How to Relocate Shower Drain Part 2

Just a few minutes ago I brought in the shower base. A big change has happened here on the job

site and I shoved it into place and here it is. You can see it right now it's down here and what

it's time to do is now that the shower base is in place and this is just temporary I'm going to move

it. I need to mark exactly where the drain pipe is going to come up, this 2-inch drain pipe

before I get rid of all the concrete. In other words, if I made the hole and kind of created a

hole underneath the shower pan, it would be bad because I wouldn't have any place to mark. So you

need to mark it before you enlarge the hole. So here's what I did. I took a 2-inch PVC pipe

coupling and centered it inside the drain hole for the shower pan. And the reason I

did that is because I can take a magic marker, a Sharpie marker, and then I trace the inside

diameter of the 2 inch coupling because that represents the outside diameter of the 2 inch pipe See how easy that is There really nothing to it You just got to make sure that the coupling is centered

in the big drain hole. The next step is I need to get this shower pan out of the room

and put it back in its protective box so that it doesn't get damaged because we're not going

to be using it for another three or four days. And then we have to do another very, very

important step so that we'll be able to center this drain pipe when we rough in that plumbing

pipe. Okay, I'm going to show you that in just a moment. To make sure that you get the drain pipe

in the right place, you have to have a template. Many, many years ago, an old season plumber

while I was a young, wet behind the ears plumber, he taught me how to do this. I was working on a

commercial job, we had a lot of pipes that had to come up through a wall and they had to be

perfectly centered. So what we had to do on this rough job site is I basically had to suspend a

wall plate. We actually staked out this 2x6. I know it doesn't make sense to you, but trust me

we had drilled the holes in this plate exactly where the pipes were going to go and then we used that board as our template to bring the pipes through Well guess what I can do the same thing with a piece of cardboard here Watch how I do it I cut a piece of cardboard that is far bigger than the hole

that I'm going to create in the concrete. I take the 2 inch coupling and basically center

it up and down, left and right in the cardboard and use the Sharpie once again to trace the

inside of the 2 inch coupling because that represents the outside diameter of the plumbing

pipe. I use a razor knife and carefully cut out the outline of that circle. Once I have

the outline cut out, I go ahead and set it over the black circle that's on the concrete

and then I carefully mark the corners of the cardboard and I also put A and B matching

letters on both the cardboard and the concrete so that when it comes time to place the template

back where it belongs, we'll know exactly how to align it. It's very simple to do this

I've got the template finished. I've got everything marked. I now just get it out of the way continue to make my hole and here what going to happen at the end I have to put duct tape down I tape this down to the concrete after we done cutting everything

and then you'll see why it was so important to make those marks at the corners and to have the

A and the B. One last thing I want to talk about. I want to talk a little bit about the shower drain

You need to make sure that the hole you create in the concrete is not very tight where the pipe's going to be

Give yourself an inch or so around the outer edge of that pipe so that the shower drain mechanism and the shower drain assembly is going to fit and not interfere with the concrete

You may even want to make it two inches wide or around where the pipe's going to be

Believe me, you'll never regret doing that. I'm Tim Carter for AskTheBuilder.com

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