Shower drain removal

[lucasboy]

My Wife's having me remove our shower & turn it into a closet. The plastic pan is cracked & the showers so small you can barely turn around in it, so It's pretty useless & we could use more closet space.The pan doesn't look to difficult to remove & I know I have to cap off the drain under It when I get the pan out.What I'm not to sure of is how to unhook the drain from the pan & also what size cap do I need to buy to seal the drain? Thanks!

[Greg]

Since you are noy worried about saving anything, the easiest way is with a sawsall. Pick up a pvc glue on cap & the cleaner& glue to cap it off. It should be either 1 1/4" or 1 1/2". Greg

[JD]

There are tools made especially for removing drains but if it is the type with the crosshairs in it, I will put the handles of a pair of pliers in the drain and use a screw driver as a handle to turn it. But many times the old drains are stubborn or have no cross hairs (pop-up type). If the drain will not loosen with plier handles and scrwdriver, I will cut a vertical line inside of the drain opening and up the the edge that you see inside the tub. A sawzall is good for this but you can also use just a hack saw blade in a gloved hand. once you have the drain cut, you can use a chisel or screw driver to collapse the drain slightly and it should unscrew easily.

You will probably need to remove some of the abs plumbing as it projects up through the floor a little bit. Usually there is a pretty good sized hole where the drain comes through that you will have to fix. So you can open that up more to get yourself some room to do the ABS repair. Also I am thinking that Greg meant ABS glue.

JD

[lucasboy]

Thanks for the advice. Todays the day I start ripping it apart.