Shower Tile Installation Tricks

At every twist and turn shower tile installation is full of places to make a mess and places that are just the spot to get leaks started. Here are just a few of the places to make a mess of tile showers and a few ways to avoid such messes.

Keeping a tile shower stall waterproof is not as easy as it might first seem. The shower is a high moisture area in every way. The environment is high in moisture in the air as well as just the streams of water. And what makes it a real challenge is the tile and especially the grout do not hold the water back at all.

Water making it through grout causes all kinds of trouble.

To catch all that water takes several steps. The core barrier to water is the shower pan or shower base.

Prefab Shower Pans Or Masonry

Ready to tile shower pans are far more than what you get with a typical acrylic or fiberglass shower base. It takes some real rigidity or stiffness to hold up to the weight of tile. Bases that move around will lead to cracking tiles or at least cracking grout lines. The tile ready shower pans are up to the task and in some cases the tile can be put right on the base after the base is set in place. This is a popular way to get a base that will hold in the water and that requires little specialized skill. On the other hand what you get as a base is most often a masonry or concrete base.

These pans work too but require skill for proper installation.

The tricky part of masonry shower pan installation is getting what's called the liner membrane put in the right way. The liner is really just a vinyl sheet, most of the time, that gets put in between two mortar layers. Once the liner is in it catches all the water that makes it as far as the liner. Then that water gets channelled to a special drain. All that works fine if it gets done the right way. Another option is the Kerdi shower pan too.

Heres's a trick...

Some tile setters put down a liner membrane and then lay all the mortar over the liner to keep the water from getting out of the base. This is WRONG.

What that does is make a base that is soaked with water. That base will grow fungus and mold and slowly come apart due to all the water.

The liner must go down over a sloped layer and then a second layer goes over the liner. The top layer will stay soaked still but not the lower layer.

Here's another trick...

The liner goes up the walls at least several inches higher than the curb. It should have no fasteners in it except as close to the top as possible. If cuts are made to fit around or over the curb those cuts must be sealed with proper adhesives.

As the liner goes up the wall, the liner thickness will protrude from the framing studs. Without something being done, the wall boards will be held out at the bottom by the liner. Solve that in one of two ways. Notch the studs back to get the liner back even with the studs. That's way one. Way two is to add lath pieces just as thick as the liner to the studs above the liner. Again, that puts the liner on the same plane with the studs. Do it either way but do it one way or the other.

More Tiling A Shower Floor Tips

After the first base mortar coat for a mortar shower and after the liner is in and up the walls, you get to the next step. That is installing the wall boards over the liner and up the walls. Keep the wall boards, cement boards, up off the liner a bit to minimize wicking of water up the boards from the liner. Seal the bottom of the cement boards before installation for best results.

After the wall boards are in the top layer of the base can go in. Note that it usually goes up the cement wall board and the board needs to be sealed to keep water from going up the wall boards and getting moisture in the walls.

Go all the way up with the base and then lay the floor tiles to finish the base.

Shower Tile Installation - Other Parts

After the base is in and the floor tiles are in then it's on to the rest of the parts.

Ceilings get done before walls and must be supported from the bottom while the tiles stick.

Walls get a waterproofing layer underneath the wall boards by the way.

Note that key to a sealed shower is caulking in strategic locations. Caulking at the floor to wall junction keeps that critical spot water tight. Also caulking in the corners makes for a seal. Grout in either of those areas is liable to fail and leave large cracks for water to find and get in.

That means when you use caulk you have a maintenance requirement in a shower which you do.

Shower tile installation is filled with all kinds of tricky little steps. Leaving out some of the steps is a shortcut to a really serious problem in the future.