Wet rooms continue to grow in popularity. Spacious and stylish, wet rooms not only elevate an at-home experience, but they can also be a great investment in a home’s resale value. A wet room is a type of bathroom design where the shower area is integrated into the overall room without a separate shower enclosure or bathtub. In a wet room, the floor is usually level with the shower area, and the entire space is waterproofed to handle the constant exposure to water.
It is certainly easier to design and build when starting from scratch, but a wet room can be a good retrofit option, too.
“If you have a tiny space and you want to add a bath,” Matthew McHenry, a construction manager in Berkeley, CA, shared with This Old House, “a wet room might make a lot of sense.”
One of the biggest priorities when designing a wet room is ensuring any area experiencing water is completely waterproof. It’s important to make sure the right foundation is in place just below the tile and flooring elements, wherever the water may be headed.
HEALTHY & DRY WET ROOM SUBFLOORSFor years, builders and remodelers have built showers on a mud bed application. Unfortunately, be it in a wet room or even a standard shower, traditional mud beds are time consuming to construct and prone to leaking, which can trigger serious problems down the road, including mold and mildew. Fortunately, easy to install, 100% waterproof and 100% leak-free custom shower pans are a perfect solution.
With a pre-sloped custom shower pan from KBRS, builders and remodelers can ensure the proper floor drainage that a wet room requires. A leak-free solution, custom shower pans also provide the moisture protection necessary to prevent the growth of mold and mildew, so homeowners can enjoy a healthier, cleaner living space, inviting rest and relaxation.
Comments (1)
You make some good points about the advantage of the sloped shower pan over a mud bed. If the weep holes of a drain flange in a mud bed are clogged with sand mix there is no where for the water that soaks into the mud bed to drain out. The sloped pan does not rely on the weep holes to let water drain. I have ripped out my share of saturated mud beds that have become stagnate with smelly water and mold due to clogged weep holes. While some will quickly say that there is no organic matter in the mud bed construction that will lead to the growth of mold they completely miss the point that the organic matter is introduced in the form of soap, shampoo and body oils that mix with the shower water and then saturates the mud bed. The sloped pan doesn’t let organic matter come into play.
Also, if the floor under the mud bed was not built with a preslope the water that saturates the mud bed will not be drawn to the drain by gravity but will form a shallow puddle which will stagnate below a level line equal to the height of the weep holes above the non-sloped floor.