NEED HELP- 2nd Floor Laundry room floor

[Jack]

Need suggestions on flooring for 2nd floor laundry room. It is part of a big remodel, but we are finishing floors ourselves. In remodel plumber put a drain in center of the floor (big laundry room, 12x18) He also laid that thick shower floor membrane over entire floor. Now we want to finish with ceramic tile. How do you put ceramic tile over shower pan membrane? As it stands the membrane is just laying on the plywood floor. Options:

Pull up membrane, put down cement board, put membrane over cementboard then put tile over membrane. Obvious problem is, does the thinset bond to the membrane??

Could just put cement board over membrane, essentially rendering membrane useless with all the screws through it.

Any other suggestions.. it is too big of room to put down "cement" or cementlike covering over membrane, then tile on that like you would do in a showerpan.

will not be attempting to slope floor to drain, too tough on such a big floor, and water on floor would be very infrequent, it is just a safety drain, so not worth sloping.

[Big_Jake]

If you aren't planning on sloping the floor to the drain, then you probably shouldn't have even bothered putting the drain in. The plumber started the work, and you should finish by putting down a mortar base, sloped to the drain, and tiling over that. It would be less work than pulling the membrane, putting cement board down, resetting the membrane, etc.

JK

[HeyBub]

Think weight. Then think linoleum.

[Jack]

I am just curious, why is weight a problem? Will a properly framed house have not problem suporting the weight of a 2nd story tile floor?

[RicodJour]

If the room is too big to slope the floor (?) membrane should not have been laid down on the entire floor. The immediate area around the plumbing and machines should have been waterproofed. A better way of doing it would have been to have the washer sit in a precast receptor

- or in a recessed waterproofed area of the floor - that was plumbed to the drain. Then the situation is no different than a bathroom or any other sink.

R

[RickH]

You could do 2 things:

1) Treat it like a big mudded shower pan and do the drain exactly like you would do a mudded shower pan, (drain with weep holes), and slope the whole room. Google for how to build a mud shower pan. Might not be able to use the extra large tiles but anything smaller than 8x8 should be fine.

2) If the drain is (hopefully) directly over the spot where you want to put the washing machine(s), then you could just pan that area and drop the wasing machines in it, to prevent a 2nd floor flood catastrophy. Then just floor the rest of the room with hardwood (as hardwood likes to sit on vapor barriers) directly over the membrane. Bamboo is supposed to be pretty good with splashes, etc.