Dry packing shower pan

Advice and installation help at the John Bridge Tile Forums. I have therefore taken a few pictures of the mud I make, and I will explain the process once again. Maybe these pictures will be a dry packing shower pan clearer than those previously published.

The shower pan is the all-important foundation of a stand-up shower. Water is a merciless foe, so cutting corners here can lead to rapid and expensive failure of the entire shower. In this project guide, get the key practices for building a mortar shower pan after the framework of the shower is in place. Project Tip: Use the Sakrete App to quickly measure, estimate and buy straight from your phone. The first layer of the shower pan is underneath the waterproofing membrane.

Dry packing shower pan

Building your own shower floor from scratch requires shower deck mud, also referred to as dry pack mortar. Deck mud is made from portland cement, sand, and water. The mixture should be approximately 1 part cement to 5 parts sand but anywhere for 4 to 6 parts sand to 1 part cement is acceptable. Be very careful with how much water you add to the deck mud as you mix it up. It's referred to as dry-pack mortar for a reason. Do not add water like you are mixing concrete. If the mud is too wet it will be harder to work with and level in your shower. More importantly too much water will cause the deck mud to shrink when it dries and floor will not be as strong is it should be. To see if you've mixed the correct amount of water, make a snowball out of the deck mud and it should hold its shape but squeezing the ball should make it fall apart. The mixture should be damp but squeezing it should not cause water to drip out.

Once perimeter is level, fill in the center of the shower pan to start establishing a rough slope from the edges to the drain. Add more material where necessary and continue packing down. Sharp sand or masonry sand, on the other hand, is stored outdoors, and dry packing shower pan water content varies with the weather.

Read This]. View First Unread. I am remodeling a bathroom and building a new 4'x8' shower. Existing floor is concrete slab. I followed all the instructions on this website to make dry pack mortar and installed the pre slope yesterday. I mixed 60 lb bags of Sand Topping Mix and added 25 lbs of play sand to get a sand to cement mixture of close to I dry mixed this thoroughly, then added water slowly to get the consistency described in the dry pack article.

It also explains how to properly install a traditional shower floor base. Read on for info about how to properly slope a shower floor pan. I use Kerdi fabric to waterproof my own custom shower installs, which puts the waterproofing layer right below the shower floor tile. However, other shower installation contractors still use old-school PVC vinyl and fiberglass waterproofing for renovations and new home builds. While this is a lower-tech way of waterproofing a shower, it can still work okay for a couple decades when done correctly. The most important part of any shower base is the waterproofing.

Dry packing shower pan

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In other places, it is a little stronger, but a few seconds with a putty knife and it completely came apart. Water is what causes concrete and concrete products to shrink when curing. Once perimeter is level, fill in the center of the shower pan to start establishing a rough slope from the edges to the drain. Cut waterproofing membrane to approximate size. I was able to screen and float exactly flush with the top of the sticks and I got a very smooth and flat floor with uniform slope. I agree, if there's any movement and cracking, it will be along those sticks. All that's required there is an adequate slope and a flat surface solid enough to support your shower floor. Adding latex in this instance is simply a waste of time and money. Project Tip: Make a final pass with a steel finish trowel to establish a smooth finish surface. Quote: I added 6 cups of water This can take several days depending on the thickness of your deck mud. To recap, deck mud is the mortar to use when building shower floors.

Waterproofing a shower. Well, a lot of showers that are built these days still have no shower waterproofing whatsoever. Or they have poor or improper waterproofing.

My hand was clean, and the mixture crumbled easily, again just like the pictures. The first layer of the shower pan is underneath the waterproofing membrane. Most of them will have to be thinned down just a bit by adding additional sand, as the cement content of the pre-mixes is too high about , usually. There are pre-mixed mortar products that contain only sand and portland, and these can be used to make deck mud. Water is a merciless foe, so cutting corners here can lead to rapid and expensive failure of the entire shower. Install Waterproofing Membrane Waterproofing membrane ensures that any moisture intrusion is properly drained. Adding latex in this instance is simply a waste of time and money. I deviated from the instructions on this site and followed the instructions in videos for the pre-pitch and quick-pitch tools. You can see above the clumps that are created when water combines with the sand and cement. The basic recipe is 5 parts sand to 1 part portland cement — Mark Forums Read. Continuing to mix the mortar will eliminate much of the clumping — unless the cement content is too rich. I strongly recommend you dispense with those plastic strips in the final mud bed installation. I dry mixed this thoroughly, then added water slowly to get the consistency described in the dry pack article. I have used concrete and mortar before, but never dry pack, and without the instructions on this site, I definitely would have added much more water than I did.