Hello,

My shower drain seems to be on a "mountain" - i.e. instead of the pan sloping TOWARD the drain, it slopes AWAY from the drain.

Attached is a photo of the shower. In the interest of science, I took an 11-quart pan filled with water, put in some blue food coloring, and poured it into the shower. I did this because clear water did not show up very well in a photo, and I wanted to make it obvious to the camera how the shower pan looks after I finish taking a shower. (And besides, in cartoons the water is always blue, right?)

Here's the bad news: I asked my dad, and he told me the shower's been that way since the house was built ~17 years ago. (Yeah, I know, if I would have been a little older at the time, I would have told my dad to insist that the contractor have it redone, but I didn't know much about plumbing at the time.) More bad news: upon closer inspection, the shower pan seems to have developed some spiders cracks around the drain over the years (see second attached photo).

I don't really know where to begin asking: Is there any hope in this case? Can it be fixed? Or will it have to be replaced? The shower is several inches above the ground (see first attached photo); will removing the tiles in front of the rise to access the area beneath the pan help me any? Are/will the spider cracks cause serious problems?

And finally, something I've been curious about for years (even before I got into plumbing): where does all the excess water go - it usually disappears overnight (for a bedtime shower) or throughout the day (for a morning shower), so does it make sense to assume it evaporates in shuch or short time? Or should I be worried that it's somehow seeping through an as-of-yet undiscoved crack in the pan, and wreaking havoc on the subfloor below?

Help!!
Moishe

Some more info: just found these markings in the corner of the shower pan:

MUSTEE PN. 32.102
32" X 32"

I guess that means that it's a Mustee Part No. 32.102 or something...

Moishe, Ya sure know how to start a dudes day out. This has been like this for 17 years? One of two things have happened here. The shower base was faulty before installation or the drain was installed so high,( and don't ask me how) that the area around it has been raised. The mystery deepens when you inform me that the standing water "just goes away" after it sets. Evaporation doesn't explain the loss of all the water I see that's left standing. But if it has been leaking out onto the subfloor for 17 years it surely would have shown up by now. Very strange! I take it the shower's on the second floor and you would see a leak on the ceiling if it came through. Disturbing the drain, (ie" lowering it) might open up those spider cracks into a full blown problem. Perhaps the only answer would be to (1)replace the shower base or (2) Remove the base and pan out the shower and mud and tile in a new shower floor. I would go for door number 2 if it were me. Regards, Tom

Well Tom, after asking around the household a bit, I think I can explain the mystery of the disappearing water (assuming it's not a leak): those of us who use the shower are aware of the problem, and after a shower we try to "kick" as much water as possible down the drain with our feet, or we push it up the "hill" with a washcloth; the remaining water is a lot less than in the picture, and can evaporate quickly. As for the night I experimented by leaving the pan full, the water disappeared quickly for a very simple reason: the bathroom was cleaned the next morning, and the person who cleaned it (unaware that I was in middle of an experiment) went and sponged up all the water. :D So much for the scientific method...

Yes, the shower is indeed on the second floor.

Can you think of any logical reason why the shower is raised about 8" from the floor (as you can see from the first picture I posted in this thread)?

As for the options you gave me, if I end up doing either one of those, I'm going to need some help. I'm the type of guy who doesn't mind getting his hands dirty, and can whack away determinedly at a problem for hours, no matter what it takes - electrical, plumbing, carpentry, tiling/masonry, etc. - with one catch: I need to be told what to do. In other words, I can tackle a serious project (and sometimes complete it) but if I get the idea that things are not going well, I get discouraged easily. This usually happens because I can usually figure things out, so if I hit something that I can't figure out and there is no one to help me, I panic. So if I decide to go ahead, can you please help walk me through it?

If the answer is yes, I have a couple of questions before I decide which path to take:
1) Which one is easier?
2) Which one will probably be cheaper?
3) How can I figure out how much this will cost (i.e. what variables need to be considered)?
4) Why did you say you prefer option #2?

" if I decide to go ahead, can you please help walk me through it?"
No problem Morris, that's why I'm here. Not knowing what's under the base doesn't give me much to go on if you go for door #1 and if you pick door #2 I can walk you through setting the flange type drain and panning out the shower but you're going to hafta get instructions on framing the base and mudding and tiling the floor.
1) Which one is easier?
Neither one. Both make a mess and both are major surgery
2) Which one will probably be cheaper?
Depends on how much outside help you bringin. #2 will cost more for materials.
3) How can I figure out how much this will cost (i.e. what variables need to be considered)?
I wouldn't have the foggiest.
4) Why did you say you prefer option #2?
Because I'm not sure the present base isn't defective and a tile job isn't a repair job like #1, it's a remodel and will look a lot classier when you're through.
Morris, You might want to keep it as it is. You're going to go through a lot of work to change it, but hey! Your choice. Regards, Tom

Hmmmm... I guess I'll have to think about it. Seeing as how the first step in either solution would be to remove the existing pan, can you please tell me how to do that? Like this, I'll have what to think about for starters (i.e. if I decide that it sounds too complicated, then at least I know to give up right away. Although I don't like admitting defeat, at least it'll take the burden off my mind of thinking about it any longer).

