In Ground Garden Tub/Shower Conversion
So I've started a bathroom remodel, the house was built in the 90's when large Garden tubs were popular.
My plan was to pull out the tub and replace it with an on-grade, curbless walk in shower.
I knew the tub wasn't at slab level, but underestimated how deep it went.
I pulled the tub and cleaned up the area.
A couple of things:
Depth of the hole is 8-9 inches deep.
The water lines emerge from the slab (copper to PEX).
The drain appears to be in sand with a tar coating (hot mop?).
The pile of rocks is a bag of sac-crete that supported the tub base.
Looking for some advice.
What should is use to fill in the depth of the whole? Concrete, dry pack?
I don't really want to backfill over the drain and water line. I was thinking of building a box around it. Should I ever need to replace the shower or spring a leak it can be serviced... maybe that doesn't make sense.
I plan on routing the waterlines up the wall which will require jack hammering some concrete to route the lines from below grade to the shower valve. Do I use pex or have a plumber run copper?
Due to the entry and the proximity to the drain I was thinking about moving the drain towards wall and making a linear drain. The idea was to limit the slope change when entering the shower.
I'm open to any and all suggestions. Thanks
You've got a lot of questions.
Hard to pack all the info in for you.
Few suggestions:
Get rid of the sand, jackhammer and move your drain where you want it. Maybe gravel backfill and a few inches of concrete for the holes.
Test the drain and trap. Put a 4" PVC coupling around your 2" drain stub out and pour concrete. I lightly oil the PVC coupling so I can twist it out after concrete dries .
Pex or copper is a personal choice (mostly). Any buried joints are generally copper, but I transition to pex-a as soon as I can.
A little confused by the slope comment, but I vote center flofx drain.