Defile by the water

You can make a bath­room beau­ti­ful and cozy with­out increas­ing its area. How­ev­er, if you dream of an exclu­sive inte­ri­or, you can­not do with­out rede­vel­op­ment and the use of non-stan­dard archi­tec­tur­al solu­tions. One of them- con­struc­tion of the podi­um.

What is a podi­um in the apart­ment- in the kitchen, liv­ing room or bed­room,- our read­ers, no doubt, have a good idea. Mean­while, in the bath­room, a podi­um is built no less often, and per­haps even more often than in oth­er rooms. The fact is that from the point of view of inte­ri­or design, this solu­tion allows you to dis­guise com­mu­ni­ca­tions in the most advan­ta­geous way. BUTafter all, dur­ing rede­vel­op­ment asso­ci­at­ed with the trans­fer of plumb­ing, it almost always becomes nec­es­sary to hide the sew­er pipes lead­ing to the ris­er. The con­nec­tion to the mix­er or toi­let can some­times be placed in the floor screed or hid­den under the wall sheath­ing, and the drain pipes are too large in diam­e­ter for this, in addi­tion, they need to be sloped (at least 20mm per 1 lin. m). So, the podi­um in the bath­room, as a rule, car­ries a tech­ni­cal load. The specifics of the “wet” zone, as well as the pur­pose and dimen­sions of the premis­es require a spe­cial approach to the design and con­struc­tion of this struc­ture.

Podium in a new look

In spa­cious bath­rooms, the podi­um, along with solv­ing tech­ni­cal prob­lems, can per­form the same func­tion as in oth­er rooms,- visu­al­ly divide the room into func­tion­al zones (in com­bined bath­rooms, in this way they sep­a­rate the bath from the toi­let, some­times com­bin­ing the designed floor lev­el dif­fer­ence with semi-par­ti­tions, screens andt.d.).

ATin a small bath­room, the podi­um appears in a new look, becom­ing minia­ture, more like a wide step or a small stand,- after all, it is nec­es­sary to leave a free “street” suf­fi­cient for a nor­mal pas­sage. Yes, and design­ers do not advise mak­ing a podi­um in the bath­room, exceed­ing half the floor area in terms of footage. How­ev­er, with the main artis­tic task- select a cer­tain zone or ele­ment of the sit­u­a­tion (in the role of which the bath most often acts as the main per­son involved in the home water area)- a com­pact podi­um will do just fine.

Who would not like to have a small Turk­ish bath in their apart­ment, or a Japan­ese bath, or a per­son­al cor­ner of the sea coast, or a bay of a for­est lake instead of a bor­ing, pure­ly util­i­tar­i­an bath­room? Such a goal is quite achiev­able, espe­cial­ly if you have at your dis­pos­al the whole range of mod­ern mate­ri­als and a pro­fes­sion­al set of dec­o­rat­ing tech­niques. AndOf course, it is nec­es­sary to give a new look to the bath, cre­at­ing a frame for it that effec­tive­ly fits into the inte­ri­or. Thus, in rela­tion to the “wet” zone, the term “podi­um” itself some­what changes its mean­ing.- here it is not only a con­struc­tive solu­tion for the floor, but also a way to install the font. More­over, they build a box designed to dis­guise com­mu­ni­ca­tions, as well as the bath itself (that is, its out­er sur­face, leav­ing only the rim vis­i­ble). Such a podi­um is often not at all intend­ed for walk­ing and is not much larg­er than the actu­al bath­tub.

Atown­ers of coun­try hous­es, as well as mul­ti-lev­el apart­ments and apart­ments with high (more than 2.7m) ceil­ings, it is pos­si­ble to equip a spe­cial type of podi­um, which experts con­sid­er the most advan­ta­geous from an archi­tec­tur­al point of view. It is a small (100–300mm) an ele­va­tion with a bath­tub com­plete­ly recessed into it (“trick” is that it resem­bles a nat­ur­al land­scape; besides, it is more con­ve­nient to descend into the bath­tub from such a podi­um, and if you wish, you can sit on the “shore”). How­ev­er, imple­ment­ing this solu­tion is not at all easy: you have to drown the bath into the floor, and for this you need to either raise its lev­el through­out the room (make a raised floor), or, even more dif­fi­cult, build the bath into the ceil­ing. ATin the lat­ter case, it is nec­es­sary to make changes to the design of the floor, pro­vide addi­tion­al sup­ports under the bot­tom of the bath, fixed on the walls, low­er the ceil­ing of the room below, and if the bot­tom of the bath is in a cold under­ground, build an insu­lat­ing box.

