when you say puddles, is it more then 1/8" deep? A couple of observations.1) can it be the fact that the "wood" look makes the puddles seem more apparent then they might be if the floor was tile or acrylic base? 2)While the slope in the "mud" job should prevent puddling of any magnitude, can the fact that the "planks" have little grout, and are long strips as compared to tile, a likely cause ?

I couldn't see your photobucket pictures. How long are the porcelain planks?

I think your tile guy is right. I really like the concept of what you were trying to do, but I don't see how the long tile strips can be properly pitched toward the drain in such a small area.

Even if you get the left to right pitch correct, I think it would be almost impossible to get the front to back pitched properly. Because of the length of the boards, the tile guy couldn't get that gentle slope toward the drain. Which is perhaps why most of the water is in the front and back of the shower.

qdognj, yes puddles are more than 1/8" deep, mostly in left front and back right corners. Which is exactly what jerszeegirl is saying.

jerzeegirl, yep you're right. You explained the problem exactly. I just couldn't put it into words. What you said is what the contractor explained to me.

I just wished the contractor told us before installing them. He told me this morning that he didn't think they would work. Well Hello, Say something...rrrrrrrr.

No words can say how upsetting this is.

Do you love it enough to give it a quick squeege after a shower?
I think it's gorgeous!
Lynn

bestyears has a good point...If you love it, leave it alone..a quick squeege after the shower will do...I actually squeege the walls and door after every shower anyway, so to do the floor real quickly,to me, is a better alternative then ripping it out...

I certainly wouldn't mind using the squeege on the floor, it's DH that I worry about and I don't want mold.

But putting the squeege on the side, since the water is pooling won't it just build up while showering? What drainage we do have is slow because of the pitch.

Gosh, I'm trying to learn about this so I don't sound so uneducated.

You mean the puddle gets deeper the longer you shower? If that's the case, you need to have it repaired and sloped properly..If the water just finds a low spot after you are done, then i'd let it be and squeege it...

Your tile guy hasn't heard of weep holes? And you have a 2-part clamping drain?

That leads me to my next question...before he put the membrane down, did he do a preslope? Meaning, he should have packed deck mud in there at a slope. Let it cure overnight. Come back the next day and install the membrane over the preslope. That makes the membrane slope.

Then you pack another layer of mud on top of the membrane. Since the membrane is sloped, this layer is also sloped. The tile gets thinsetted to that top layer of mud.

What I described to you occurs pretty much everywhere but the west coast. Some west coast guys still do hot mop.

So anyhowz...

Despite it all, your tile guy has to work with the tile he has. If someone tells me they want 2" mosaic, even up to 4" or maybe even 6" tiles on the floor, I'll slope the preslope like always. Then I can tile and for the most art, tile 6" and smaller will conform to the slope without the edges of the tiles getting too lippy.

For tiles like yours that are too large to conform to a typical preslope, I would have made the preslope look like an inverted pyramid. There would have been a "crease line" gog from each corner of the shower directly to the drain.

The triangles of preslope that are made up by the crease lines and the wall, that mud would be flat. Not level, it would pitch from the wall to the drain, but that section of "triangle" would be flat.

I could then tile your floor using whatever sized tile you want, but you'd have cut lines in the tile that follow the previous crease lines, meaning you'd have cut lines in the tile going from each corner of the shower to the drain.

For the life of me I can't figure out why I labored so hard through that explanation. I hope it makes sense.

That wood tile look so strange in the shower. Not in a bad way, it's an attention getter.

Your shower is no good as it is. Your tilesetter should have pointed out the limitation of the wood tile before setting the tile. Unless he simply didn't think things through before starting.

Still, a non-draining shower floor is a no go.

and just to cover the thought, if you sprang this tile on him the day the shower was to be tiled, surprising him? He should have waved the white flag, told you that he'd had to take an hour to reshape the mud on the pan, then come back the next day and set the tile in the pyramid-style that I described earlier.

He could charge you a lost day for that and that would be your fault. But in the end, this non-draining shower is his responsibility.

Mongo

Mongo, I do appreciate you taking the time to respond to my post. In hindsight, I wish I had pics of what is under the tile. All I can say is the contractor told me he presloped. I can tell you that before he laid the tile there was a gray floor with a rough surface and coming from the 4 corners there were grooves going from corner to the drain.

Gosh it's hard to describe something when you have no idea what you're talking about.

