Oh, you must live in my home town...

So, thinking this through... How is the connection between the walls and the floor waterproofed in the shower? Don't tell me you count on caulk to keep the water from entering the wall.

It's just tiled to the floor. The grout meets the concrete. There is no caulk.

I personally don't count on anything preventing water from entering the wall, which is the reason I'm asking for opinions. I'm trying to see if I'm overreacting and everything is fine, or if the contractor is clearly wrong. My suspicion is that the place where the wall meets the floor is a particularly big weakness.

The place where the shower glass meets the floor does have some kind of clear caulk around it.

Following.

Caulk is not waterproof.

Additionally I am not even close to a pro, but it appears that they didn't do a thick enough layer of the waterproofing on the walls.

Thirdly, all changes in plane on wall corners, bottom of wall and floor need to be caulked, not grouted.

@Verbo, do you think there is anyway we can pivot to a regular shower (with a threshold) without busting the concrete?

The other complicating factor is there is tubing for radiant heat in the slab. But it's currently not hooked up to a boiler (it was installed in case we wanted it in the future). I don't want to ruin that tubing if I don't have to.

@Verbo We had an architect. She designed the bathrooms and the kitchen. She has an interior design service, which we paid for, for stuff like this.

When I first brought this up, she said the shower was fine without the liner because it was on the slab itself and not on a second floor, but since I asked her to directly address the codes she followed / what I found, she said "she would investigate" and let me know.

The contractor handled the rest. The contractor said he consulted long-time plumbers in the area about the shower, but I don't know if he consulted a tile professional. The people who did the showers didn't seem like they owned a business, the way the HVAC or painter subs did, for example.

On our original architectural drawings, I see that the shower area is marked to be "recessed." It was sloped when it was poured, but it if you look at the drawings, the whole rectangle is shaded and says "recessed."

I'm starting to wonder how anyone in good conscious could tell me "a shower floor doesn't need a waterproof liner" beneath it. It seems like it's understood in the community that that is wildly absurd.

I think that you are focusing on the wrong issue. When you talk to them about a membrane under the floor, they are thinking about the floor. It's not about the floor... it's about the walls.

The moisture in the concrete wouldn't be too big of a deal if it weren't for the walls. I'm going to guess you have wood stud walls - and even with treated wood for the sill plate you will have rot. The big issue then is how did they prevent moisture from entering the wall either directly or wicking through the concrete floor. Caulk is not an acceptable answer (and neither is grout). There is nothing that you can apply to the exterior of that floor/wall connection that will be waterproof for any length of time.

Unless they did something that's not apparent - this is going to look great for a year or two, and then you will see problems.

The right answer is a membrane that connects the waterproofing from the walls to the floor to the drain. The reason in this case is primarily to protect the walls - not the floor.

Your concrete driveway gets rained on, suffers freeze-thaw cycles that your shower never will, and functions fine for decades.Densify the concrete and forget about this please.

Hey tear-it-out club, you're 0 'n 2 today.

Sorry you are going through this. You did all the right things, hired an architect and a designer, this is on them not you. Hopefully your architect and designer can come up with a solution.

I used to be a member of a gym that did this- shower floors directly on the building slab with no waterproofing, steel framing, cement board walls. They had to close for a week every spring to repaint the walls to hide all the rust coming through and conceal the walls that were getting wider as the framing turned to rust. With wood framing when the slab becomes saturated the framing will just mold

Joseph, please. There is reason for alarm.

Not yet there isn't.

Then again there is the obvious concern in the OP's statement which every professional Tile Setter is aware. "shower-adjacent walls were framed with wolmanized wood,"

You don't use pressure treated lumber anywhere in a tile assembly / shower build.

https://www.tileletter.com/are-you-allowed-to-use-pressure-treated-lumber-to-build-a-bench-or-curb-in-a-shower/

It isn't the pressure treating, it's the moisture content of the wood and subsequent movement of the wood as it dries that's the problem. Non pressure treated wood stored uncovered for months outside will have its MC (moisture content) soar and present the same risk.

KDAT (Kiln Dried After Treatment) would meet the TCNA standards.

@Jake The Wonderdog Thanks for explaining that to me. I think my contractor is focusing on the concrete, too, which is preventing him from engaging with the real problem: the wood in the house.

