Hello all, I was wondering if anyone here might have a bit more plumbing expertise than I do and can tell me if my situation is normal or if someone made a mistake.

Four years ago I *gut* renovated my Brooklyn carriage house. In general, it went extremely well but in retrospect the plumber was a bit of a weak link.

I write today because of my master bath shower. It's a big stall with a center floor drain about 5" across.

In the last 4 years there have 3 or 4 incidents when the floor drain started running slow. And then really slow. As in you're standing in 3" of water by the end of the shower. Ideally I would have snaked the drain but one of the screws holding down the drain grate was stuck so I resorted to Liquid Plumber.

Well, it started to run slow again and I know Liquid Plumber isn't the best for the pipes so I finally got the screw unstuck.

YUCK.

Under the grate there was essentially a solid mass of hair. We're talking, once removed, an amount of wet, greasy, disgusting hair roughly the size of a softball. It smelled like death.

(Honestly, I'm not surprised by the amount of hair. My wife has long curly hair. And she had a baby 16 months ago and and for those who don't know, about 6 months after a woman has a baby they lose a lot of hair.)

Once cleaned out -- and here's my main question -- I realized that the way the drain is built there's always water sitting about 8" below the floor of the shower (see attached photo).

I assumed that the water would run down the pipe and... away. I know sinks have P-traps and there's always water sitting down there I guess I just didn't realize that showers have them too. So is sitting water below the shower drain normal?

And while we're at it, does anyone know of a shower drain grate that would do a better job of catching the hair *before* it turns into such a disgusting mess? The existing drain is 5" across polished nickel (I guess chrome would do -- who would notice the difference?)

Thanks everyone and be grateful you don't have to clean up the disgusting mess I just did.