Does anyone know what to use to attach a Corian surround to the shower walls?
3 walls above the shower pan. The corian panels are 1/4″, 81″ tall and quite heavy.
The walls are Durock on the lower 3′ and greenboard above.
I was thinking of using silicone, unless someone knows better.
thanks, Haldi
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Replies
Silicone is the way to go! I've done cultured marble installs before (three to be exact) and this material is very similar. One panel at a time cause they do slip and slide until they set. Use large pieces of scrap ply or the like to distribute the pressure when bracing against another wall or surface until that piece cures up.
American Standard has available both a tub and a shower surround made of Corian. Go to American Standard's website and download their very detailed installation instructions. They refer to the use of 100% silicone as the adhesive of choice and, as suggested by timestamps above, the use of bracing during curing.
Also, a call to Corian will reveal that 100% silicone is the only adhesive approved for use with their product.
JohnG
It's been more then 20 years since I went to Dupont's Corian School in Delaware, but here's how they taught us to do it. We used construction adhesive and pressed the panel in place...then pulled it back away for about a minute. While the minute was passing away we put a couple of dabs of hot melt glue at the top two corners, then pressed the panel back in place. Then just rubbed the panel all over with our hands and a J roller. All the corners were caulked with Corian color matching silicone.
Two shower stalls in my house were made this way and they still look great twenty years later!
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Thanks guys for all the info.
Haldi
Haldi where did you get the corian from?
Local plumber has a radio show.He installs lots of Swanstone shower kits.He says tht they come with "construction adhesive". But he does not like it and uses Dow 723 siliocone.The same that he uses to caulk the joints..
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
We use silicone as well. We just did a Swanstone surround with those god awful ugly trim peices and use silicone for that as well.
silicone works great. Have used it many times over the years and have never had a problem
I happen to know a job where the installers wrote some nasty stuff on the wall using the incorrect cartridge adhesive. It bled through the corian and the customer was not too happy.
We did a couple surrounds with a very light colored Onyx awhile back. We didn't do the install, the guys who supplied the surround did. They were adamant about us getting a couple coats of primer over the green board before they showed up to do the install. Apparently with lighter colored products the greenboard can also show through in some cases.