Commercial Shower Pan Repair General Questions Answered
Signs your shower pan is due for a repair
No shower pan lasts forever, so eventually, given enough time, even yours will begin to show signs that it’s in need of repair. The trick is knowing how to recognize the indicators so the repair can be made before the problem becomes a bigger.
One of the most readily recognized signs that your shower pan is due for repair work is sponginess in a fiberglass shower pan. It used to be solid to stand on, but now it is what would best be described as spongy.
Another obvious sign is a visible crack in a fiberglass pan. Then if you look carefully around the edge and notice the sealant or grout coming out, that too means that a shower pan repair needs to be addressed.
Then any visible water where it’s not supposed to be, such as on the ceiling of a room underneath the shower, is for sure an obvious sign that the shower in the bathroom above it has a problem.
A few maintenance tips to help you avoid shower pan repairs
If you want to practice maintenance to help you avoid the headache of shower pan repairs, there are a few things that you can do in this area. The first one is the head down to your local hardware store and pick up a spray bottle a grout sealer.
Grout sealer is just that. It’s a waterproofing barrier that stops water from soaking through the tile work, where it can then cause damage by weakening adhesion or degrading the grout.
Another hot tip is to never place a chair or small ladder inside a shower sitting on the pan, then use it to stand on. The bathroom window on the wall or the ceiling above the shower may be difficult to reach when cleaning the bathroom walls around the shower.
Use an extension rod instead to reach up to paint or to clean the window, even it means holding up the job for a while. But never simply grab a chair and use that to stand on, or you’re just asking for damage to your shower pan.
If a shower pan repair doesn’t work, is the next step a new shower pan or shower base?
The answer here is no. The reason why is that it sometimes happens that there may be two areas where water is leaking from your shower pan. After contacting Kwiatowski Plumbing at 412-681-9525 we were informed that while it is a rare occurrence for them, for less experienced Pittsburgh plumbers, tracking down multiple water leaks can be problematic.
A crack in the floor is obvious most of the time. But the inexperienced eye can overlook leaks coming from a small discrete failure of the seal along the edge. Then, of course, there’s always the shower drain that can be an issue as well.
Then even if you have located perhaps a crack and done the repair yourself, if it wasn’t done correctly, it will need to be gone over again. Shower leak repair on the surface might look easy, but long-term reliability comes from an experienced professional most of the time.
Can a bathtub replace a shower without serious plumbing work?
The answer here is that it depends on what type of bathtub you plan on having installed and what type of shower is currently there. Take a look at a shower, and you will see that the water control valve is located up on the wall.
Then you have the showerhead that’s even higher up on the wall. So obviously, some Plumbing work has to be done when changing from a shower to a bathtub. Is it serious? Not really, if an experienced plumber is doing the work.
Then down at the bottom, there’s the water drain. Showers use a larger drain than a bathtub. So if the shower in place has the drain hole in the same place as the bathtub to be installed, that for sure makes things easier.
So at a minimum, some work will have to be done to adapt in a larger shower drain and make changes for a faucet. Here again, though, to an experienced plumber, this is not a major job. So keep in mind what might be serious to you doesn’t mean that it is to an experienced plumber.
Is a bathtub a better choice than a shower for you?
If the area is too small, you may not have a choice regarding a bathtub versus a shower. The choice for a shower will have already been made for you because there simply isn’t enough room to fit a bathtub in.
However, if you do have enough room to have a bathtub installed, there are a few good reasons why you may want to do just that. Reason number one, is that if you have more than one bathroom in your home and you already have a shower, you may want to install the bathtub, so there will always be that option.
Reason number two is some people folks, and you may be one of them, prefer a long hot bath at the end of the day. Then reason number three, is that there are now so many new options available in today’s bathtubs.
Not only technical options like those found in a Jacuzzi tub but also color and design options to lend a more up-to-date look to a bathroom remodel job.
Then finally, don’t forget that you can have both with a bathtub that also has an integrated shower. So, in this case, there’s no need to decide between one or the other.
Making the right bathroom remodel choice the first time
The Pittsburgh plumbers at Kwiatowski plumbing we dialed up at 412-681-9525 told us that it’s not uncommon for a bathtub or a shower installation job to be completed, only to have owner unhappy with their original choices.
It can be any one or combination of several things, ranging from color or tile designs schemes, or maybe they found something that they prefer after the job is closing in on the completion.
It’s something that just happens, and unless the problem is something that’s easily replaced, such as perhaps a shower door or a showerhead, they almost without exception find themselves having to live with what they have.
So their advice was to always consult a design expert during the initial planning process, so you can have all the options available laid out on a computer screen before the final decisions are made.