Hi Ann..yes I am installing a steam shower. I have the NuTone ultra quiet fan,heat/nite light combo installed just outside of the shower over the toilet. I would prefer to not have to add another fan but I thought that I needed some ventilation in the steam shower (fan or transom) so that when taking a regular shower, it would not be too steamy. What is your experience w/this? I love the bench idea but what are the dimensions. I'm thinking of the fold down type so I can easily have more room w/o having to move a bench in & out...but it is lovely.

A couple of points to ponder...is this a localized area of increased humidity, or do you have whole-house elevated humidity? Has the relative humidity in your house ever been checked? A whole-house dehumidifier might help, they're fairly easy to install if you have whole-house air conditioning. If you already have one, it just might not be running as much now due to the AC not being used as much in the cooler winter months, so your winter interior levels might be increased. The bathroom fan you have can help evacuate localized moisture, but if the overall humidity in the house is high enough for mold/mildew to flourish elsewhere in the house then it might not be a fault with the pebble. The large amount of grout that comes along with most pebble installations can be an irritation for sure if you have mold/mildew. Do you have issues in other bathrooms or in other rooms in your house? If so, my first recommendation from this "whole house" side of the argument would be to look into the humidity levels in your house. By the way, installing a whole house dehumidifier would probably be less expensive than redoing your shower floor. Let's toss whole house aside and just consider the bathroom: When your shower floor was built, was the waterproof membrane put on top of a sloped surface, or was the waterproof membrane set on the flat subfloor and the sloped surface put on top of the flat membrane? Membranes put flat on the subfloor can hold water, exacerbating moisture problems on the shower floor. Especially a pebble floor. That excess moisture can then increase the localized humidity levels in the bathroom. Investigate the efficiency of your bathroom fan. How big the bath is versus the rated size of the fan. Run the fan. Is there any significant air movement? Will is suck and hold a piece of toilet paper to the face of the grill? Does the airflow grab the toilet paper and snap it onto the grill or does it barely hold on to it? Is it strong air movement? Weak? I'd take a look to where the bath fan outlet is outside your house. Are there any impediments to air flow? Bird nest, bee hive, etc. The duct work from the bathroom fan to the outlet hood...is the duct crushed anywhere? Pinched as it squeezes through a framing bay? Too long of a run? Too many turns? Grout sealers...some are film sealers, some penetrating. Film sealers are bad. They sound good, but in a bathroom it's like putting saran wrap over your tile. It's great...until moisture gets behind the wrap. Which it will. The better choice would be a penetrating sealer that is moisture vapor permeable. Those sealers will bead water droplets and will help the grout shed water. But if moisture gets under the grout (which it will) they allow the moisture vapor to permeate through, back out of the grout and back to free air within the room. Stepping back a bit to the pebble floor itself. Does it drain well or does water pool after you're done showering? Also, since pebbles can be a bit of work to grout, some people mix the grout too wet so it flows easier. That's bad. The water that isn't consumed during the hydration process will eventually evaporate away, and instead of having nice dense grout you have grout with micro-voids within the cementitious structure. It'll sort of act like a sponge, collecting and holding water. So...it could be myriad things. If this bathroom is the only moldy place in your house, start with the bathroom. The fan, is it moving air. The shower pan, is the membrane flat or sloped.

Thank you so much for the responses. Sorry, I didn't reply sooner. antss - I'll check out the Kohler. Thanks for the heads up. mongoct - thanks for the detailed reply. I really appreciate the time you took. I agree that it doesn't look like we have much storage in the bathroom. However, the closet near the shower is 8 1/2 feet long and the other one is a little over 13 feet. Rather than add another door for a linen closet in the bathroom, we decided we would just have shelving in one of the closets for the excess linens. I think it will work for us given all that space & the fact that we have additional storage for off-season clothing. Yup, already got "beaten up" about the 2' doors on the new home forum (reposted there since I wasn't getting nibbles here & that is more my "home".) Anyway, I thought it was OK since we have a 2' door in our current powder room. Upon reflection, I think we will increase those to 2'4" to avoid banging knuckles when carrying a laundry basket. The WC compartment in our current master bath is 2'8"x5'2" with an in-swinging door which is on the side. I don't know if code is different in TX or the spec builder just got away with it. These plans were drawn up by an SC designer to build in SC. I'll ping the builder about code so we don't have any surprises. I was more than beaten up about this on the other forum with claims that 3 feet wide was absolutely insufficient to exist in. We must just be weird because our current room is fine & this is a touch bigger. We have used our WC room as a "mockup" & measured where the door would swing on the new one. Well, you have me there about the open door. ;^) Like I said, we're weird. I know that I won't be seeing much when its steaming, I was more interested in the sense of light I would get when sitting there. I want to maximize that. The steam shower is mostly for me (& our future septic tank). I take very long showers because I just stand there daydreaming & thinking. We had the idea that if I could sit in the shower surrounded by steam, I wouldn't go through so much water. I do think the seat is a problem. I couldn't get the designer to put in a bench deeper the 12", so I finally gave up & asked for a corner seat. Its seems like a bench should be between 15"-18" deep & long enough so I could lean against a wall & stretch my legs out along it. (I'm only 5'2" so that's not much length.) Do you have suggestions about height, length, depth & which wall to put it along? I've never had a rainshower experience so I don't really know what I want. In our current shower, we replaced the fixed showerhead with a Waterpik, so that is the extent of my direct experience with shower fixture technology. Pretty sad, right? I know we have to have a handshower, but that can also be what we use for general washing, right? I'd like body jets to be able to direct to parts that get sore (my shoulder & DH's elbow). I think if we are going to have a rainshower is should be the real deal as you described it. I was looking at Moen because that is what the plumbing supply house quoted as the basis for our builder's bid, but we're not limited to Moen. Also, our builder has no issue with us providing fixtures & our allowance will be credited. Since I have the quote sheet, I know that the builder's discount brings us in line with what we could get off the internet, so I have no problem going with the supplier for most things. I agree that the Moen system looks like a mess, but DH is leery about the digital alternative which is much sleeker. (And, we're both EE's; go figger.) Thank you so much for the advice about the Hansgrohe. I think that is exactly what I need. I did a quick look online & the (cheapest) trim kit + rough-in is ~$350. I read through the installation manual so I can start thinking about what fixture I want to go to which port. I assume that I can get whatever fixtures I want to work with the Hansgrohe, right? Again, I really welcome the advice & I understand what you were saying about the doors. I will quiz the builder on the WC room swing & code. Thanks - Jo Ann