So my next question is - is my contractor right. If we pick out a smaller tile, will this solve the problem?

yes. The biggest the tile should be in ANY direction is 6 inches, and the smaller, the better it'll conform to the required slope. In almost all the shower floors I install, the tile is 2x2.

Bill, is a 2 x 2 on a mesh OK? (Thanks, Kate.)

A mesh backing is indeed fine.

That wood is starting to grow on me! Although when I look at it I curse him for his too close butt joints. But I'm thinking like it's wood flooring.

Mongo

The rest of the bathroom floor is the same tile and we wanted the floor in the shower to match. Well for us it was a good idea. Aren't there showers that have teak floors? We were thinking along those lines. We also had the contractor cut strips as a border to separate the top tile from the bottom tile. Oh well so much for our brainstorm idea. By the way, when I post the pics of our finished bath you will see it is very, very different.

But considering we did a complete 2 floor gut down to the studs and the shower floor is the only thing that went wrong, that isn't too bad.

If I may ask another question. Now that I have to pick another floor, should I get smaller tiles of the wall tile. It's Walker Zanger crackle tile.

Thanks everyone for your help.

In my opinion, the installation is ridiculous, and shame on the contractor....to me, wood tile planks should have been an obvious red flag for issues with properly sloping the floor that he should have mentioned prior to installing.

I doubt there is a preslope, or any slope at all. I would guess his membrane was layed flat, and then the planks were layed "flat". If water does not flow back to drain weep holes, you will get nasty stuff growing under your tile.

off topic but...

Can you post pics of the rest of the bathroom? I was going to use the plank tiles in my bathroom too. I was thinking beadboard cabinets, soapstone tops and wood look floors. I would love to see the floor before I commit though. What color are they? They look like my Brazilian Cherry floors that I was trying to match.

Thanks,
Cleo

For a teak shower floor, I make the teak grid, and while it depends on the design, the grid is usually flat.

I then set the grid on top of a tiled preslope, it is held above the preslope a bit by feet.

Water flows through the teak grid, then flows towards the drain, coaxed by the tiled preslope.

The teak grid can be lifted out and removed from teh shower if need be.

Mongo

cleo, here's a pic of our floor. Sorry it hasn't been cleaned yet but you get the idea. The floor is Rex Abisko and the color is mogano.

mongoct, thanks for the info on the teak floor. Contractor would probably have a stroke if I asked him to do it :)

{{gwi:1495238}}

I agree...shame.
I think he is making up a story regarding the preslope. And then he leveled the preslope to accomodate the long flat tiles. I think not. He layed the membrane on the flat subfloor. Those tiles are too long to accomodate a slope. And the joints do not even meet at the centerline..impossible. He should rip out and replace at his cost.

Is it possible to do with your tiles what Mongo said he does with teak? i.e. Do a tile floor underneath, then do an overlay grid in your tile with some type of support to keep it a little off the lower floor but still allow the water to drain? The water would drain between the tiles down into lower tiled floor and out...

Or if you can't do that with tile, then I would just do the teak floor thing exactly as Mongo described. Stain the teak to the color you want. You've already thought out the design, I wouldn't let it go so easily.

The wood look tile is very cool! I do agree that it should not have been used in a the shower. As has been said, there is no way to get the proper slope. I like the idea of tiling the floor and using a teak shower "mat" over it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Custom teak shower mats

Love the look you have going, the combination of wood look and embossed metal is really great.

It sounds like he sloped in the 'inverted pyramid' that Mongo mentions, but then laid the tile accross the corners that lead to the drain, instead of out from them. The floor should be sloped like an 'X', with the drain at the center, the arms running to the corners. Tiles in each section of the 'X' should be laid at a 90 degre angle to its immeadiate neighbors so that the majority of grout lines are funneling water into the X arms.

I'm not sure the 'weep holes' issue has been properly addressed, not clear to me though maybe it is to Bill or Mongo.

And even though I love the look, I'd worry that this is going to be one slick floor: not enough grout lines, a glazed surface, and a large format, low texture tiles.

So, for saftey if not for drainage, I think it needs a do-over. I'd cut the tile into small pieces and try to do a layout like a parquet floor, with plenty of grout lines for grip.

Yeah, here are two ways it could have been tiled while maintaining the slope:

Thanks for the picture. I really like it.

Mongo, thanks for the diagrams. I am going to show them to my contractor on Monday.