When build­ing a podi­um in the bath­room, a wide vari­ety of mate­ri­als and tech­nolo­gies are used. ATeach spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion, their choice is indi­vid­ual and dic­tat­ed by the pur­pose of the struc­ture, its archi­tec­tur­al form, the mag­ni­tude of the cal­cu­lat­ed loads, the type of fin­ish coat­ing andt.d.

What’s at the core?

The podi­um box is erect­ed before the start of fin­ish­ing work in the bath­room, but after the instal­la­tion of the floor screed (some­times simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with this process). The most com­mon types of struc­tures- frame, block or brick (mason­ry) and mono­lith­ic. Let’s con­sid­er them in more detail.

Frame struc­tures hold the lead. They are made of gal­va­nized steel pro­files and plas­ter­board or gyp­sum-fiber sheets (of course, only mois­ture-resis­tant dry­wall is used). The use of this very com­mon tech­nol­o­gy in “wet” areas, con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, is quite accept­able, but only with a small (no more than 150kgf/m²) design load and pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary water­proof­ing. The frame is made of stan­dard U‑shaped pro­files with a shelf width of at least 50mm, and it is assem­bled in such a way that the step of the racks and cross­bars does not exceed 400–500mm. Sheathe the frame with sheets of GKLV or GVLV with a thick­ness of 12.5mm (as a rule, pref­er­ence is giv­en to GVLV- they are stronger) in two lay­ers, plac­ing the joints apart (for details on how to work with dry­wall, includ­ing the tech­nol­o­gy for cre­at­ing curved ele­ments, see “IVD”, 2000, No.5; 2003, no.9). Some­times poly­styrene sand­wich pan­els of a new gen­er­a­tion such as Wedi (“Com­fort Stu­dio”, Rus­sia) or “Primus” (“March”, Rus­sia) are tak­en for cladding with a thick­ness of 20–50mm, which have greater mois­ture resis­tance than GKL and GVL and have a rein­forced coat­ing that is per­fect for tiling. When assem­bling struc­tures from such pan­els, they often do with­out a frame.- the pan­els are sim­ply fas­tened togeth­er with the help of cor­ners, screws and glue.

Because a dry­wall podi­um can­not sup­port the weight of a water-filled bath­tub, it is installed over the exist­ing floor using a con­ven­tion­al instal­la­tion sys­tem.- legs or frame. If the bath needs to be raised, brick stands are laid out on the mor­tar under the legs, con­crete cast­ings are made, or spe­cial weld­ed frames are made. If the podi­um hides com­mu­ni­ca­tions, an inspec­tion hatch should be left in it.

Some­times podi­ums are made on the basis of a frame of beams (prefer­ably larch, but ordi­nary pine, anti­sep­tic and pro­tect­ed by coat­ing water­proof­ing) with a sec­tion of 5050 or 70fiftymm. Such a frame is sheathed with water­proof ply­wood of the FSF brand. At the same time, boards or slats made of decay-resis­tant wood species are most often used as a fin­ish­ing coat­ing. The ply­wood box is some­times lined with tiles, but then it must first be sheathed with dry­wall or plas­tered over the grid with a strong cement-sand mor­tar. This type of struc­tures can with­stand loads up to 200 kgf / m²that is, it is quite accept­able to place plumb­ing equip­ment on it (with the excep­tion of the bath­tub).

Types of podi­um con­struc­tion

Mono­lith­ic:

one- roll hydro-iso­la­tion (two lay­ers);
2- expand­ed clay con­crete;
3- tile adhe­sive;
four- tile;
5- damper (PPE 4mm);

Mason­ry:

one- water­proof­ing (two lay­ers);
2- cement-sand screed;
3- lay­ing in half-brick;
four- cast or coat­ing water­proof­ing;
5- rein­forced con­crete slab;

6- tile adhe­sive;

7- tile;

Frame:

one- water­proof­ing (two lay­ers);
2- cou­pler;
3- cast water­proof­ing;

four- frame made of gal­va­nized pro­files;
5- GVLV (two lay­ers);

