like cat fights! I sense that this one has been going on for a while here in this forum. Now, where's that popcorn.....
Ya know, some of us have worked at one job for a long time, others have moved around a lot. I grew up on a dairy farm in Walton, NY, milking 95 Holsteins morning and night. Then in 1947 I went to Tokyo for 15 months where dad was reopening the far east division of United States Lines using 118 freighters to serve 1142 island destinations. After that I went back to the farm and helped build 4 barns, 3 houses, and milked a lot of cows. Then I played guitar professionally in the 1950s working up to WABC New York and a Capital records recording contract. I was pretty good. Then I spent 7 years at Cornell, MIT, Harvard and Columbia earning some degrees in useless stuff like Physics. Then I worked at designing radio stations and recording studios. I made some really good recordings of the Philadelphia Orchestra. I finally found a steady job in Avionics Engineering at Pan Am and wound up as Vice President of Engineering. After they went broke because the war department couldn't pay for the Kuwait war transportation I rebuilt tug boats in Port Bolivar, TX.
Now I'm retired, working on my eighth decade, in Fishkill Plains. In 2005 I hired a professional mason and tile setter to build a humdinger of a bathroom. It looked great, but it didn't last because the pro with the business name on three trucks was a schmuck and the membrane leaked. So I have to get it fixed, but the present day pros, all of whom claim 30 years experience but weren't in business in 2005, each have different ideas about what I should do, and each of them thinks that only he is right.
So, I came here confused. I asked, "Now what do I do … a new mud floor … a solid molded composite insert … or a membrane over a tapered support?" Now, I don't want you guys to stop the cat fight, I like it, and I fully expect you to start aiming barbs at me now that I have given you more ammunition about being a Polack dairy farmer, but I would like to end my confusion because I have to get this shower fixed sometime this decade.
1. The solid molded composite insert would be an oven cured plastic like DuPont Corian. The only difficulty would be dropping it in place on a layer of thinset over a plywood subfloor. It would outlast my grandchildren. The problem is that it will take 6 weeks to get, I will have to drive to Rochester with a trailer behind my Suburban to get it, it will weight about 600#, and it will cost about $2800.
2. The mud floor would be a sandwich of many layers, plywood, 30# roofing felt, tapered layer of floor mud (4 sand / 1 Portland / very little water), thinset layer, then a membrane. Then the confusion starts. Some say a second layer of 1 1/2" of mud is needed before setting tiles in thinset, others say you can then set tiles in thinset directly over the membrane. Is the second layer of mud really needed with modern fuzzy membranes which thinset can bond to? How important is the skill level of the mason who places the mud because I don't think much of the guys who've looked at the job?
3. All the membrane manufacturers say you can apply the membrane over a plastic foam tapered preform, but they only make the preform in sizes up to 60" x 60" so this was not an option. Yesterday I found that USG makes custom size sloped foam preforms which key together smaller pieces. So this now becomes an option. I have asked them for prices. This would be layers of plywood, 30# roofing felt, thinset, the foam preform, thinset, membrane, thinset and tile. This seems to be the simplest way to do it, but some of you don't think it is very permanent. How permanent is it?
Like I asked originally, what do I do? Help!
Paul Lepkowski in Fishkill Plains, NY