Friends, I would like your input on a wet room base and drain for my box truck. I’m leaning towards fabricating my own wet room base pan out of ¾” birch ply. I’m confident that I can make a stiff, leak-proof base pan through good construction, good support, good joinery, pack the joints with and round them out with Bondo, and layer the whole assembly with epoxy resin (Carrera marble style). For the drain I envision a tailpipe with a flange on it (all one piece), dropping through a tight-fitting hole through 2 layers of ¾” ply - all part of the pan - then Bondo’d and epoxy’d in place so that it becomes a permanent part of the shower pan – a monolith. Then I cut an oversized hole through the aluminum truck bed so the tailpipe will go in without touching it, save for some great stuff around the pipe. I think that the connection between the shower pan and the drain pipe is the key to avoiding a drain leak, and that I want to support and isolate that pipe from any rigid contact with my bump-slammin’ truck. Beyond the tailpipe I envision a HepvO valve and a short run of white flexi-pipe to the gray water tank. The obvious down side to this scheme is that should the connection between drain and pan fail, the fix would require removing a connection intended to be permanent – a real pain.
An alternative method would involve elevating the whole wet room base 4” to give me access to the underside of the base in order to change out a leaky drain. I don’t know. I’ve watched lots of videos in which a person attaches the drain to a thin plastic shower pan with putty on top and a nut on the bottom. In those builds I think that stepping near the drain will flex the shower pan and break down that seal over time, as will the vibration of the tailpipe secured only with putty and a nut to a thin, albeit reinforced, layer of plastic. But it looks pretty straight forward to fix every so often.
My question is whether to make the pan and drain a bomb-proof monolith and bet the farm on it, or to make the drain an ancillary attachment and plan on repairing it periodically. Please tell me what has worked or failed for you.
An alternative method would involve elevating the whole wet room base 4” to give me access to the underside of the base in order to change out a leaky drain. I don’t know. I’ve watched lots of videos in which a person attaches the drain to a thin plastic shower pan with putty on top and a nut on the bottom. In those builds I think that stepping near the drain will flex the shower pan and break down that seal over time, as will the vibration of the tailpipe secured only with putty and a nut to a thin, albeit reinforced, layer of plastic. But it looks pretty straight forward to fix every so often.
My question is whether to make the pan and drain a bomb-proof monolith and bet the farm on it, or to make the drain an ancillary attachment and plan on repairing it periodically. Please tell me what has worked or failed for you.
