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Is it possible to have one of the showers where you just have a shower head and a drain in the floor ( Is there a name for them ?) on a first floor which has wooden floor boards on top of which I would tile ? can you get a water proof grout ?, or would I need to place a water proof coating of some sort in between? if so how would you bond the three together ? Under neath the floor is the ground floor cave , garage, etc so the floor boards would be exposed underneath to be able to watch for leaks ......

Any help on this Idea will be gratully received, Thankyou [:)]

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Do you mean a wet room?

Lapeyre do a drain hole that is bonded into a sort of rubber sealing membrain, designed to be used under tiles in just such a way, but if there are floor boards, and you have something like wires or plumbing running underneath, you may, one day, have to get to them!!

Bathroon grout is waterproof. The chap that sold us his house grouted our shower with kitchen grout, which isn't!

There are waterproof palsterboards, or even marine ply, but it all boils down to that access problem!!

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The sealing I think - we have had problems in the past with the grout in showers breaking down over a period and are pretty keen to avoid future problems - also, how will you achieve the required change in level to allow the water to flow through the outlet efficiently? I think the gap between our upper floor and lower floor ceiling may have been an issue too.
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I have been looking into this and it is what I wanted as well but have decided against. I didn't want it to be open as in a wet room but wanted a glass shower enclosure in the bathroom with no tray. However, after considering all of the specialist tanking products or special base as Anton mentioned that would be tiled over, it worked out to be a lot more expensive and worrying.

I don't think they are as common in France and I would have worried about the tilers inexperience because if it isn't 100% waterproof, in our case it would have caused future problems. So I have decided on the old fashioned shower tray in the end.

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[quote user="Russethouse"]The sealing I think - we have had problems in the past with the grout in showers breaking down over a period and are pretty keen to avoid future problems - also, how will you achieve the required change in level to allow the water to flow through the outlet efficiently? I think the gap between our upper floor and lower floor ceiling may have been an issue too.[/quote]

If you look at antons link it shows you how you make the drain sinkdown its done by a under tile pad thinghy..... As we are starting this room from scratch tanking the area wont be a problem,    

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I normally talk my clients out of this kind of installation, not because it can't be done but because they don't appreciate the mess after a shower

If the shower is open you would be surprised at how much water is all over the floor after a shower

If you have a screened area, part shower and part drying area it is much more practical

Any area of floor in the bathroom that is likely to get wet must be laid to a fall back to the shower or a separate floor drain

There are membranes which incorporate the shower waste available on the market, plus Wedi do a rigid base contoured to a fall but you would need to raise the surrounding floor slightly to incorpoate this

Under no circumstances attempt to make the waterproof joint between the floor and the shower waste yourself, this is a recipe for disaster

Go to a good builders merchant such as Point P, get a copy of the Weber Broutin catalogue

In that you will find details of System Protec, a waterproofing solution for bathrooms

They also do Weber HR tile cement and grout that is for use on swimming pools and is genuinly waterproof

There are selection charts in the catalogue so you can get the right combination of products for your requiremets

Le Plombier

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 Unless its good size space everything does get wet ( I have used a wet room - I know :( :( ) that includes whatever you took off or perhaps the towels you were hoping to dry yourself with.

As it is our shower room is too small for a succesful set up and after seeing some showers recently I think given the space I would opt for a large shower area, with tray.

Good luck though - I can see the attraction, its just the practicalities that concerned me in our situation.

 

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You could always stick a hose out of the window and stand under it P? It would solve at least 2 problems, 1. you would get clean and 2. it would water the garden. There is a 3 too, it would give the villagers something to talk about [Www][Www] ?

I too had the experienceof a wet room a long time back and it was a real pain. As RH said everything gets wet and as someone else said anyone wearing any kind of footware in there no matter how clean you think it is and there is dirt all over the place.

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We are going to do one in our apartment (for use by guests) but only because it is big enough to have a barrier between the washing area and the drying area, while leaving room for wheel chair access. We are considering glass blocks (it's a solid concrete floor), glass wall or a shaped tiled wall.

There are quite a few products to ensure what ever happens to the grout/tiles, water doesn't get through. as I said, water liners are featured in Laperye , which you tile straight on to.

It is also interesting that there is now an English web site for Laperye, where you can order stuff for delivery in France!!  http://www.lapeyre.co.uk/

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Be aware that virtually all grout commonly used is cementitious and therefore water resistant NOT waterproof. This means that it is not affected by the passage of water but water will certainly pass through. If you want a better solution you should use epoxy grout but this is still only about 99% waterproof. The best bet is to tank the substrate prior to tiling. Cementitious bathroom grout and kitchen grout is basically the same though the bathroom grout may have some extra anti-bacterial properties added to it during manufacture.
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