Shower pans can be made in any shape or size these days. They can be curbed or curb-less. They can have regular centered drains, or linear drains. They can have curved walls, and be pretty much any design you can imagine. No matter what shape or style, a shower pan is there to catch 100% of the water and put it down the drain. A shower pan done incorrectly can damage your home and be an expensive nightmare to repair. Almost half of the shower pans that we have torn out over the years were failures because of installer error or laziness.

Think about it this way. A standard shower has a flow rate of 2.2gal/min. If a single person takes a 5 minute shower one time per day in a tub sized shower, they are using about 4,000 gallons a year. That is the equivalent of over 2,000 inches of rain in your shower per year. (Boulder historically only has about 25 inches per year). This is a lot of water, so take this part of your bathroom project seriously!

And, no matter which style you decide to go with, make sure the company doing the work knows what they are doing, can explain the system they are using to you, and does a proper 24 hour flood test before they tile over it.