Friday, January 28, 2011

Light at the end of the tunnel! And I don't think it's a train...

Well there is finally some progress worth talking about. The tub went in yesterday and today I'll hook up the drains and give a water test. Naturally, it wasn't as easy as just dropping in a tub. The tub is an acrylic soaker tub which basically means it's a thin acrylic shell sprayed with fiberglass and a sheet of chipboard added to strengthen it. The downside is that if you don't support the bottom of the tub properly it will creak like mad and possibly get hairline cracks over the years.

The gap on my tub was 4 1/2" at one end to 3 1/2" at the other. This means that while the top of the tub is level, the bottom is angled for good drainage. The best way to support the tub is with a bed or mortar (Quikrete Masonry Mortar S type was what I used) but I didn't want to put down enough mortar to fill that kind of gap. It would be 150+ pounds and combine that with personal weight plus water and you get a lot of weight. Luckily my tub is pretty much directly over a support wall with 1 1/2" subfloor so I'm not too worried. Still I figured that making a platform to take some of the height would be better. So here is my mortar bed support Mk. II (yes there was a Mk. I - we won't talk about that):


Note that I've matched the 3 degree slant of the tub to the support. I've also added 3 key strips to help lock the mortar in place. Now there is the possibility that this tub may come out at some point (long after I'm dead 'cause I ain't doing this again anytime soon) so it wouldn't be good to have the mortar stick to anything. We just want it to provide support. So, the bottom of the subfloor get some 6 mil poly laid over it (the Tuck tape was to make sure it didn't catch on the tub when moving it in and cause the poly to roll up):


The base is screwed to the floor so that it neither goes anywhere, but it can be removed if required. To keep the mortar from sticking to the tub, more poly is applied there:






You can also see the insulation that I've added to help keep the water hot. A full strip on the front and a partial on the side. No room for insulation on the back. I'm using Roxul stone fiber insulation because it's water proof and being actually made from volcanic stone, it will not harbour mould:


Then I mixed up some mortar (anyone who thought I didn't need one of  these you were wrong. Na-na-na-boo-boo!) to a fairly thick consistency and made an angled mound on the support:



With that done I raised the tub up, slid it in on an angle and placed it down. Then I squished it around (the tub that is) and stood in in just to let it sink in. Some say that you should fill the tub with water so that the mortgar hardens as if someone were in there, but I've done some checking and I don't think that's the best way to go. Think about it, you add a couple of hundred pounds of weight and let it set. Then you take the weight off. What if the tub rises back up a bit? You've got a ton of mortar and you still have a squeak. The support is there, but I bet it'll be noisy. Since I confirmed it was level in both planes (which it was) and then doubled checked the drainage slope in the bottom was still good (which is was) I didn't see any reason to weight the tub while the mortar dried.. And there's tub (that's not damage on the right side, its where I tore back the protective coating to check a mark):



And if you're thinking I forgot the drain waste outlet on the tub, I didn't. I have space to attach it from below. See the height of the tub and the base prevented me from putting it on before the tub was installed. Also, while you can't see it there are support strips running on all the wall to catch the lip of the tub. However, because it's fiberglass, the underside is not uniform. There is full contact in some areas, and none in others. I'll remedy that by applying a low expansion hard setting insulating foam between the tub lip and the supports.

I've also completed my leak tests and it's all green lights - no issues with tub, drain plug or drain lines. Now I'm in for the fun stuff, final attachments to secure the tub, put on the drain waste outlet plumbing, do a leak check, finish the niches to hold shampoo and stuff, put up cement board and then Kerdi membrane. Oh the fun.

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