I found out that the contractor did a curbless shower *with waterproofing* in the other house he was working on in our neighborhood. The house has the same kind of concrete floors as us, but this client wanted tile instead of concrete on the floor of the shower. The contractor told my husband this made the shower fundamentally different from ours; the other shower required waterproofing and ours did not.

I cannot understand where he is coming from, and he hasn't explained beyond the fact that a plumber told him the drain was fine and that all the materials used in the shower were acceptable for that environment.

However, I haven't been able to find anything that justifies no waterproofing layer in a shower when the "floor" is the slab. And he has not yet engaged specifically with this point.

My understanding is that there is no way to achieve this look and follow code unless you recess the shower, build it up with the layers, and then pour another layer of concrete on top, which would be essentially analogous to tile (the decorative covering we see). Is that accurate?

One last question: If my contractor tells us "I just did what you wanted," is that valid? I was under the impression that if the homeowner suggests something that is not to code or problematic in some other way, the contractor still has to follow the codes and standards of the industry. It seems like we hired an architect and contractor for their expertise . . . specifically because we are not design and building experts.

I've not built a shower with a concrete floor - so I want to be clear that I don't have expertise with that. What I'm pretty clear about is that unless they have done some construction detail of which we are not aware, you will have an issue with the wood in the wall where the floor meets the wall. You will have this because of moisture wicking in the concrete, and to a greater degree when the caulk / grout fails at that connection - which it always does. The wood bottom plate will expand and contract and that joint will open to water. Once it does, it will swell the wood plate even more and things will go downhill quickly.

Whatever the waterproofing method, it needs to cover the floor and extend up the wall a few inches and it can't rely on caulk, grout or surface sealant. It must be able to accommodate the movement of the wall in relationship to the slab floor.

It's not an acceptable answer to say, "this is what you asked for".

You are in a gray area because, unless there's a well-known and published standard, this feels like a general workmanship issue. If it had been a tile floor, that's clearly a published standard. I think the tile floor standard applies here, but your contractor wants to debate that.

As the concrete gets wet the water will wick further and further out as well, compromising other walls possibly as we as drywall and other finishes.

The simplest answer would have been to use something like Kerdi on the floor and up the walls...and then simply tile over that. This can still be done but requires removal of a row or two of wall tile to tie into any (?) waterproofing on the walls. You would need a Schluter drain. If you do no demolition, they make an adapter to use on a PVC/FHA drain base.

@Stonetech/Avanti ... and then presumably they would add a curb, tile the floor and replace that glass. Which could work, but would not have been the intended design.

Possible that the floor tile be removed and the concrete is smoothed to the entry area, a Schluter drain is installed and a couple of rows of wall tiles removed... Kerdi membrane is installed on the entire floor to the entry and up the walls a bit. Re-tile these areas and the Kerdi up the walls should obviate any rot concerns about the wood. I might suggest you contact Schluter with your issues. I find them to be quite responsive...

For anyone curious . . . the city's building plumbing inspector has confirmed that the shower does not meet code, and he's writing something up to give to the contractor to compel him to fix it. The contractor has not responded to any of my communication in a month (though the inspector has not been in touch with him yet).

I am assuming it will be less expensive to simply install a curbed shower at this point. I have been giving the contractor a chance to do the right thing here, but if he doesn't, I suppose I'll have to cut my losses and pay for this out of pocket.

If anyone is still paying attention to this, I'm pretty sure my contractor is legally obligated to fix this. We used a standard AIA contract and it says the contractor is obligated to follow local building codes. Of course, if he doesn't comply, the only way to compel him to do it is through legal means, which I really don't want to do (and would probably be more costly than just paying someone to fix it).

Does anyone have any advice about communicating with our contractor and trying to salvage this relationship? I really don't understand why he's burning this bridge. It really doesn't align with our previous working relationship.

Contractors out there . . . can you shed any light on why mine seems to be so defensive about this mistake? He has fixed other incorrect things, such as our internet cable, electric issues, etc.

@Verbo The drawings do indicate that the slab needs to be recessed. The slab simply wasn't recessed for some reason, and the architect didn't say anything. And I didn't realize it wasn't done correctly until months and months later

The contractor knew it was to be curbless. The drawings clearly show the bathroom elevations. It even specifies the Durock stuff behind the shower; it does not show a detailed under-the-floor detail, which perhaps it should have.

