Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms - Hole in shower wall.

Greetings everyone,

Just discovered this site and it's already in my favorites!

Question, I recently had the shower valve control replaced in my shower/tub. The repair left a hole in the wall roughly two tiles high and three tiles wide using 4" tile as a reference. I saw other posts about this same situation, but here's the kicker. Right next to the valve is a A/C register sending air to the second level and the seems are sealed with asbestos tape. Also, there are no studs within this hole. I have very limited access to get to the hole from the other side, and I really don't want to make the hole any bigger. FYI, my home is 60 years old.

I gladly welcome any suggestions!

Thanks

Welcome to the forums! I am assuming you accessed this from inside the shower, rather than from the back as it is normally done. If you can, cut a piece of 3/4" plywood large enough to cover the area, but narrow enough that you can insert it into the hole and draw it up tight to the backer that is already there. Drill a 3/4" hole in the plywood to start with. Hold it by the hole as you pull it tight against the backer and install screws around the perimeter. Place a piece of backer board over this plywood and attach it with backer screws. After it is installed, you can tile over it.

OK, just so I understand you correctly, because sometimes "the hamster falls asleep on the wheel". :)

From behind the shower, not in it, put some scrap wood basically on back of the backer board, then from inside the shower, put backer board that fits the hole, then so on, and so on.

There in lies a problem on it's own. The walls were not constructed of backer board, but wire mess and mortar. Not easy stuff to screw into.

Well, I was assuming you didn't have a hole in the wall behind the shower. Rather than screwing the plywood, you may be relegated to using an adhesive, such as PL200 or another brand. If you can access behind the valve from the opposite wall, insert the board, adhering it to the mesh as best you can. From there, you will have to re-mesh and re-mortar the area. The plywood is just to give some form and rigidity to the area while you install the mortar, building up the area to accept tile.
Others may have some good ideas, but not seeing what you see has us behind a little. Could you post a couple of pictures on a site such as photobucket.com so we can see what you see?