Proper Vinyl Pan Install

[mwinnick]

My plumber installed the vinyl shower pan. After I noticed that the bottom is not all flat on the floor but rounded at the inside corners, so the pan is really shaped like a bowl. If you try to push in at the bottom near the burb you cannot get the vinyl to touch the floor. In some places the vinyl is an inch off the floor in the corners. He said that when the concrete bed is put in it will rise high enough to allow for tiling the inside vertical curb. But that makes no sense. Everything I've read says the vinyl should lay on the floor and sides. Right now the sheetrock has been put on so it will have to come off to redo the pan.

Any comments on whether the pan is done right or not? I assume too that over the years the weight of the concrete and us using the shower and adding weight could eventually break the vinyl.

 

[Jadnashua]

It's best to keep questions in the forum to help others with similar problems. It sounds like the installer did not use the preformed pan corners to save a couple of bucks. The corners are supposed to be folded neatly, then when it goes over the curb, you do need to cut it, but then you glue the corners in to keep it waterproof. Deck mud will not stretch the liner down. It needs to be fixed is my opinion, before you do the final slope and tile.

You'll be more hits from people that do this all of the time over at www.johnbridge.com. Most of the moderators are away in SC at a class (I'm here, too - not exactly sure why they asked me to come, but I'm not complaining). As a result, you may not get as quick a response as normal. But, they have a good article in their "liberry -sic" on proper construction techniques of a traditional pan with a liner. It has some pictures and discussions that will allow you to compare what you have with what is the accepted industry standards. As I understand it, yours has defects.