Still, it is hard for the contractor to blame the drawings in this case. Like I mentioned previously, another client of his in the neighborhood had spec'd a very similar shower to ours. The only difference is the other client wanted tile on the floor and we wanted the concrete look. The contractor recessed and built up the other client's curbless shower, including the waterproof liner that connects up the walls.

He did not do the same with ours. I have no idea why. He must have thought the fact that it was concrete made it different . . . but that also doesn't make any sense.

J In

J Indiana I’m curious how your situation turned out. I can feel your pain. I just had my third bathroom contractor quit because I point out to them how things are not going correctly and they get mad and defensive. The most recent one was installing the Schluter electrical floor over the waterproofing instead of under it.🤦🏻‍♀️

@Nona Muss

Getting it right initially is so much better than trying to get them back to fix it in a couple of years.

@Nona Muss We just hired someone (not my contractor) to put a curb in and waterproof and tile the floor. The had to take off a section of tile on the walls to put the waterproofing up the sides. They had to put in a different kind of drain that worked with the system. They had to take out some concrete around the old drain hole. But it didn't seem like it was too complicated for them to fix. Then we just got shower glass instead of having it open.

I don't think there would have been any feasible way to do the curbless shower without it becoming a whole endeavor. We weren't married to the look anyway, which made the issue all the more annoying. One whiff of "this might be complicated," and I would have been like "let's just do a regular shower." Luckily, we had extra wall tile. And we like the full glass enclosure way better than the half glass, which we found impractical.

Sounds much like my above advice with the Kerdi......Should work.

Yeah, you did the right thing unless you were really wed to that curbless design for some reason (wheelchair access, for example). That was the most sane fix - the alternative would be way more work. You should have a watertight shower that will last now.

@Nona Muss - I understand exactly what you’re going through. My first contractor didn’t do a pre slope under the pvc liner on shower floor. We got that addressed - and then he decided to not use any of the three bags of white thinset (he purchased) to install the carrara tile on the shower walls - but instead used mastic ”because it was faster.” When we pushed the issue, he packed up and left.

The second contractor (with over 200 4.9 star Google reviews) sent over his “business partner” to bid the work. His “business partner“ then said that he felt so bad for me re: every thing that had happened with the first contractor (including needing to rip out the slate bathroom floor bc several pieces failed to bond), that he would start the work himself ASAP + work over the upcoming weekend.

Well, it turns out that he wasn’t a “business partner” - but a new employee. He produced fraudulent receipts for materials (that I reimbursed upon recipt per contract) - and stopped showing up. I did a quick background check and discovered that he had been in prison for over nine years for aggravated battery + fraud charges (had been out for 18 months). I asked the owner about whether he had done a background check - he told me that he hadn’t run it yet. After I told him about the results of the background check I did, the owner asked me if I noticed the scar on the guy’s upper arm - and then told me that when he asked the employee about it, he said it was from “being shot by a cop.” I swear I am not making this up. He also stole some jewelry from me.

Third contractor - great guy - had just started work - and then was sentenced to 90 days in jail related to a third DUI conviction.

My fourth (and final) contractor is AMAZING.

The third and fourth ones are both TCNA certified - I didn’t hire the first or second one - my SO did. Although I don’t blame him for what happened. My SO had glowing references from two of his law partners who had used the first guy for several projects + did research on the second one (who was the second highest bid out of five).

I thought that by now I would have not only finished two bathroom renovations - but also my laundry room + kitchen reno (which is close to starting FINALLY). I actually wish I had never even begun - my bathrooms were fine - just a little dated.

I have no problem telling a customer that their idea is not a good one.

@None - and that’s why you are most likely a good contractor!

That I am. We do not advertise and are booked for the year. Thank you

" We do not advertise and are booked for the year."

It's March. Your rates are much too low. 6 weeks out max.

Our rates have raised twice in the past 3 yrs as I’m sure everyone’s have and we are at a modest rate. We have only 3 to the company and work exclusively for one designer with master bathroom’s averaging from 60 -80k at around 45- 60 days to complete.

9’ to the arch, heated floor, steam, hands free no valve controls

J Indiana - any pics of updates?

@hollyfr sure -- I just snapped this real quick.