So I've been working on tiling about half of my basement, and I'm finally at the last room which is the utility room. It has an old rusty floor drain that I need to decide what to do with. Despite the rust it still drains fine and I really don't want to have to break into the slab.
The main reason it is so rusty I think is that there were previously 3 layers of flooring - linoleum on the bottom (with asbestos, so I had this all professionally remediated), then stick-on vinyl tiles, then floating sheet vinyl on the top (it was floated on top of a layer of underlayment). They had just (poorly) cut holes around this drain for each layer, so any time water drained in/out of it, it sat in the floor layers around it. Yuck.
If you're wondering why I said flows out of it, that's because this drain is unsurprisingly the first thing to back up when there is a clog in the main line. We have a septic system which is located significantly lower than the house, so backing up from the septic is never going to happen, but for instance we recently had to deal with tree roots and it backed up with bathwater. The lowest place around this drain is under the wall, which leads into a bathroom - so anytime it backs up even a tiny bit, it goes straight under that wall which is less than ideal. The wet floor in the pic is just from me playing around with it a bit.
So my main two questions are, how should I deal with this floor and how should I deal with this drain?
This is in a room about 125 sq ft, but most of the floor is quite flat and does not slope towards this drain at all. Maybe 1-1.5' around it is sloped towards it, and if there is any water coming from behind the washer (to the right) it runs under the wall and then kinda sorta towards this drain - so it isn't well sloped. My inclination is to run tile up the wall in addition to on the floor to prevent water from running under the wall, any other suggestions? I'm also not sure if it would be better to level the slope in the floor (such as it is) or to use a different/smaller tile just around the drain to accommodate the slope. I'm using 6x36" tiles in the rest of the basement/room. The only things near enough to this drain to possibly overflow into it are a utility sink and the washer - my water heater is located across the room where it isn't sloped towards this even a little bit.
Even if I just did the smaller tiles and didn't change the slope though, I'm not sure what if anything I should try and do with this drain since it would be below the level of the tile. Is there a way to replace the rusty grate? Raise the whole thing a bit? Suggestions appreciated!
The main reason it is so rusty I think is that there were previously 3 layers of flooring - linoleum on the bottom (with asbestos, so I had this all professionally remediated), then stick-on vinyl tiles, then floating sheet vinyl on the top (it was floated on top of a layer of underlayment). They had just (poorly) cut holes around this drain for each layer, so any time water drained in/out of it, it sat in the floor layers around it. Yuck.
If you're wondering why I said flows out of it, that's because this drain is unsurprisingly the first thing to back up when there is a clog in the main line. We have a septic system which is located significantly lower than the house, so backing up from the septic is never going to happen, but for instance we recently had to deal with tree roots and it backed up with bathwater. The lowest place around this drain is under the wall, which leads into a bathroom - so anytime it backs up even a tiny bit, it goes straight under that wall which is less than ideal. The wet floor in the pic is just from me playing around with it a bit.
So my main two questions are, how should I deal with this floor and how should I deal with this drain?
This is in a room about 125 sq ft, but most of the floor is quite flat and does not slope towards this drain at all. Maybe 1-1.5' around it is sloped towards it, and if there is any water coming from behind the washer (to the right) it runs under the wall and then kinda sorta towards this drain - so it isn't well sloped. My inclination is to run tile up the wall in addition to on the floor to prevent water from running under the wall, any other suggestions? I'm also not sure if it would be better to level the slope in the floor (such as it is) or to use a different/smaller tile just around the drain to accommodate the slope. I'm using 6x36" tiles in the rest of the basement/room. The only things near enough to this drain to possibly overflow into it are a utility sink and the washer - my water heater is located across the room where it isn't sloped towards this even a little bit.
Even if I just did the smaller tiles and didn't change the slope though, I'm not sure what if anything I should try and do with this drain since it would be below the level of the tile. Is there a way to replace the rusty grate? Raise the whole thing a bit? Suggestions appreciated!