Tub-to-Shower Conversion in Bellevue, NE Tub Removed, Shower Built New

The line between this page and bathtub replacement

Read the bathtub replacement page beside this one, because the two jobs diverge at the drain. A replacement puts a tub back in a tub's footprint: the waste and overflow lands in the same spot at one end of the alcove, the trap below stays where it is, and the wall assembly gets rebuilt only to the height the new tub flange demands. A conversion deletes the tub entirely. The drain has to come to the middle of the new floor, or wherever the base you selected puts it, so the trap and trap arm get cut out and re-run. The alcove floor becomes a graded, waterproofed surface instead of a shelf holding a self-contained vessel. Two jobs, one alcove, and almost nothing shared behind the tile. Everything else on this site follows from that split, so the services list sorts the two apart rather than filing them together.

Moving the drain is the whole job

Under a Bellevue tub the waste tees into a trap near the end wall, usually inside a joist bay if the bathroom sits over a basement. A shower base wants its outlet near the center of the pan, and manufactured bases publish an outlet location you either match or reject the base. That means opening the floor, cutting the existing trap out, setting a new trap at the depth the base thickness requires, and re-running the trap arm to the stack at the fall the code demands. In older parts of the city that stack may be cast iron, and extra heavy cast iron waste lines are generally credited with a service life of 75 to 100 years, per CorrView's piping bulletin — old enough that a hub connection can be sound and the fitting beside it soft.

The City treats it as new work, and the master plumber files it

Bellevue's Permits and Inspection Division is explicit that clearing a stoppage or fixing a leak needs no permit, but once a trap, drainpipe, soil, waste or vent pipe has to be removed and replaced with new material, that becomes new work for which "a permit shall be procured and inspections made as provided," per the City's permit division. A conversion cuts out a trap by definition, so there is no version of this job that sits inside the exemption. The filing is not yours to do either. Under Bellevue city code § 27-58, the plumbing permit is applied for by the master plumber, and once approved it is signed and paid for by that license holder. The City's fee schedule charges $9.80 per fixture or trap plus a $23.50 issuance charge, and adds $4.75 per fixture for altering drainage or vent piping — which is exactly the line a conversion triggers and a like-for-like tub swap does not, per the plumbing fee table.

Size the compartment before anything is ordered

Bellevue enforces the 2021 Uniform Plumbing Code, adopted at § 27-85 of the city code. UPC 408.7 requires a shower compartment with a finished interior of not less than 1,024 square inches that is also capable of encompassing a 30-inch circle, measured at the top of the threshold, and that clear volume has to be maintained to a point not less than 70 inches above the shower drain outlet, per the Uniform Codes spotlight on 408.7. Valves, showerheads, soap dishes, shelves and grab bars are the only permitted intrusions. A 30 by 60 receptor is called out separately as acceptable, which matters because a standard alcove tub is 30 by 60. A sloped ceiling, a soffit, or a bulkhead hiding old pipe can eat the 70-inch dimension even when the floor plan measures fine.

Waterproofing gets built new, not patched

A tub carries its own watertight floor. Delete the tub and the room loses it, so the pan, the curb or the ramp, the corners and the drain flange all become site-built assemblies. IRC R307.2 requires a nonabsorbent finish on shower walls to 72 inches above the floor, and in a curbless shower that measurement starts at the drain inlet, per this reading of R307.2. Old greenboard salvaged off the studs is not a shortcut here; water-resistant gypsum board is barred where there is direct exposure to water, per the R702 wall covering text.

What Bellevue's older stock adds to the scope

The 2023 affordable housing plan Bellevue filed with the Legislature proposes a systematic code inspection program for every housing structure 60 or more years old, and locates the city's deteriorated pockets near the downtown core and in the oldest neighborhoods north and south of it, per the Bellevue Affordable Housing Action Plan. In Olde Towne that reads as a single vent stack, a tub against an exterior wall, and no room to shift the drain sideways without touching a joist. In the late-1990s and newer subdivisions the alcove is wider and the supply lines are copper or PEX, so the conversion is mostly a floor and waterproofing exercise. If the goal is a level entry rather than simply losing the tub, the walk-in shower page covers that.