Paul Lepkowski
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Hi guys. I'm a very old retired engineer. 10 years ago I anticipated the day when a wife or I would need a wheelchair by having a tile contractor build a big fancy wheelchair accessible shower, 5 feet wide by 8 1/2 feet long, with a Grohe thermostat, Speakman showerhead, three Grohe body sprays and a hand shower on opposite walls in one narrow end. It’s in a ranch house over a 5 foot crawlspace. To support its weight four round footings were installed below the frost line with adjustable post jacks supporting two 4 x 12 beams oriented transversely under the joists. Five of the 2 x 10 x 19’ joists were then notched down to about 5 inches over the new beams. A center drain mud floor with a flexible membrane and tile facing was that installed in the recess. This produced a level entry door at the end of one of the 8 foot walls. The walls and ceiling of the shower were tile over cement board.
It was beautiful! Until two weeks ago, that is. My wife had her stroke and has balance issues so we were installing a giant sit-down bathtub in the adjacent room. In the process of installing plumbing the plumber noticed heavy mold deposits in the crawlspace below the shower pan. After a lot of poking around we concluded that the membrane buried in the mud floor was leaking through overlapping joints. The plumber ripped out the mud floor and then found that the backer board in the walls was crumbling, so he ripped out the lower courses of tile and the first backer board in the walls. When I found that we can no longer match the wall tile I told him to rip out the rest of the walls. The ceiling is still intact, but I find that it was installed over green board, so I may rip that out too. We think we've killed the mold with successive applications of boric acid, vinegar, and chlorine bleach.
Now what do I do … a new mud floor … a solid molded composite insert … or a membrane over a tapered support?
Tiles bond well to concrete because they have similar expansion properties, so floors have been done this way for 3000 years. Lead or copper pans under sloped mud have not been able to last for more than 30 years due to corrosion.
A sandwich of plywood plus a tapered foam layer plus a membrane then tile seems to work well, but the largest preformed substrate available is 60" x 60". It seems silly to marry that, via a cold joint, with 4'6" of mud.
I would like to use a linear drain along the long wall instead of a center drain. The pitches in four different directions in the old floor were destabilizing my wife when she walked across them. I can't locate a company that can mold a one-piece floor pan with a linear drain along the long edge.
There doesn't seem to be a very satisfactory solution.
I'm going to start by replacing the jack posts with concrete filled lally columns, and adjusting the leveling of the transverse beams. I will then cut 8’ 6” off of the trimmed joists and install new joists of appropriate height. The new joists will only have to span 4 feet between the beams and 4 feet between the first team and the foundation wall, so they don't need to be very tall.
I saw an elegant shower drain in 1950 in the Highland Park, NY YMCA where I took a swimming test. In the 20' x 10' shower I noticed that all of the water was draining in one direction and there was no visible drain. On closer inspection I discovered a 3/8" x 20' slot at the base of one wall which the water was draining through. The Janet it took me down to the basement, (after I got dressed), where I found that the girl’s shower was right next to the boy’s shower, (which seemed very interesting at the time), and that the water from both showers exited through the slots in the two walls and fell into a 20’ long open trough. The janitor told me that it had been installed in 1910 and it worked very well. Occasionally a girl would lose some jewelry which would wash through the slot and landing in the open trough. It was easy to pick the jewelry out of the trough and get a reward when he returned it to the girl. He seemed disappointed that the boys never lost anything.
I wonder if it would be possible to build something like this in my house.
The price of linear drains is appalling. Schluter suggests that I use two of their 4 foot drains end to end. Best Tile in Wappingers Falls sells them for $240. These things are simple stainless steel “U” channels with a grate on top. I sketched and 8'6" “U” channel and Metalworks Inc. in the Bronx quoted $170 with a grate. Then I remembered the trough hanging below the slot in the YMCA and I found that Home Depot sells a 10 foot vinyl rain gutter for about $4. That's a big jump from $480 to $170 to $4!
Is there any way for me to fabricate a 60” x 107” planar slope out of something other than mud, layer it with concrete board, then with a membrane, then with tile, and route the drain water through a slot under the wall tile where it will fall into a removable vinyl rain gutter hanging from a joist?
Like I asked before, what do I do? Help!
Paul in Fishkill Plains, NY
It was beautiful! Until two weeks ago, that is. My wife had her stroke and has balance issues so we were installing a giant sit-down bathtub in the adjacent room. In the process of installing plumbing the plumber noticed heavy mold deposits in the crawlspace below the shower pan. After a lot of poking around we concluded that the membrane buried in the mud floor was leaking through overlapping joints. The plumber ripped out the mud floor and then found that the backer board in the walls was crumbling, so he ripped out the lower courses of tile and the first backer board in the walls. When I found that we can no longer match the wall tile I told him to rip out the rest of the walls. The ceiling is still intact, but I find that it was installed over green board, so I may rip that out too. We think we've killed the mold with successive applications of boric acid, vinegar, and chlorine bleach.
Now what do I do … a new mud floor … a solid molded composite insert … or a membrane over a tapered support?
Tiles bond well to concrete because they have similar expansion properties, so floors have been done this way for 3000 years. Lead or copper pans under sloped mud have not been able to last for more than 30 years due to corrosion.
A sandwich of plywood plus a tapered foam layer plus a membrane then tile seems to work well, but the largest preformed substrate available is 60" x 60". It seems silly to marry that, via a cold joint, with 4'6" of mud.
I would like to use a linear drain along the long wall instead of a center drain. The pitches in four different directions in the old floor were destabilizing my wife when she walked across them. I can't locate a company that can mold a one-piece floor pan with a linear drain along the long edge.
There doesn't seem to be a very satisfactory solution.
I'm going to start by replacing the jack posts with concrete filled lally columns, and adjusting the leveling of the transverse beams. I will then cut 8’ 6” off of the trimmed joists and install new joists of appropriate height. The new joists will only have to span 4 feet between the beams and 4 feet between the first team and the foundation wall, so they don't need to be very tall.
I saw an elegant shower drain in 1950 in the Highland Park, NY YMCA where I took a swimming test. In the 20' x 10' shower I noticed that all of the water was draining in one direction and there was no visible drain. On closer inspection I discovered a 3/8" x 20' slot at the base of one wall which the water was draining through. The Janet it took me down to the basement, (after I got dressed), where I found that the girl’s shower was right next to the boy’s shower, (which seemed very interesting at the time), and that the water from both showers exited through the slots in the two walls and fell into a 20’ long open trough. The janitor told me that it had been installed in 1910 and it worked very well. Occasionally a girl would lose some jewelry which would wash through the slot and landing in the open trough. It was easy to pick the jewelry out of the trough and get a reward when he returned it to the girl. He seemed disappointed that the boys never lost anything.
I wonder if it would be possible to build something like this in my house.
The price of linear drains is appalling. Schluter suggests that I use two of their 4 foot drains end to end. Best Tile in Wappingers Falls sells them for $240. These things are simple stainless steel “U” channels with a grate on top. I sketched and 8'6" “U” channel and Metalworks Inc. in the Bronx quoted $170 with a grate. Then I remembered the trough hanging below the slot in the YMCA and I found that Home Depot sells a 10 foot vinyl rain gutter for about $4. That's a big jump from $480 to $170 to $4!
Is there any way for me to fabricate a 60” x 107” planar slope out of something other than mud, layer it with concrete board, then with a membrane, then with tile, and route the drain water through a slot under the wall tile where it will fall into a removable vinyl rain gutter hanging from a joist?
Like I asked before, what do I do? Help!
Paul in Fishkill Plains, NY