claw foot tub drain plumbing question

[chale4]

Hello, just joined this excellent group.

I have a small older (1926) rental house with a rough but functional basement. The basement floor is concrete. There is a circular drain in the floor in the existing 1/2 bathroom, located about 2' away from the basement wall, and from the main vertical waste line for the whole house which is located up against that wall. I'm pretty certain that this floor drain is connected to the main waste line under the concrete via a sanitary tee or similar fitting (there are no issues at all with odor or anything, at any rate).

We want to install a claw foot tub in this bathroom; fits nicely in the available space, no tile work to hassle with, etc., so seems like a pretty good way to go in this old basement.

My question is this: is it sensible, legal, practical to basically modify this floor drain's hardware and plumb the tub's drain pipe to this floor drain? It's entirely possible to position the tub such that its drain pipe is perfectly centered on the existing floor drain, no problem. I had one guy come by to have a look at it, and he had some fuzzy but concerning comments about how he thought some concrete jack-hammering and cutting and such would be necessary...oh man! I don't understand why it would necessarily need to be that heavily modified...

I'd note that there is at least one other floor drain in the basement (maybe a couple), so I'm not necessarily all that averse to "losing" this one floor drain in the bathroom. Or, I could envision a "custom" piece of hardware that both permitted tub draining, and floor draining, simultaneously. I've got a home machine shop and can make such things, if they're functional and sensible...

Thanks much for your time thinking about this deal! Charley Hale Lafayette CO

[Oren]

The only time I placed a claw foot tub in a basement; it required a platform, The only way to get a pitch for the plumbing drain.

2X10 and luan. Fit perfect under the basement window.... Just a step up into the tub.

[chale4]

Thanks. I can see why you'd potentially want to do that platform to provide vertical space for a tub p-trap, right? I very much want to avoid that here unfortunately, as this basement is already pretty low ceiling, without the tub being on an even higher level than the floor...

Above I said I thought my non-odorous floor drain in the concrete floor must be connect to the main waste line via a sanitary tee, but that's no good, it must rather have a p-trap down in the concrete, right? A sanitary tee is shaped correctly to drain on into a vertical waste line no problem, but wouldn't have any gas-sealing effect like a p-trap, would it. And so, it would seem to me that my floor drain does in fact have a p-trap below the floor. That seems like a very good thing, in that, seems to me like, I can effectively treat that floor drain p-trap as my new TUB p-trap, and just go ahead and "custom- plumb" my tub's drain output straight-away into that floor drain. Does anyone see anything amiss here? Thanks--Charley Hale

[Speedy Jim]

Yes, the floor drain likely has a cast-in P-trap and the tub drain can simply empty into the floor drain.

The city inspector would probably turn his nose up at this "indirect waste" arrangemnet, but if you're not too concerned, go for it. :-)

Jim

[chale4]

Thanks, Jim, I think I will in fact proceed with this. I just installed my p-trap forty years before the actual tub, you see... : )

--Charley