Making a shower tray.

[wanabechippie]

Hi.

Need to remove a bath from the MIL's house and replace with a shower. Instead of using a regular stone resin or plastic tray, I was thinking of making one using some 18mm marine ply that I have. The size would be around 90x120ish.

If I were to shape it so as to have a low point, tank and tile the whole thing and fit a drain - would it work? Thinking it would be along the same lines as a wet-room level entry tray?

Any thoughts?

Cheers.

 

[Jesus H. Christ]

Sorry - I posted prematurely. I'll be back if anyone calls.

 

[wanabechippie]

O....K...

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

Why not just do the whole floor of your bathroom as a wet room floor and forget about the crazy plywood shower tray idea?

 

[gcol]

You can do it, but it needs to be properly rigid and needs tanking properly before tiling.

 

[wanabechippie]

I'm fairly sure I can make it completely ridgid. That's no prob. Was just wondering if there was something i was missing from my cunning plan before i embarked upon it.

Budgets a bit tight, hence just replacing bath with shower - no wet room.

Is there a specific wet-room type of drain I would need to use or would a regular shower tray one work?

Cheers.

 

[PilotPete]

Dallmer do a huge range of drains. I used one in my wet room and so far it has proved faultless. http://www.dallmer.de/sanitaer/html_gb/index_gb.html can be seen for sale herehttp://www.boundarybathrooms.co.uk/acatalog/copy_of_WetFloorDrains.html

A normal waste needs to be fitted into a suitable recess, which I suppose you could do with your ply by using a router, but then you will have a drop from the surface of your tiles into the drain. These wet room drains can be just butted up to a suitable sized round hole in your ply. They do have to be fully supported underneath though in a sand/ cement mix in a suitable 'box' so that they can bear the weight of a person standing on them. On the top surface you mount the square grate surround which is the same thickness as your tiles, thus you end up with no step down from the tile surface into the drain. A square stainless grate looks good too.

In my experience as a DIYer it takes quite a lot of work to 'set' the lower half of the drain at exactly the right height in the sand/ cement mix to ensure that your flooring material (your ply) butts up perfectly to the rubber seal. Your ply will need to be very well supported on the joists, possibly with extra battening between the joists to make it extremely rigid. Then tank throughout all around the drain, across the base and up the walls and Bob's your uncle!

PP