How to build a shower that won't leak

Building a proper shower starts with specifying the right sort of products. Because there are all sorts of sites out there that tell you how to build a shower (and since I don’t build these myself), I am going to stick with something those other folks don’t tell you – the products I specify on a shower that can never, ever leak.

I mean NEVER as in “while I am still alive” or at least until I finally move to a remote tropical island with no extradition treaties with the US. Since I’m not moving for at least another 11 years (and my daughter is off to college), This is how we like our showers built.

It starts with the wall board – and we call for DensShield Tile Backer. This seems to be the current gold standard in shower evolution because this is all we see anymore. I am old enough to remember the lath and mortar walls, and then the cementitious backer board days but we are in the 21st Century now and there are better, more reliable, and most cost effective ways to sheath your wet walls.

I pulled this graphic off the Georgia Pacific website because it does a pretty fair job of showing how the Tile Backer board is produced. Strength, moisture, fire and mold-resistance – this is a great product and does it all (well, not all but it suits the need very well in our shower assemblies).

Up next … Waterproofing Membrane 9235 and Blue 92 Anti-Fracture Fabric from Laticrete.

Say what!?! [needle scratching record]

LATICRETE 9235 Waterproofing Membrane is a cold-applied, liquid rubber polymers that is used with LATICRETE Blue 92 Anti-Fracture Fabric/ Membrane. The liquid is applied with a paint roller or paint brush and the fabric is embedded into the liquid until the liquid bleeds through the fabric. A top coat of the membrane liquid is immediately applied over the fabric. In the picture above, that is why the shower walls now look black – you are looking at the Anti-Fracture Membrane.

LATICRETE 9235 Waterproofing Membrane is a thin, load-bearing waterproofing designed specifically for the special requirements of ceramic tile, stone and brick installations. It is a self-curing liquid rubber polymer that is applied to the substrate and then a reinforcing fabric is quickly applied. Together, they form a flexible, seamless waterproofing membrane that bonds to a wide variety of substrates.

LATICRETE Blue 92 Anti-Fracture Membrane is the second part of a two–part system consisting of a liquid rubber and reinforcing fabric. When cured, it forms a highly flexible membrane. While the thin bed method of tile installation provides many advantages, this method can be affected by problems with shrinkage cracking in concrete and other types of substrates. Cracks can telegraph through the tile and/or grout joints. To reduce or eliminate cracks in tile work, a flexible membrane should be applied to the cracked substrate prior to the installations of ceramic tile, marble and stone.

The picture above shows a shower ceiling after the whole waterproofing system has been put in place but before any actual tile has been installed. We like to set our glass for the showers into the tile because as modern design goes, so go the frames for the glass shower wall. The wood blocks are there to hold the glass panel in place until the tile gets set and the blocks can be removed one by one.

This is a look at another glass shower condition at the ceiling as the tile is being set. In the picture above, you can see that there is one row of tile missing at this stage. We generally tile the ceilings as well in our projects – it is a cleaner look and makes the entire shower more watertight.

I have mentioned it before but a pet peeve of mine is when you get a round shower drain right in the middle of the shower. That’s because this is generally the spot where I find myself standing and I don’t like standing on the drain – it doesn’t feel right. With just the littlest bit of effort, that’s an easy thing to deal with but in our nicer projects, I am particularly fond of the linear slot drain located against the wall where nobody will ever stand on it. The one we are using for this project is the Infinity AG 65. There is another product on the market that I was just introduced to but I haven’t used it before so some additional research will be required before I squawk about it here on my site.

Since I don’t have any finished pictures of the shower just yet, this one is from the Infinity Drains website – I just included it here so that you could get an idea of how it looked in a finished environment.

Lastly a shot of the glass wall at the shower floor – which will also be set in place by the tile. In this picture, you can see my foot resting on the finished tile floor of the bathroom. We also drop the slab in our showers so there aren’t curbs between the bathroom floor and the shower floor. You can also tell in this shot that the floor in the shower is sloping (towards our linear slot drain remember?).

I hope I didn’t make you fall asleep reading today’s post – every now and then I remember that I wanted to focus on showing people what an architect does and share some information that could be beneficial to the non-architects who read these posts. I am a big fan of all the products I mentioned today and did not receive any compensation of any sort or in any form to talk about them. I hope that is something that the regular readers here at Life of an Architect have already figured out – I speak my mind and answer to myself.