Home Garden
# Home & Garden >> Building & Remodeling >> Remodeling Plans

Do You Need to Prepare a Concrete Floor Shower for Tile?

Concrete is the preferred substrate for tile installations; and if you are dealing with a concrete shower floor, you can rest assured your shower will last for years to come. While concrete is durable on its own, you can also take extra steps to ensure the installation has an even greater strength this is not necessary for every shower.

  1. Pre-Sloped Concrete

    • While it is not common in every home, sometimes while pouring the concrete slab, the concrete finishers will slope the concrete down to the drain during the finishing process. This allows the tile installers to come into a home with an existing slab slope and get right to work. In these instances you don’t have to do any prep other than clean the concrete and install the tile.

    Flat Concrete

    • Tile shower pans need to have some form of slope to them so that the water goes down the drain rather than pooling up somewhere in the shower. Specifications for slope on a shower floor are up to a 1/4-inch of slope for every linear foot away from the drain hole. If you have a large enough shower, you can simply grind down the concrete with a sander to achieve the slope; but if you have a smaller area, you will need to float a pan.

    Building a Shower Pan

    • Floating your own shower pan is a very challenging task that is best left to the professionals due to multiple aspects that require skill and experience. The base layer needs to be slurried onto the concrete slab and then a sloped layer of mud added on top of that. A plastic pan liner is then installed and run a few inches up the wall, and the finish layer of mud is floated and sloped on top of that to provide the base for the shower pan.

    Basic Waterproofing

    • All concrete shower pans or floors can benefit from a layer of painted-on waterproofing although it is not a requirement other than when wood is present. You can paint it directly onto the concrete floor such, as with a pre-sloped setting, or you can paint it on top of the shower pan, after you have floated it, to provide your shower with an extra layer of waterproofing and protection.

Previous:

Next:

Remodeling Plans
  1. Preparing Concrete Floor for Tile
  2. Can You Lay Tile on a Concrete Shower Wall?
  3. What Kind of Concrete Do I Need for a Shower Pan?
  4. Can You Use Concrete Only for a Shower Pan?
  5. What Kind of Concrete Do You Need for Stained Concrete Flooring?
  6. How Thick Does Concrete Need to Be for a Garage Floor?
  7. What Kind of Subflooring Do You Need for Tile?
  8. Do You Need to Prepare Concrete Before Tiling It?
  9. Do You Need to Put a Moisture Barrier on a Concrete Floor?
  10. Do You Need Joints in a Floating Concrete Porch?
  11. Can You Use Stick-Down Tile on Painted Concrete?
  12. Do You Need a Concrete Floor for a Sauna?

Home Garden © https://www.98905.com