Signs Your Shower Pan Is Failing
The pan is the waterproof floor under your shower tile. When it fails, water goes where it should not — into the subfloor, the ceiling below, or the wall framing. Watch for these signs:
Stains on the ceiling below the shower. The classic tell. If the spot grows after showers, the pan is leaking.
Loose or hollow-sounding floor tile. Water under the tile breaks the bond. Tap the floor — solid tile rings sharp, failed tile sounds dull or moves.
Musty smell that never leaves. In Florida humidity, a slow pan leak becomes a mold problem fast. If the bathroom smells damp no matter how you clean, suspect the pan.
Grout that keeps cracking in the same place. Movement from a rotted subfloor underneath.
What Replacement Involves
There is no patching a failed pan properly — the fix is replacement. We remove the bottom rows of wall tile and the floor tile, take out the old pan liner or base, inspect the subfloor (and replace any rotted wood), then build the new pan correctly from the ground up.
The right way to build a pan: a sloped mortar bed (quarter-inch per foot to the drain), a waterproof membrane — sheet membrane like Schluter-KERDI or a properly installed PVC liner — with all seams and corners sealed, then a flood test before a single tile goes down. We fill the pan with water and check for leaks over 24 hours. Only then does tile start.
Prefab vs. site-built. A factory acrylic or cultured-marble pan can replace a like-size pan quickly and costs less. A site-built tile pan matches any size and looks better. We will tell you which your bathroom needs.
Cost
Published guides put pan replacement in the low thousands for prefab and higher for custom tile pans with wall repairs. The subfloor condition is the wild card — we cannot price rotted wood until we see it, which is why the written estimate comes after we open things up. What we find, we show you before we fix it.
Call (407) 434-9297 for a free in-home inspection. If your pan is failing, every month you wait is more damage underneath.
Preventing the Next Failure
A new pan should outlast the tile above it. What makes that happen: proper slope (quarter-inch per foot, verified with a level, not eyeballed), a continuous waterproof membrane with sealed seams, and a flood test before tile goes down. Ask any contractor bidding your pan replacement whether they flood-test — the answer tells you whether they build pans right.
In Florida, also ask about the subfloor material. If rot is found, we replace with exterior-grade plywood or a concrete-compatible backer — not the same untreated material that failed. Building it back the same way it failed is the definition of a repeat repair.