We have this set up. My tile pro built it like a real steam shower, but we didn't install a steam generator: sloped ceiling, glass to the ceiling, transom above door, tiled ceiling, etc. He is an excellent tile professional who has built many real steam showers, so building our "steam-capture" shower was not a challenge for him. You need to talk to your tile pro about what waterproofing/vaporproofing detailing he recommends. It's been 2 years, so I can't remember every detail of what materials and methods he used, except that I know he used Laticrete hydroban boards and it's a sealed system, not a water-in-water-out system. You do need to tile the ceiling. My pro used extendable support poles to hold the ceiling tiles in place, and only did one row of ceiling tiles at a time (they are 12" x 24") so as not to disturb the adjacent row. The ceiling took 4 days to complete because of only doing 1 row at a time. About the door: We asked the glass installer to omit the hinge stops so that the door can swing in and out. After a shower, we leave the transom open and the door pushed inward while the exhaust fan is running and we are getting ready for work. I don't like the door sticking out into the bathroom while we are getting ready. This also allows for easy reach-in to turn the water on with out getting wet. About the transom: We like having it because sometimes we don't want very much steam to build up. If it's cold out, I close the whole thing up for steam; but if it's hot and I'm sweaty from gardening, I don't want much steam. If that's the case I leave the transom open and I run the fan while in there. Having the transom gives you options. The transom is also useful because you can close the door, but leave the transom open pretty much all the time. This allows airflow which helps cut down on moisture inside the shower. A normal shower has constant airflow because the top is open; it's good for your shower to allow airflow and the transom is the easiest way to do that unless you want the door to be open all the time; I woudn't like that. Bench: We didn't want a built-in bench. We bought a teak corner bench from Frontgate. Configuration: Try to position your valve so that you can reach in and turn the water on without having to step into the shower. Height and slope of shower ceiling: Our bathroom has 10' ceilings. That's too high IMO to get a good build-up of steam; it would all go to the top! So the contractor brought the ceiling down so that the highest point is 8'8" and the lowest point is 8' (this is a 2" slope per linear feet; our shower is 4' deep). This required some framing/bracing work in the attic to provide support for the ceiling tile and the glass above pony wall, so that there would be no support posts needed in the bathroom proper. All the support comes from above. The shower is on the furthest wall from the entry door and a focal point of the bathroom. The high point of the ceiling is against the back wall, so furthest from the entry, and it slopes forward towards the entry. This way, the slope is not even noticable until you are in the shower. Unfortunately, my DS built a steam shower and her contractor sloped the ceiling form right to left. IMO it looks stange/lopsided when you enter the bathroom when it is oriented like that. Fixtures: We have a fixed showerhead on one wall, a rain shower in the ceiling, and a hand-held positioned low on the wall next to the teak bench. Hand-shower makes cleaning easier. DH likes a cold blast from the rain shower, but not me. He doesn't turn the diverter until the end of his shower, so that he can get a cold blast. I always turn the diverter half way so that the fixed and rain warm up at the same time; no cold blast. It's a luxury, but having that option is nice. Our city allows 2 valves, so our hand-shower is on it's own valve. If you are in CA or another place with stricter water rules, you can put a different kind of value and diverter so that all 3 fixtures are being fed by the same valve. Glass cleaning: I wipe the shower down a couple times a week, but I don't do it every time like some GWers do. But since the glass goes so high up I can't reach the top. I keep a squeegee in a nearby cabinet, and use it sometimes, but have to admit that I don't do it every shower. Make sure you get the factory-applied glass coating (such as Showerguard). Privacy: We have a tall-ish pony wall bc I don't like the "shower-show." We've got lots of kids and they sometimes will walk in to ask me a question (yikes!), so I asked contractor to build the pony wall to about shoulder height. What I didn't realize at the time is that I probably didn't have to do that at all because the steam provides a lot of privacy. The glass fogs up and you can't see in or out very well at all. It's also really quiet in there which is cool; feels like you are very far away for just little while. It's very refreshing. Good luck!