When you are trying to select a shower base, you will want to keep a few things in mind. You do not want to select your shower head based on price alone. If your base is not installed properly, you will find that water that leaks through will cause more home damage than you ever bargained for. This damage will be costly to fix, and some of it might even cause damage that is beyond repair.
The first principle that you want to keep in mind, is that mortar takes quite a long time to dry. It stays wet in most showers for quite a long time. In most showers, in fact, mold is always wet. If you have a closed door on your shower, or a large heavy curtain up all the time, you will find that the grout has very little opportunity to dry. Wet mortar, in turn, breeds mold. In most shower bases, there is a mortar layer between the tile layer, and the water proof base later. So in most showers, there can be quite a large layer of mold, if they are not maintained or installed correctly.
This mortar layer can often stay wet for the duration of several weeks, or even months in extreme cases. This is why cleaning mold between your tiles is so frustrating. It seems that just as soon as you have cleaned your grout, it gets moldy looking again. This is because the living mold spores from the layer below, are creeping up and inhabiting the newly cleansed areas between the tiles.
When you use a tile ready base as an alternative to a traditional shower base, there is no mold layer like this. There is no place for mold to actively grow and thrive. This situation is ideal, and provides for much less damage in your home.
In addition, when you have a tile ready shower base, the drain is set up a lot more effectively. Traditional bases incorporate a lot of mortar around the drain design. The drain is actually made up of multiple parts, a hole that is at the base of the shower drains to an additional hole, located somewhere buried underneath. Water comes in contact with mortar the whole way down. With a tile ready base, the drain in the shower, is the only drain. Water drains through, and directly out of the house. The water has no contact with mortar, and there is no new mold created on the way down. Water leakage can create major plumbing problems and a quality shower basin can go a long ways to prevent any damage to your sub-floor.
Tags: home improvement, plumbing, shower base