6- tile adhe­sive;
7- tile

The main advan­tages of frame podi­ums- speed of erec­tion, the abil­i­ty to do with­out “wet” process­es, low weight (the load on the ceil­ing increas­es slight­ly). How­ev­er, such a podi­um, even lined with tiles or mosaics, makes boom­ing sounds when walk­ing or hit­ting, which con­fus­es many. Some­times, in order to get rid of this effect, and at the same time strength­en the struc­ture, builders offer to com­plete­ly or par­tial­ly fill the emp­ty space with ordi­nary polyurethane foam from house­hold cylin­ders. Prac­tice shows that such a deci­sion entails numer­ous unpleas­ant con­se­quences. First, there is no access to hid­den com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Sec­ond­ly, when expand­ed, non-pro­fes­sion­al foam puts pres­sure on obsta­cles and is able to deform skin sheets. Third­ly, polyurethane foam is hygro­scop­ic and, once sat­u­rat­ed with mois­ture, it prac­ti­cal­ly can­not dry out in an enclosed space deprived of ven­ti­la­tion. This leads to cor­ro­sion (rot­ting) of the pro­files (beams) of the frame, delam­i­na­tion of the sheet sheath­ing mate­r­i­al, due to which the ser­vice life of the entire struc­ture is sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced.

If you want the struc­ture to be mas­sive and have increased resis­tance to oper­a­tional loads, you can build a mason­ry or mono­lith­ic podi­um.

Podi­ums made of blocks or bricks designed for large sta­t­ic (over 200 kgf/m²) and oper­at­ing loads. Such a design can eas­i­ly with­stand the mass of a bath­tub filled with water and oth­er plumb­ing equip­ment, does not spring and does not “sound” when walk­ing. To facil­i­tate the con­struc­tion, only walls along the perime­ter of the podi­um are erect­ed from blocks (gyp­sum, con­crete, expand­ed clay con­crete) or bricks. The inter­nal space of the result­ing “well” is filled with expand­ed clay, on top of which a rein­forced cement-sand screed is then poured. Anoth­er vari­ant- the box remains hol­low inside, and on top it is cov­ered with a rein­forced con­crete slab, cast sep­a­rate­ly. The lat­ter method is prefer­able for the con­struc­tion of a tech­ni­cal podi­um, as it allows access to hid­den com­mu­ni­ca­tions through a tech­no­log­i­cal hatch. If you plan to build a bath into the podi­um, a hole of the appro­pri­ate shape is pro­vid­ed in the slab; if the podi­um is made to fit the dimen­sions of the bath, they sim­ply bring the mason­ry under its sides. The main dis­ad­van­tages of block and brick podi­ums- the com­plex­i­ty of the con­struc­tion (in addi­tion to the work described, it will be nec­es­sary to plas­ter the out­er sur­faces in order to pre­pare them for tiling or oth­er mate­r­i­al) and a sig­nif­i­cant addi­tion­al load on the ceil­ing. So, the own weight of the podi­um attached to the wall with a size of 20001500400mm with walls laid out in half a brick, will be more than 350kg; mod­ern slab floors with a bear­ing capac­i­ty of over 600kg/m² quite cope with this load, and the ceil­ing in the old house may not with­stand.

Mono­lith­ic rein­forced con­crete podi­um due to the large mass and lack of access to com­mu­ni­ca­tions, it finds very lim­it­ed use. The addi­tion­al load on the ceil­ing is even greater than in the case of brick­work. How­ev­er, if you need to build a low “pedestal” for open-stand­ing plumb­ing, there is no bet­ter option. As a rule, the cast­ing is made of sand con­crete or (for light­en­ing) of expand­ed clay con­crete and rein­forced with a rein­forc­ing cage and mason­ry or road mesh. A damp­ing lay­er is required between the cast­ing and the wall. It is made of a poly­eth­yl­ene foam strip with a thick­ness of 4–5mm and a width equal to the height of the podi­um.

The struc­tures described in this sec­tion require addi­tion­al water­proof­ing work in the place where they are erect­ed.

We are not afraid of the abyss

With any design of the podi­um, it is nec­es­sary to pro­vide pro­tec­tion against leak­age into the room below. This pur­pose is served by a lay­er of water­proof­ing under the floor screed. Fur­ther, already on the screed, they water­proof the site under the future podi­um (its lay­er will replace the water­proof floor­ing), and if the struc­ture is adja­cent to the walls, the lat­ter are water­proofed to the entire height of the podi­um. To do this, most often used rolled (past­ing, weld­ed) or cast water­proof­ing. From rolled mate­ri­als, domes­tic ones are prefer­able, made on the basis of mod­i­fied bitu­men on a strong fibrous (fiber­glass, fiber­glass) or non-woven poly­ester base (hydrostek­loizol, iso­plast, glass-elast, tech­noe­last, uni­flex, fil­i­zol, bire­plast and rubi­tex grades KhPP and TPP), since they are all stronger and more durable than ruberoid. For reli­a­bil­i­ty, the strips of mate­r­i­al are laid in two lay­ers, and if an ordi­nary roof­ing mate­r­i­al is cho­sen, each lay­er is smeared with bitu­men or bitu­men-poly­mer mas­tic.

