As we said in our last video, learning how to install a shower pan begins with proper
prep. And one of the things that you should keep in mind is the relationship between the
shower pan and the curb and how that is going to affect the finished look of your tile.
But unfortunately, whenever people are installing custom shower pans, specifically the Wedi
Fundo Primo shower system, they might cut that pan incorrectly, and that could lead
to a leak or a waterproofing failure down on the road. So today we're going to show
you how to properly cut down the Wedi Fundo Primo shower pan and do the final prep work
for the subfloor underneath it so that you have a rock solid shower pan installation.
Okay, so again, overall we have the pan size is 36" x 48". And we're going to be cutting
this pan down to 33" and we're going to keep the drain in the center. So before you cut
anything always double check your drain location and make sure it fits because the last thing
you want to do is be right next to a joist that you have to cut out, and you'll be better
off to have your drain location offset than to have to do any structural framing to redo
your drain. So double check that before you cut the pan. So we're going to keep everything
centered; everything works for us. So we'll just cut it down 1 ½" on either side. And
on this particular first cut, you want to cut all the way through because that's what
we're making: a 33" x 48". And you can do this on a table saw, or you can do it with
a circular saw. The table saw obviously will be a bit easier, but you can achieve the same
results with a circular saw. There's my inch and a half line there. I'll simply cut through.
Then from there, thirty-three…. Okay, so now our next step is to recreate
the dado for our pan for our panels to go inside. That's basically just a ½" x ½"
dado. So we'll just measure over ½". Make a mark. Half inch. We'll work the other side
as well here. What I normally do is just adjust the saw
blade to ½". I'll just use my cut piece to make sure that I have… now you can go, I
mean, just use this as a guide for the depth of your blade. But keep in mind, I mean, the
one nice thing about this system is that if you cut a little bit deeper, you'll be fine;
it's no big deal because you're going to be sealing this whole area when you put the wall
board up. But as long as you don't cut all the way through this thing, it really is not
going to matter too much how deep you go and how accurate, too. If you ended up cutting
this, say the width of this, and made it ¾" you're still going to be all right; you'll
still be able to fill that with sealant and have a waterproof system. So just know that
you don't have to be worried too much about 100% straightness and accuracy. But try to
do the best that you can. So make sure that blade is set. Like I said,
you don't want to cut all the way through the pan. So then for the rest of this, you
can just use a utility knife to cut the dado out. You can mark out with a chalk line if
you want. To be a little bit more accurate, you can just chalk line that so you have a
straight line to cut. That's it. So if you haven't already moved your plumbing,
or you didn't have a plumber already move it, I find it easiest to just to set the pan
in first and make a mark of where exactly your drain location's going to be and then
tear out the plywood and make sure. But I find it to be a little bit more accurate just
setting the pan in, circling around where that drain location's going to be then measure
from that. But obviously, this is all, you know, once you have your pan inside, you can
always measure it and make sure you get it in the proper way.
Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and cut out the plywood area so that we can move our drain
over. Best thing you could do, because you can obviously see here that I have a copper
pipe pretty close to the subfloor here. So I would definitely adjust your blade to the
thickness of your plywood. And remember that Wedi does require you to have ¾" subflooring
on 16" on center joist. That's going to be typically what most of you will find. But
sometimes builders use actually thin subflooring, so you just want to make sure there's ¾",
but set your saw depth to do that. Okay, so I have a measuring mark where the
center of my joists are, so that's what I want to cut out. I want to cut this area so
that I could put this new piece of plywood and nail on all corners of that piece. So
as you can see, I
have enough of room when I put a new piece of plywood down and be able to nail it.
So what we're going to do is, for the drain location, you actually have to put a 5-inch
hole for the drain assembly to fit down into the plywood. So we're going to use a 5-inch
hole bit like this, but you could technically just use a Sawzall and cut a circle big enough
around it for the fit. But to be precise, we're going to go ahead and use this 5-inch
blade. That works very nice. We dry-fit the ABS drain pipe for the shower
pan before gluing it in place. We're using liquid nail on the joists before we add the
piece of plywood back. Now we wanted to show you how the ABS pipe was situated with the
P-trap. So you want to take care of that before adding your plywood back to the joists, like
Steve did there. Now, we're just using common decking screws to secure the plywood back
to the joists. Okay, so as you could see on this, the way
they had this originally cut out for that tub, you could see that the joist is completely
exposed, and there's nothing actually kind of supporting this little area of the plywood.
A lot of cases if you have a ceiling down below, you're not going to be able to do this.
But in this case, I can reach down around; I can put some blocking and screw against
this joist to help support it. So that will support it.
And the final step for prepping this floor is just replace this last piece of plywood
or OSB. So Steve did apply liquid nail, added the OSB, and then screwed it in place. Pretty
simple. So what do you think? Does the Wedi Fundo
Primo look like a shower pan that you can cut to size yourself? Let us know down in
the comments what you think. We're curious to hear what you have to say. Remember, our
prior videos showed you how we did the layout for the curb in relation to the Wedi Fundo
Primo and did all the planning so that our tile would look great in the end. And in our
next video, we're going to show you how to set the Wedi Fundo Primo shower pan on the
wood subfloor. So don't miss out on that. And finally, remember, if you're doing a complete
bathroom remodel, and you want access to all of our videos and one-on-one support, you
can always join Bathroom Repair Tutor. It's a phenomenal service. It'll save you a lot
of time and money. Thanks for watching this video, and we'll
see you in the next one.