brunnhilde's cassette toilet - part 7

With so many posts on a toilet conversion project I at risk of being accused of 口水多過茶 - meaning the person got so much to say that he lost the point of the central agenda. It translates as he has more saliva than tea.


Today I made some progress on the shower pan to prepare it for laminating with fiberglass, to creating a smaller pan that is compatible with the Thetford cassette toilet. First back to the bathroom floor that has a challenge that I didn't mention in the previous post. This stacked plywood support for the raised platform is built like a fortress. Each of the three layers of plywood are glued together, and the stack is also glued to the subfloor. Any experience carpenter would know not to quarrel with a glue joint that has a large interface area. I was hoping that Westfalia would just tack it down with a bit of caulking. I tried using a ply bar using a hammer to break a crack for it to get a foot hold. No luck. It didn't budge at all.

I don't want to use brute force that will jeopardize the overall structure of the bathroom. I would have to use a divide and conquer approach. My thought right now is to cut the stack into narrow strips using a circular saw set to a safe depth and break the stacks up with a chesel. I carefully inspected if any nail, fastener, or staple in the stack and I could find none (except the nut inserts on the bottom of the subfloor).

i used a long straight edge to mark the cut line on the shower pan, but the contours

i came up with the idea to use my sushi knife with has a flat grind on one side

i then use a Sharpie to trace the faint scribed mark of the knife

while working on the shower pan something unusual on the raised planter caught my eyes; i then realize why the paver is tilt at an angle

there are three sizable bamboo shoots that are raising it up; you might seen movies where in some asian countries the growth of bamboo shoots are used to torture and kill the victim; it is no urban myth

Unless you live in the country do your neighbor a favor, don't plant bamboos. Despite what the nursery tell you there is very few effective way to contain bamboo without major expense; my neighbor diagonal here was the one planted the bamboo. The two neighbors' lots have already been breached. I am the last standing lot and my only option it to be very vigilant every year. At this time of the year I have to check my yard and snap off any shoot that grows up in my property.

Back to the shower pan. I decided to use a bandsaw to make parts of the cut.

after cutting the straight segments of the cut line i cut the curve line of the raise platform with the fein multimaster

 even using the slowest speed setting the acrylic plastic melts from the heat generated by the friction

now i crossed the point of no return - in ancient china a general wanted his solders to conquer the enemy's fortress; he ordered all the boats that was used to cross the river be destroyed leaving the only choices that they either die fighting or win the battle

i filed the slight raised contour of the radius along the curve to flatten it out

this is how the pan and the toilet in the bathroom - you can see a dam would be required along the toilet base; in the photo is the trim valance which i will scribe cut to the cross section of the pan

To deal with the void left by the raised platform I am leaning towards using some carbon fiber cloth for sufficient strength at the transition boundary. One layer on top and one layer at the bottom forming an I-beam like sandwich.