Tile Ready Shower Pans – To Bypass the Mysterious Parts
Tile showers just naturally leak. It’s because the grout in a tile floor is porous and sometimes the tile is too. Water just seeps right through and that’s a sure route to destruction and damage. The normal solution to that involves mortar work but tile ready shower pans offer a completely different approach and a real solution.
The traditional mortar tile shower base goes together from the bottom up. Construction is a layer by layer process. A sloped mortar layer goes down first and then a vinyl liner membrane goes over that mortar. Getting the liner in place so it won’t leak is somewhat tricky.
Then the liner must be sealed to a special drain so that whatever water makes it to the liner gets routed down the drain. Then over the liner goes another layer of mud. So the working part of the floor including the liner and the special drain get buried and are literally out of sight within the floor itself.
With tile ready shower bases, the buried mystery working parts are not there. The pan, ready for the tile, gets put in place and the tile goes right on.
In some cases, there still is mud to install. But rather than tricky sloping of mortar, the mud installation just serves as a support for the pan. It’s put in place and the pan just set in place on the mud.
Bases ready for tile are unlike much less expensive shower floors available at home supply stores. Pans ready for tile must be rigid and specially constructed to prevent cracking of tile after the installation. The down side is the cost.
Using the more modern method for building showers lets you skip out on the skilled mortar installation. It also avoids the delay that comes with letting multiple mortar layers dry and cure. Also it skips the tricky task of getting a vinyl sheet properly folded into corners and over the shower curb. It also bypasses the buried drain holes necessary with traditional showers.
In short, the newer pans go together faster with fewer complications and less skilled work. That means less cost for the actual installation and less chance for leaks and problems.
But the tile ready shower pans do cost considerably more than the materials for the traditional showers. Though the labor cost is less for these pans, the material costs are far higher. That higher cost must be balanced against the several advantages.