Taking out an old bathtub

Since the move a couple of years ago to the rive house my wife has been a saint.  Our house has about a 1970 enamel coated stamped steel bathtub with these awful brass shower sliding doors.  I could not even fit in this tiny bathtub as it was built for people 5'6" or less and the doors made it impossible even for my wife who is 5'8" to fit.  The first thing we did a couple years ago was put in a stand alone modern shower.  Very selfish on my part because my wife had this great jaquzzi bath in her 4k foot home which I easily fit in and she loved her baths as they were relaxing, but she settled on the shower in our 1.2k square foot home.

Well as I am weakening, we have visited hospice and met with them and they are only six miles down the road, and we are figuring that they will make home visits until I get really bad(I am nowhere near that now, but it will happen very quickly when it starts) so we thought about putting in a soaking tub with strong grab bars high and low, and we are considering putting in two vertical beams and mounting an electric hoist( we used one to put the flag pole up) and basically we will create a swing with a pivot point and pulley which will allow my wife to easily put me in the tub and lift me out safely to my feet.

I will post the demolition, as we proceed.   We have popped the bathtub out by watching a UTUBE video.  I have taken two bathtubs out personally, but I was as strong as a bull, I am not now.   We took off the walls to the studs, put our 1976 Honda Civic jack under the tub and removed the plumbing extensions and slowly jacked it out of the tight fit using the back access panel to set up the jack.  I found out I still have a great deal of strength as I ripped it out, but needed frequent rests and we brought a chair in for me to work on the plumbing.

Unfortunately, there are only 2x6 rafters and 3/4 inch plywood on a 10 foot rafter with NO block supports for the tub.  My wife is piszed at me about insisting to cut out the plywood floor which will allow us to block the beams and put in an additional support beam because we will be putting in a tub which hold 30% more water, which will be about 240 llbs plus my 235 lbs putting close to 700 pounds on a 2 x6 which has been exposed to moisture.  I put my foot down, and she finally agreed......I do not want to do something half asz, and get deflection and be too weak to fix it.

So, I will go to a similar box store as Lowes and Home Depot called Menards.  We will buy a new refrigerator, and the new tub.  We will have them load the dump truck, and I will drive the truck up to the back deck and lift the dump and get the tub and refrigerator on the back deck, I will leave in ten minutes and will post the results later.

Hang in there buddy... pun intended.

Hang in there buddy... pun intended.

This nasty tub was so bad we would not let the granchildren take a bath, and the only thing which has gone in this tub were the dogs after they rolled in something.  I am going to have to investigate a floor plate with a pivot for a swing arm which can be winched from the floor....I am going to have to give some thought to utility and aesthetics, but my wife always kept the shower glass closed when she had her breakfast club over.....she was entirely unhappy with the bath, but if I make it look like an oil change bay with a bunch of mechanical things to get my sick butt in the tub.....I do not think that will work....I am going to scour the internet for a floor pivot with a steel mount.....we will see, and yes I will be crawling to my final project....no give up here.

It's easier to just sledge a cast iron tub and carry it out in pieces. Oh you are probably going to use it as a redneck planter in your front yard.

My sister has become brilliant at handicap accessible housing options. If there are issues you'ld like advice on please feel free to ask. Her husband was brain injured in the same accident and she engineered their home which met every scenario.

It's become a specific lucrative consulting sideline. But I can pick her brain for free... even tho I remember almost all.

The smallest detail can make the biggest difference... even seemingly obvious things like zero level entrances.

How much time do you think you have left, Oatie?

Maybe use a I beam and a trolley.  Then you would not have to swing any thing.  Use a small elect winch to do the lifting.
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Dob't do the heavy work....you do the thinking, planning and buying.... hired help for the Manuel work.

Hallmarkgard wrote:Maybe use a I beam and a trolley.  Then you would not have to swing any thing.  Use a small elect winch to do the lifting.
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Excellent... The secret to consistency is simplicity... make sure you wire it into the generater circuit.

I need to do as hard of physical work as I can bear.  I have been asking the docs for three years how long......they always answer it is variable.  Last summer when the hormones went to 4600 from 580, I was toast and the doctor would not look us in the eye.  Northwestern has the best in the world radio embolization, and with this cancer the smaller the beads but in the liver tumors the arteries do not collapse and they can repeat the surgery, and my consult Friday when I got my shots said they are at 600 something which is not good, but compared to last July at 4600....it is great.  I asked this visit what is the most surgeries the liver can tolerate and they have had a few take four, but most  are two or three.   I have had a mapping procedure which does not count(I thought it did because they did block arteries and did radiate) and two surgeries, so I can probably go one more, but she said that at some point the counts will not matter and most patients just become incredibly tired and fade away.  So if you think my doing all this physical work is insane, this is how I rolled my whole life, and I am not going to change now.  It is not some kind of macho thing, but a focus on short term projects which gets me out of my chair, and allows me to pace myself.

The wife got her refrigerator, a new tub, and a new front door.  I am resting now as she takes the foam off the refrigerator and gets our dolly to come into the kitchen from the deck.  The tub is a much deeper tub than a standard one and will hold 60 gallons.  We have an on demand hot water heater I installed a few years ago so she can get unlimited hot water.  I feel terrible after I saw how nasty the tub was and how much she loved her baths.....I feel very selfish right now because we are kinda doing this for when I weaken, but I feel good she will be able to enjoy it after I am gone.  I appreciate the lift recommendations and I will start tonight on seeing what I can find.  Thanks for the suggestions.