On hor­i­zon­tal sur­faces, cast water­proof­ing is some­times made from hot bitu­men poured onto a con­crete base primed with mas­tic in two lay­ers with inter­me­di­ate dry­ing. But recent­ly, bulk and rolled poly­mer mem­branes have been used much more often, for exam­ple, Hyper­desmo, Logi­croof (both- Rus­sia), Max­e­las­tic (Spain), Sol­max (Cana­da), San­i­flex (Ger­many).

Coat­ing water­proof­ing (bitu­men, rub­ber-bitu­men and bitu­men-poly­mer mas­tic) pro­tects indi­vid­ual parts of the podi­um (for exam­ple, frame parts). Con­crete cast­ings, block mason­ry, GVL and GKL sheath­ing must be pro­tect­ed from mois­ture using paint pen­e­trat­ing water­proof­ing based on poly­mer emul­sions. Many of its types, such as Aqua­sil (OZSS, Rus­sia), Flachen­dicht (Knauf, Ger­many), Osmo­las­tic and Osmoflex (INDEX, Italy), are suit­able for sur­faces intend­ed for ceram­ic tiling.

Royal clothes

The fin­ish of the podi­um in some cas­es con­trasts sig­nif­i­cant­ly with the walls and floor, and in oth­ers- only slight­ly dif­fer­ent in hue from the main col­or scheme or ful­ly cor­re­sponds to it. Of course, there is no friend for the taste and col­or, but, accord­ing to many experts, the last two options are prefer­able in a small bath­room.

The entire range of fac­ing mate­ri­als used in “wet” areas is suit­able for fin­ish­ing hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal sur­faces of the podi­um: ordi­nary ceram­ic and porce­lain tiles, glass and ceram­ic mosaics, spe­cial plas­tic pan­els (for ver­ti­cal sur­faces). Of the non-stan­dard options, nat­ur­al and acrylic stone should be men­tioned, as well as cork, which is not sus­cep­ti­ble to decay and at the same time warm and safe (not slip­pery and elas­tic). Hor­i­zon­tal sur­faces, even if they are not going to walk on them, but only plan to lean on them with their hands, it is rec­om­mend­ed to lay them out with floor tiles. For round­ed ribs, all lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers of ceram­ic and porce­lain tiles offer spe­cial fit­tings. Mosa­ic is con­ve­nient for fac­ing curved parts, and glass smalt on such planes cre­ates an incom­pa­ra­ble play of light. At the same time, the mosa­ic can be com­bined with ordi­nary tiles (how­ev­er, only a high­ly qual­i­fied mas­ter will cope with such a task).

Often, to empha­size the role of the podi­um in the inte­ri­or of the bath­room, it is sheathed with wood. To do this, take grooved boards with a thick­ness of 20mm from fun­gus-resis­tant rocks- oak, ash, teak andetc., as well as from heat-treat­ed wood, which is prac­ti­cal­ly not sus­cep­ti­ble to decay. The boards are glued to the frame with polyurethane glue.- e.g. Nail Pow­er (Henkel, Ger­many), Sik­aBond-T2 (Sika, Switzer­land), Sim­son MSR (Bostic, France) andetc.,- and then cov­ered with a spe­cial oil or poly­mer var­nish.

ATIn con­clu­sion, we note that there are many suc­cess­ful com­plet­ed bath­room projects with a podi­um. But there are no less exam­ples of how this design brings dis­so­nance to the inte­ri­or and, more­over, cre­ates domes­tic incon­ve­nience. To pre­vent your bath­room from being one of them, you should invite a pro­fes­sion­al archi­tect to design.

Approximate calculation of the cost of building a podium of brick and reinforced concrete with an area of ​​3.2m² and height 0.4m

An approximate calculation of the cost of erecting a wall frame podium with an area of ​​2.5m² and height 0.5m

The edi­tors thank the com­pa­nies “Lege-Artis”, “Com­fort Stu­dio”, Ide­al Stan­dard, Konzept, VilleroyBoch for help in prepar­ing the mate­r­i­al.

• Source: Ideas for Your Home magazine#123

Mate­r­i­al pre­pared

Vladimir Grig­oriev