Bathroom Renovations in Lacombe: What Older Plumbing Means
Cast iron drains, galvanized supply and a room laid out before anyone expected a second sink. What we check in a Lacombe bathroom before pricing it.
By David Hutten, Owner, Green Ladder Contractors
The older homes around Lacombe were built well and they were built for a different set of expectations. Bathrooms in them are usually small, usually laid out around a single stack, and usually running plumbing that has been in the walls a long time.
We are Green Ladder, a builder out of Red Deer, and we renovate bathrooms across Lacombe through the winter. On a house of this vintage the plumbing conversation comes before the tile conversation.
What is in the walls
Galvanized supply lines are common in older Central Alberta housing and they narrow from the inside over decades, which shows up as pressure that has been quietly getting worse for years. If the walls are open anyway, that is the cheapest moment there will ever be to replace the runs serving the bathroom.
Cast iron drains are the other one. Cast iron lasts a long time and it is quieter than plastic, so it is not automatically something to rip out. What matters is its condition where it is accessible and whether it can be tied into properly. A licensed plumber can tell you in a visit, and that visit belongs before a scope is written rather than after the fixtures are ordered.
This is also the reason we would rather look at a Lacombe bathroom in person. What is behind the wall decides most of the number, and it cannot be seen in a photograph.
The room was not laid out for two people
Older bathrooms here are small, and the fixtures sit where the original stack put them. That is fine, and most of what people want is achievable inside those constraints if the design starts from where the drain actually is.
A double vanity often is not, in a room of that size, and pushing for one usually costs more space than it gives back. A single wide vanity with better storage, or a taller mirror and better light, delivers most of what people are actually after (the complaint is nearly always storage and light rather than the number of sinks).
Plaster, and why demolition is different
Plaster and lath does not come off like drywall. It is heavier, it is dustier, and it takes longer, and where it is staying, patching into it is a skill of its own.
That belongs in the quote as its own line, and so does dust containment, because plaster demolition in an occupied house without proper containment puts fine grit through the whole place.
Older bathrooms are cold, and this is the moment to fix it
A bathroom in an older Lacombe home is often on an exterior corner with a single small radiator or one register, and it is the coldest room in the house on a January morning.
Two things help and both are only cheap while the room is open. Where an exterior wall is stripped back, the insulation and air sealing can be brought up to something reasonable, and in a house of this age there is frequently very little there to begin with. And electric in-floor heat under tile costs little to add when the floor is already coming up (it is a thin mat, it goes under the tile, and it is the single thing people say they notice most afterward).
Doing either one a year later means opening the room again.
Waterproofing, which older bathrooms often never had
A tiled shower or tub surround in a house of this age was frequently tiled straight onto whatever was behind it, and it has been shedding water into the wall ever since.
Tile in a wet area goes over a proper tile backer board and a waterproofing membrane, never over ordinary drywall. Grout is not waterproof and was never meant to be. What is behind the tile is what keeps the wall dry, and on a renovation like this it is often the single most valuable thing being replaced.
Slope to the drain is built in underneath before any tile goes on, which means it is decided before the part you can see exists. A shower floor that holds water anywhere is one that will eventually let it through.
Permits
New plumbing and electrical need a permit, as does anything structural. In Alberta the homeowner is the permit applicant, so it goes in under your name and we support you through it: which permits apply, what goes with the application, and the work ready at each inspection.
How we quote it
We walk it, get a licensed plumber to look at the supply and the stack, and price it firm in writing once we know what we are working with.
We do not publish bathroom ranges. On an older Lacombe home the services behind the wall move the number more than the finishes do, and nobody can guess at those from the outside.
Bathroom Renovations
Bathroom renovations and remodels in Red Deer and Central Alberta, with proper waterproofing behind the tile.
See Our Bathroom Renovations Work →Ones we built
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David Hutten
Owner, Green Ladder Contractors
David Hutten started building at age 10 and has 25 years of hands-on construction experience. Green Ladder Contractors builds custom outdoor living spaces, decks, fences, pergolas, and landscaping, across Red Deer and Central Alberta.
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