Tiling a false wall

[andrewm]

I am about to replace a bathroom. The bath has the soil pipe running alongside it so currently it is six inches away from the wall with a small shelf next to it. This is useful in its way but I want to add a shower over the bath and suspect that it will get covered in water. The plan therefore is to build the wall out to cover the pipe before installing the new bath. But, a couple of questions:

1 - What is the right material for the wall? I am thinking probably moisture resistant plasterboard. Is this correct?

2 - Should I waterproof further around the shower area? It will be a mains powered shower from a combination boiler, not a pumped power shower?

3 - If I do need to fully waterproof the wall first and if I am using glazed tiles on top how does the adhesive dry?

The tiles have not been chosen yet but since cost is a prime consideration they are not going to be anything fancy and are unlikely to be excessively big.

Thanks for any help you can give.

Andrew

[Aspect Tiling]

If you want to keep the shelf there is no reason why you can't. Just replace it with a suitable material such as hardiebacker cement board or Aquapanel. If you do build the wall out you've got a few options. Plasterboard or a cement board, these will need tanking in the areas expected to get wet. Or an aqua type panel which does not need tanking.

The tanking wont affect the drying of the adhesive, but don't be tempted to go for the ready mixed stuff. A bagged flexible cement based adhesive would be my choice, like most on the forum.

[paul78]

aquapanel and definately bagged flexible addy/grout is the way

[andrewm]

Thanks to you both.

Are there any guidelines as to the area that is expected to get wet? Or to put it another way should I be using aquapanel for the whole wall or can I get away with only using it in the shower area? It does seem to be quite a bit more expensive than plasterboard but I don't want to store up trouble for the future.

Andrew

[Rich]

All good advice above.

A cement board would be my first choice also (if money was no object I would do the entire room with it) but you may find that it is cheaper to used plasterboard and then tank over the top of it, this will be suitable for what you need. Is there a Tile Giant near by? The will stock the Mapei tanking kit, would recommend having a word with them to see the price difference

With regards to how much to tank/use cement boards, you are much better playing it safe and using it everywhere that you expect to get covered in water.