Lower the shower to subfloor level?

[AaronAndBrit]

My husband is 6'3" and the shower is just a couple inches too short for him to stand...

We're putting a new sub floor in our '73 ambassador 29-foot rear bath AS already. Right now, we plan to refinish the original bath, sink, and toilet and re-install them. Is there any reason we couldn't attempt to reinstall the shower on the floor itself instead of 4-5 inches higher than the floor like it is now? Any suggestions for how to drain it?

[truckasaurus]

Hi, my current trailer came with the shower mounted direct on the floor and drained out of the trailer without going near a grey tank. I really like the mount direct to the floor option for various reasons so I plan to use a marine scupper style drain such as the "whale big gulper" I think it's called. It's a really slim drain unit that mounts to the shower pan and a 3/4" hose connected to a pump. The water in the shower drain activates the pump and it pumps the water away to the grey tank which can be located much higher or further away or both. Now the down sides seem to be added cost of about $300, noise and obviously more stuff to go wrong. For me, keeping the low mounted shower pan with the option to have grey tanks mounted above the floor if I so chose out way the downsides. I plan to be able to quickly access the whole kit so if there's a problem I can fix it or replace the component with little inconvenience. My reading so far tells me users either love them or complain about tangled hair in the pumps so I guess it's 50/50 so far. Hope that gives you at least one idea. William

[cwf]

I would make a bench for him to sit on.. I am 6'2" and that's what I do... but, the bench is built in to the shower enclosure.

[calais66]

I ran into a similar issue when planning the shower/grey tank install on my '51 FC. Being 6'5" I can definitely empathize with your husband. My solution was to get one of the low profile grey tanks from VTS that fit between the belly pan and subfloor. I installed the tank directly under the lav, but even with a Hepvo inline trap it would've subtracted some 4" of headroom in the shower. I ended up plumbing the shower drain directly into the grey tank's drain line. The thinking here is that even tho the drain line sits below the tank itself, so long as the shower floor is above tank level the tank will fill before water backs up into the shower (there's a one way check valve on the shower drain tho just in case). I just set this up and it seems to work fine in my tests. Ended up only having to elevate the shower floor by a couple inches to accommodate the plumbing and every inch counts. Still can't stand up straight, but that's the trade off for being able to reach high shelves