Kevin James Holland
New member
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2025
- Messages
- 3
Hi folks, good to be here! Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
I'm an amateur mason, and I've only done a couple jobs. When my wife and I had to break up the cementitious floor of our (2nd floor!) bathroom, we decided to tackle pouring the mortar floor and installing the tile ourselves. That project kinda destroyed us, but we decided to continue with our plan to install our shower ourselves. We decided on a pretty traditional shower with some modern technology -- PVC shower pan liner, mud bed shower pan, Hardiback walls, sealing with Redgard etc., and then laying tile. We did lots of research, and have a deep respect for the trades, but we decided this was a job we could do ourselves.
We've now poured the shower pan and let it cure, but the surface is loose/breakable sand. We had mixed it by hand, using Sakreet Sand Mix, and it seems our mix was too dry. Tons of people recommend the "snowball test" -- add water until you can pack your mixture like a snowball, and then you know it's good. After our mortar cured, and I saw the finished product, I watched a clip on one of Bob Doyle's YouTube vids (@StarrTile). He says the snowball test is no good because it will pack in your hands like that at various ratios, so your mix could pack like a snowball and still be too dry. As I watched that video, I saw his mixture was definitely wetter than ours. I've attached a photo and a video of our shower pan mortar. The video shows that a light but firm touch with my finger will break up the surface into loose sand...
The other thing I think that went wrong when we poured, was that I took too long working with the mortar. It was definitely starting to dry on the top as I finished. This seems like a critical error as well.
TWO Questions. 1) What went wrong? The mix was too dry? I took too long? Both?
Question 2) Now what? I assume we need to break up the mortar, remove all of it, then pour again with more water and tighten up our work time window. If we go that route, we'll risk compromising the existing PVC liner, so we may end up having to redo that as well.
Or is it possible to salvage the mortar job we did? I don't know much about masonry, but what I do know makes me doubt that is possible.
I do believe we can do this job well if we take a second pass. We just didn't do well on our first go. We just want to get this project finished and have it last. Please let me know how you would advise us to go forward. Thanks!
Yours truly,
Kevin
I'm an amateur mason, and I've only done a couple jobs. When my wife and I had to break up the cementitious floor of our (2nd floor!) bathroom, we decided to tackle pouring the mortar floor and installing the tile ourselves. That project kinda destroyed us, but we decided to continue with our plan to install our shower ourselves. We decided on a pretty traditional shower with some modern technology -- PVC shower pan liner, mud bed shower pan, Hardiback walls, sealing with Redgard etc., and then laying tile. We did lots of research, and have a deep respect for the trades, but we decided this was a job we could do ourselves.
We've now poured the shower pan and let it cure, but the surface is loose/breakable sand. We had mixed it by hand, using Sakreet Sand Mix, and it seems our mix was too dry. Tons of people recommend the "snowball test" -- add water until you can pack your mixture like a snowball, and then you know it's good. After our mortar cured, and I saw the finished product, I watched a clip on one of Bob Doyle's YouTube vids (@StarrTile). He says the snowball test is no good because it will pack in your hands like that at various ratios, so your mix could pack like a snowball and still be too dry. As I watched that video, I saw his mixture was definitely wetter than ours. I've attached a photo and a video of our shower pan mortar. The video shows that a light but firm touch with my finger will break up the surface into loose sand...
The other thing I think that went wrong when we poured, was that I took too long working with the mortar. It was definitely starting to dry on the top as I finished. This seems like a critical error as well.
TWO Questions. 1) What went wrong? The mix was too dry? I took too long? Both?
Question 2) Now what? I assume we need to break up the mortar, remove all of it, then pour again with more water and tighten up our work time window. If we go that route, we'll risk compromising the existing PVC liner, so we may end up having to redo that as well.
Or is it possible to salvage the mortar job we did? I don't know much about masonry, but what I do know makes me doubt that is possible.
I do believe we can do this job well if we take a second pass. We just didn't do well on our first go. We just want to get this project finished and have it last. Please let me know how you would advise us to go forward. Thanks!
Yours truly,
Kevin