" Seeing as how the first step in either solution would be to remove the existing pan, can you please tell me how to do that?"

Not quite. If you go with door#1,(besides just replacing the base outright) you will go in from the bottom and figure out a way to lower the trap an raiser to see if the drain will pull the floor downso it will drain. If the trap can't be lowered then you'll have to cut a piece of raiser out to lower the drain and see if will lower the area around the drain.
For Door # 2 you'll just take a Saws-All and cut the base out. After you build the frame you can pan the shower and start to mud it in. Think it over, Tom

Tom,

Having abandoned this project for the past two months for various reasons, I finally got back to work on it. I went into the closet in the next room (which shares a wall with the shower) and used my Dremel with a cutting guide and drywall cutting bit to cut open part of the wall near the floor so I could see what's going on beneath the surface - how the shower is built beneath the pan. Attached are two photos of what it looks like.

As you can see if you examine the second photo closely, there appear to be a couple vertical cracks in the edges of the mortar (one of them is in the very center of the second photo, while the other is all the way to the right, just before the stud). Although the shower floor doesn't seem to flex when you stand normally in it, it does flex when you deliberately push down with a little force; I had someone do this while I observed the effect from the closet. The result was that as the shower pan went down, at first nothing moved (i.e. as if there were an air bubble between the plastic and the mortar), and then once the plastic hit the mortar [apparently], as my assistant pushed his foot down, the layer of mortar began to buckle UPWARD. Strange...

Anyway, I'm getting fed up with this whole business - I'm generally not too thrilled with the idea of capital punishment, but the so-called "plumber" who did our house is really making me reconsider it. :( I just want to get it working - even if not in the best way, but at least good enough to last for a while. The problem is, ripping out the old plastic base and mortar-and-tiling a whole new pan from scratch seems like a big pain, not to mention that I'm not sure I'll be able to do it successfully, and then I'll really be up the creek (or down the drain, as the case may be).

So I had an idea: perhaps I can get away with mortal-and-tiling directly into the old pan? I know it's a crazy idea, but it just might work. The idea is to simply ignore the fact that it's a plastic shower pan and make believe I'm working with a standard wood base: namely, I would start by filling the pan with a layer of mortar (see attached diagram, which is a "cutaway" view from the side) - thicker on the outside, thinner on the inside near the drain - to make the "pan" level. Then (perhaps, if necessary) I would install a membrane, followed by (if necessary) another small layer of mortar, just enough to give the pan a slope of ¼ per foot toward the drain, followed by tile cement and then tiles.

What do you think? I know it's clearly not the best (or even recommended at all) idea, but all I care about right now is: will it work at all? I'm so frustrated by this, that I'm willing to end up with a shower pan that my look kind of ugly, and that may not even do a very good job (in the long run), as long as I no longer have to stand in a puddle of freezing cold water when I first get into the shower, and as long as I don't keep slipping because the accumulated water combined with the "hill" makes it feel like standing in an oil slick.

Cheers,
Moishe

Moshie, Congratulations for figuring out a way out of your problem without tearing out the shower and starting from scratch. Would it work? Yeah! I think it would work just fine. Start by removing the existing drain so you're left with a just a trap raiser. Now level the floor with mortar mix. Since the lower sections of the old floor will collect water the base will have to be panned out with a Compaseal membrane shower pan. This means that when you are leveling the floor with mortar leave enough room around the stubup to install a flange type shower drain flush with the newly leveled floor. Pan the shower floor with seamless corners and run the pan up the wall 8". You may now slope the mortar to the drain and tile the floor. What a novel solution. Kudos for coming up with it.
Good luck, Tom

OK, for starters, how do I remove the drain? (You can see what the drain looks like in the second picture attached to the first post all the way in the beginning of the thread.)

And then how do I install the flange-type drain through the hole in the middle of the current pan (which unless I do major surgery from the room next door, is my only way of accessing the riser)? If it were PVC, I could theoretically put the PVC cement on, and then just drop the drain in and push it onto the riser - but this is cast iron we're talking about - how do I get a no-hub coupling in there?

Also, you say to run the pan 8" up the wall. But the wall already has tiles above the pan! (See the first picture attached to the first post in the beginning of this thread.)

One more thing: are you sure all this will work right on top of the existing pan, with no demolition required whatsoever?

Thanks,
Moishe

I would be concerned about putting a rigid pan (mortar) on a flexing base (your existing shower pan). It seems to me that the flexing might crack the mortar bed.

What about cutting the floor of the existing plastic base with your dremel and then laying the new mortar bed.