Each year, thousands of Arizona residents email or call Rosie Romero’s radio show with questions about everything from preventing fires in their chimneys to getting rid of tree roots invading their sewer system. His goal is to provide answers that suit the specific lifestyle wherever someone lives in Arizona.
QUESTION: I have a bathroom where I want to tear out the tub which has shower valves and build a new stand-in tile shower while doing all the work myself. My problem is that I can’t find a traditional shower pan for sale anywhere that fits the space that I have. There doesn’t seem to be anything in the plumbing supply houses that will fit. What can I do about my project?
ANSWER: If there’s nothing on the market that fits, it is possible to build one that will fit. But first you have to do a lot of research on the different kinds of shower pans on the market. You need to study up on the subject and do a lot of reading. You need to create a vinyl pan that comes up the wall about 18 inches and you need to do it correctly. If you don’t, you’ll be creating a mess that could end up costing you thousands and thousands of dollars in the future. Besides building the right kind of pan, you also need to replace all the plumbing valves from the old shower. You shouldn’t use what you already have. As an option, some cultured marble fabricators will mold you a new pan to fit your space.
Q: I put in a fence built from rustic, split-rail cedar posts about six years ago, and I haven’t attempted any weather protection for it. So, what can I do now to do some weatherproofing?
A: You want to apply some wood penetrating oil sealer to the posts that will be good for cedar and redwood decks. The weakest part of the posts is going to be below the soil line. So you need to get a turkey baster and hit the area below the ground two or three times until each post is well saturated. You should probably do this about two to three times in the next few months and then go back to the area every two to three years and do it again. Hopefully, the local termite colony hasn’t been feasting on the posts already.
Q: I live in a 35-year-old patio home community. One of my neighbors had some serious trouble with clogs in his sewer line that went out to the pipe out in the road. His plumber thought that the problem was not caused by trees in his yard but by larger trees growing across the street. He tore up the driveway and had thousands of dollars’ worth of expense. Would it be smart for me to get proactive and have a plumber with a camera look at my sewer line in order to see what’s going on? Then I could apply some foaming root killer to stop the roots from growing.
A: It probably is a good idea because it wouldn’t be horribly expensive to stick a camera in your sewer line. You could get a report on the condition of your lines and take some preventive action. It’s amazing what those tree roots can do. We recently remodeled a bathroom where a tub drain had been totally clogged. The problem turned out to be a root from a pine tree 15 feet away from the house.
Q: I have been doing some remodeling in my two-story home. I ripped out the carpets upstairs and laid bamboo flooring. Now I’m having someone lay tile on the ground floor. But I’m wondering what I should do about the stairs between the two floors. I’ve taken the surface of the stairs down to the plywood.
A: I’d suggest covering the treads on the stairs — the place where you place your foot with the bamboo. Then use the tile for the risers. That would nicely tie the two types of flooring together visually.