I'm hurting myself just lifting a 5gl gas tank... be safe.

Just thinking, you could mount the I beam and winch in the attic and just have the cable running in a slot in the ceiling.  Maybe a flexible seal of some kind would make it look not very bad.  We used rigs like that over big engines so we could move the parts when we had to work on the engines.  It would not have to be very big. You are only looking at 3 to 4 hundred pounds. Just a thought  Thanks for sharing  I might need to do the same thing.

Last time I replaced a tub in an old house it was on a ground floor. I removed the siding and opened the outside wall and backed the new jacuzzi tub up against the foundation on a flat bed trailer and with some shimming under the wheels slid the tub into place by myself with little effort then rebuilt the stud wall and pushed it into the hole screwed it in place and replaced the siding. Worked great.

I think I will set a steel pipe in the crawl space when I take out the old floor.  I will mix a bag of concrete and set a steel pipe of sufficient diameter to line up with a 500 lb engine hoist.  I will set a threaded pipe and weld a roller bearing to the top of the pipe set in the crawl space.  It will be a quarter inch above the floor for clearance, and then I will take a five hundred pound engine hoist and secure it on the end of the pipe.  A simple plastic swing attached to the end of the hoist sit in the swing.....wife simple jacks it up to clear the tub and lets me down into the water.......bath......lift.....pivot.......grab bar stand and walk eight feet to the bedroom we are setting up to be handicap accessible. 

I have to work on the looks of this when not in use.  I would like to be able to lift of the pivot and simple wheel the lift into a closet and put a cap on the pivot.  Time for a bath.....roll the engine mount into the bathroom.....lift and attach to pivot.....bath time.

http://www.amazon.com/Pickup-Truck-Hydraulic-Engine-Hoist/dp/B007AMM4KK

Last time I replaced a tub in an old house it was on a ground floor. I removed the siding and opened the outside wall and backed the new jacuzzi tub up against the foundation on a flat bed trailer and with some shimming under the wheels slid the tub into place by myself with little effort then rebuilt the stud wall and pushed it into the hole screwed it in place and replaced the siding. Worked great.

If we had gone with a bigger tub(more gallons) that is exactly what we were going to have to do....it would have been  a real pain in the butt, this should be an easy set. 

I could not go with any attic supports for the lift because the entire bathroom and half the kitchen was an add on to this house.  This house had a famous person live in it in the sixties and he moved the house in the seventies  to the block foundation, and he did a pisz poor job on leveling the floors and now that I see he used 2 x6 support under a bathtub I do not want to put any strain on the walls or ceiling.  However, if I pour a two inch steel flange in the crawl space with a bag of concrete and a small concrete tube I will get the support for the engine lift.  I may just order the lift because I can mount it in the dump truck if it does not work in the bathroom......I can see some women going.....that chit is not going in my bathroom......so I got to think of the looks, who knows....it may actually work.

I think it will have to be lightweight to move out of the bathroom and have wheels on it.  I have a large closet which is five feet from the bathroom.  the key is going to be the welded roller bearing on the threaded pipe coming through the floor, it has to be light enough to lift off the pivot.  I will be operating it at half capacity, but you are correct on the support legs on some models taking up space.  I used to operate a crane and I beam configuration when I worked in a roller bearing plant making bearing for steel plants rolling out sheet steel....I would pivot the crane, drop the hook by an electric control, and lift these three foot diameter bearings off the shoes of the outer race grinder...I still have build up of callous on my right index finger when I would lift them off and I think the pivot roller bearing is going to be the key to both support and space utilization.  I could weld a smaller I beam to the top of the threaded extension from the pivot bearing and run two pullies and an electric joist, but my wife and I were talking about me cooking in the bath on 12 volt hoist system......she said I could boil my juevos........so I would have to have the battery on a trickle charge and in the hatch away from the tub and water.

One more possibility which should work hire two really big guys with moving equipment. Pay money to save your back.

Hallmarkgard wrote:

TEOTWAWKI wrote:One more possibility which should work hire two really big guys with moving equipment. Pay money to save your back.  

Or 4 young women in Bikinis.....

no you are getting ahead of yourself and probably would do better with a hot tub with that crowd. Some mudslides, margaritas and

Hallmark that is a bit fancy for this river house....the original house was built in the late 1800s and was moved to the current block foundation....the kitchen floor is not level.......at best I am going to have a functional bath, but I doubt that I will succeed with the lift....but you never know.  The tub was less than 300 bucks, plumbing, new supports and blocking and we will have this in for less than 500.  If I had my way I would have done what T talked about, poured a new footing, and kicked out the wall seven feet and taken out the bedroom window and made a huge bathroom closet, but that would have to be permitted and in the county I am in now they review each and every property for changes from air shots, and require an architect for even a simple seven foot wall kick out......oh well by next weekend I will take a picture of my wife taking a bath....back shot while she is sitting in the tub.....she will be piszed, but that is half the fun.