Can anyone give me advice on a floor drain.

[AMEdinburgh]

We have wet room at the practice for our dog swimming pool and water treadmill hydrotherapy facility (I'm a vet).

Before the concrete floor was laid, a 4" floor drain was placed and the floor was meant to drain towards it, of course, but doesn't. Unfortunately, the decorative acrylic chip floor was laid before it was realised the levels were a disaster.

In short, part of the floor fills an inch deep, from the splashing and the water would actually flow under a door to an adjacent room before it would flow to the drain. Not suprisingly using a floor squeegie to clear the floor, with each dog is a pain.

The lowest point is adjacent to another room which is still a shell with bare joists for a timber floor and I have a 50mm ABS pipe there which picks up the intermittently pumped waste water from the treadmill

My questions (at last!) are how feasible is it to retrofit some sort of shallow floor drain, like a shower trap sort of thing (serviced from the top) and connecting to this 50mm pipe under the partition wall and under the adjacent floor.

I have a selection of diamond cores that could drill neatly down through the decorative coating and into the concrete raft and in from the side from the outlet and the decorative floor contractor has already said he could make it good afterwards but the neater the hole the better.

Are there any brands or websites of products worth looking at?

Finally, would I need to install some sort of valve to prevent back flow from the treadmill pump and if so what is usually done?

 

[Bahco]

I would be talking to the Wet Room manufacturers for advice on this one.

A video on installing a wet room is Here.

Might pay you to completely take up and redo the floor.

 

[AMEdinburgh]

ThanksBahco but the floor is concrete about five inches thick and and contains buried pipes for underfloor heating. The "building" firm I employed left a trail of disappointed customers and have gone bust.

Trying to remove it would be a massive task and put us out of business for quite some time and could well disrupt my wall pannelling too, which took a lot of time and considerable cash

In the photos the drain can be seen and the low point of the floor is between the end of the pool and the wall.

I took a lot of photos of the positioning of the pipework in the concrete raft and therefore I think I should be able to drill and install a floor trap in the gap between the pool and wall, close to the wall without wrecking the pipes.

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• AMEdinburgh
• 20 Jul 2008
• 2

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• AMEdinburgh
• 20 Aug 2008
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[Bahco]

Still think you should be talking to the wet room people who may have an easy option for you.

Good luck.

 

[possum_jenkins]

Cant really see any way around this tbh, other than sorting the levels out.

Used to fit a lot of wetfloors when i worked for a high end bathroom company, and we used wediboard every time, but you only really need a gully here and properly graded floor!

 

[bsr]

It would be a good idea to check this in the building forum...

but you could take out the floor covering, and build in a slope to the drain using grano screed (on the thick bits) and repair mortar and self-levelling compound on the thin bits. You would then need to lay a new floor covering on top.

 

[AMEdinburgh]

Thanks to everyone for trying for me.

There is no wet room company. There's the guy who laid the floor, I(the fool who paid him without checking the work was competent) and the flooring contractor who spread the epoxy granite chip floor onto the concrete. The cost and disruption of removing serious amounts of concrete and needing to redo the coating coating was just too much

In the end I decided to install a 90mm shower trap into the concrete at the low point in the floor.

I drilled two concentric cores with a shallow 6" cut for the lip and a deeper 5" cut for the trap.

I fabricated a stainless donut.

I was able to connect into a 50mm ABS pipe in the next room which was draining a sink and the condensate from my air conditioning unit. I has already fitted an air admittance valve so I shouldn't have problems with the trap being sucked out.

I bedded the trap into waterproof tile cement and sealed the trap and stainless ring top and bottom with premium silicon.

I shall be looking to replace the removable plastic dome which is flush with the floor with a stainless replica. That way it won't get broken.

Not ideal but I think it a workable solution and we can swim a tetraplegic dog tomorrow having swam him on Friday.

Moderator - would it be possible to return to plumbing as there were no further comments from builders and I had hoped to let those who helped me see the result and also it might help someone with a similar occurrence

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• AMEdinburgh
• 24 Aug 2008
• 1

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• AMEdinburgh
• 24 Aug 2008
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• AMEdinburgh
• 24 Aug 2008
• 1

 

[AMEdinburgh]

I thought I was fixed but unfortunately after the waste pump has run draining the treadmill for a while, the new shower trap starts to discharge water up onto the floors, which drains away after the pump stops.

The pump's 40mm outlet, presently goes into the common 50mm and into the 110mm main drain after about 1200mm. I presume the pumped waste is overloading the bit of 50mm and causing back flow although not enough to discharge into the sink also on that 50mm pipe before I added in the new shower trap.

I see two options but would welcome any guidance

1) Get back under the floor and see if I could extend the 110mm pipe back to accept the discharge of the pump directly. Can you use a solvent weld strap on boss on a horizontal 110m to accept a vertical 40mm pipe in an under a suspended floor situation?

2) Find out whether there is some sort of valve that would only allow unidirectional flow of waste water to prevent the upstream reflux caused by the pump. Swimming pool pipework has spring valves for use with pumps either 2lb or 10lb loads but I would be worried the trap wouldn't let the water away as there wouldn't be enough head of pressure even for a 2lb valve and I suspect the hair that inevitably gets in the water would soon choke them. Is there any mileage in this idea?