01/21/2010 - 0 COMMENTS
The plumbing is under the original basement floor and that drain piece has been attached. The drain seals to the rubber membrane.
The drain is set to about 1.75 inches from the floor, the outer edges will be to 3 inches deep concrete. That gives you a little over an inch to the drain, don't mess it up!
The plumber set the membrane since he had to come back out and fix the moentrol leak. It wouldn't have hurt anything to not have that slit there. I think when it's all tiled and caulked it won't be a problem.
I had 1 bag of quikrete, figured the math to use 8 so I bought 9.. had 10 to start tonight and used 7.
I used a black sharpie type marker to draw 3" mark around the edge. The sharpie mark is more than plenty contrasting with the black membrane to see when you're doing the concrete. Tape over your drain or you'll end up doing something to splash it full of gunk.
That has threads and can be adjusted to any height. I put it all the way down, then turned it back up about 3/4 of a rotation so it has room to move. When I'm done I should be able to adjust it a bit if I need so the tile matches up good. I placed just a bit of pea size gravel around where the threads are at there to hold back the cement from the threads.
Start mixing your bags of concrete and dumping them in here. Now is a really bad time to put the corner of your shovel through the membrane. (I didn't.. just saying.. be mindful)
Once it's pretty well right.. get a box or some place to discard some.. then start trawling and adding and taking away.. the biggest error that is common here is to get one or more of the 4 corners to be a holding pond for a bit of water. Intentionally bring the very corners up enough to not do that. From there, spend some time here smoothing and adding and taking away until you think you can't get your slopes any better. Remember, this isn't the base.. Tile goes on top of this and you still have all the forgiveness alotted to a layer of tile paste.
Once this is hardened, I still have the option to bring the grinder in here and change up a little if I have some slope wrong or any big humps in the deal. It's way better if I don't, but this isn't 100% final yet...
Cement board goes on the wall over the remaining membrane right down to the cement base. Everything gets tiled from there.
