chale4 wrote:
On Apr 29, 10:33 pm, Oren wrote:

On Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:29:18 -0700 (PDT), chale4





wrote:

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 circulardrain
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 floordrainis 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 aclawfoottub 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 floordrain'shardware and plumb the tub'sdrainpipe to
this floordrain? It's entirely possible to position the tub such
that itsdrainpipe is perfectly centered on the existing floordrain,
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 floordrainin the basement
(maybe a couple), so I'm not necessarily all that averse to "losing"
this one floordrainin 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

The only time I placed aclawfoottub in a basement; it required a
platform, The only way to get a pitch for the plumbingdrain.

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

- Show quoted text -


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


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