Bonding Flange Drain Comparison --- Schluter, Laticrete, and FLO-FX for Tiled Shower Pans

Well ahead. Hello, welcome to Tile Coach. I'm Isaac Ostrom. I am a licensed tile contractor in Northern California. Thanks for watching another video today. I have some

drain

s with union

flange

s and I want to compare these three popular

drain

s, actually these two. they are popular this is the most popular hydraulic band have yours

laticrete

hydra band this is a new drain called flowfx that I am very excited to try the features that I have seen so far are really cool and I can't wait to show them to you so the Today's video will try to do a

comparison

of the pros and cons of these three different union

flange

drains, okay so I'm saying union flange drain, so these drains are typically used with a membrane system of sheet similar to Schluter Kerdi.

Then they have a joint flange to which this membrane is adhered with thin set mortar or you can also use a liquid applied in the case of Hydro Ban. You can use their liquid membrane to apply to their union flange and I think you could do the same. with the flow effects a kerdi shooter they currently don't have a liquid applied membrane so I would just use a sheet shaped membrane so this is different to the traditional three piece three stage drain you would see used with a

shower

tray coating. a 40 ml pan liner or a hot mop or a copper or lead pin if you go back in time, but this is, you know, the kind of special offer from your Home Depot here, they still work fine, but the way that work.

It's three pieces so we have one piece which is the drain that screws into this collar this collar locks so the way it would work is if you have the 40 mil pan liner going in here you put this clamp. Clip here to clip this second part of the drain to the top of the pan liner and finally this would be your final stage and you're going to make another float. One of the reasons these are becoming less popular is that you need to make two floats, basically you have to do a pre-slope layer, then lay down the tray liner and then make another mud slope for platform or mortar dry and that reaches the final height with tiles, the other thing is that with these systems you have a complete mortar bed that becomes saturated and therefore it is a system of water that enters, water that leaves, the water gets under the tiles, go down to the pan liner and drain into these weep holes here and into the sewer, sometimes these weep holes get clogged, I have a ton of videos on them, I'll be sure to include them in the description and as you I have here, please leave a comment in the section below if you like using these traditional styles of 40ml pan molds or if you have moved on to

schluter

kerdi or one of the others let us know what you think is the best way to do it.

I'm curious to know and if you have another method let me know, but these are the two basic methods I know of so that's what these drains are. made for are made for use with

schluter

kerdi these are not for a 40 mil pan liner that you are going to pick up at home depot or lowe's most of these will take to your pit yeah well most of these are se They will sell in their tile stores, you can also find them online, these are starting to be sold in some of the big box stores. Lowe's I think carries Kerdi now, I don't think Home Depot does it but they will probably do it on the floor.

Necor is another big box store where you can get schluter kerdi and now

laticrete

is also in floor decoration so anyway you can find these drains so let's start with the most popular one now this is the drain we started using in 2010, everyone has been using it, well not everyone, a lot of people have been using it for a long time, very popular, their union flange drain, this is Schluter Curtis, we'll put it in there, I'll get to it a little later, it that comes there. Schluter joining flange you also get some outside corners and inside corners, you get four inside corners and two outside corners, so that's a little bonus, it comes with the corners, it comes with instructions, it comes with these templates for a cut out of the subfloor and um, oh look at this it says please support buy products on Tilecoach.com oh look at that anyway that's my cheesy little plug uh yeah keep in mind none of these manufacturers pay me so This is a completely unbiased review. uh the way it happens is you guys have been supporting me by buying entilecoach.com products like this t-shirt like this cap thank you very much okay get that out of the way so we get these spacers so these spacers come and these Should get the correct clearance if you want to place the drain body on the subfloor that way when the plumber pushes it down and these spacers hit the subfloor.

The prefoam, preformed foam liner will slide underneath on the right. height, so that's it, it also comes with pipe seals, the pipe seal is good, this type, the valve seal really only works on a few different valve manufacturers, most of the time the valves we use don't work , so this is something like that. a waste, I wish they didn't put this here, you know, I like that they offer it, but I wouldn't include it along with the pipe seals because you could actually take the membrane and make your own pipe seals, I think that's kind of it. of waste, so you also think that with the corners, this would be for a standard tray, you have four inside and two outside, so if it was a three wall

shower

, this would work, but often you have different configurations, you know, maybe you have an angle maybe you have a double wall shower maybe you have a bench other things and maybe you don't need all of these or you need different ones so again include things that you may not necessarily need for your particular setup but it's nice to have the corners , we keep them around and use them, so there's the kerdi bridle.

One of the drawbacks of the kerdi is that, as I showed in one of my videos, a really popular video that I did where you actually had to go into it. and we ripped out our own

tiled

shower, what we did had nothing to do with the um kerdi membrane we used, it was actually a problem with the walls. I'll put that link in the description so you can see it, it's a really good tear. In the video where it was actually a job that we did, we had to tear it off and diagnose it so you can see over time that this white stuff actually came off, it goes all the way down to the abs, in some areas it's a little bit left there. but you can really see how it has worn down and is actually stuck to the bottom of the slim set.

You see the white stuff there that actually came loose from the drain flange, so what I found with the Kerdi drain. was two years old and over time this white fleece that they have here completely disintegrated, so the way this works is you have the

bonding

flange thinset mortar here, the Kerdi membrane continues here, well, in the time when we were using unmodified thinset and Then the water that got underneath it was completely wet and this white stuff, whatever it is, I don't really know what it is, but it emulsified in the water and all that was left in the drain was that part, so I'll put that link in the description, but it came off completely allowing the water to evacuate and get into the mud bed.

Luckily it was on a slab foundation so there was no damage and it was minimal water, just enough to absorb. and wet the mortar, but I imagine 15 or so years on a plywood substrate probably wouldn't be good, so I think Kerdi should go back to the drawing board with whatever they're using here because it emulsifies in water , OK? So that's Kerdi. Here we have Lata Creeks, so Laticretes is very similar and a lot of the things you see on the market today are basically an imitation of what Schluter has done. I mean, they're one of the ones that were on the market. cutting edge in this technology, so a lot of the companies are just taking the Schluter stuff and trying to make it better, so laticretes comes with a union flange, um, we use two inch abs or two inch pvc, and that it just slides in there so I don't know what the deal is but we don't need it and it was a pain to get out so I don't like it much but I have used these drains.

What I like about the Laticretes drains is that they're a little bit more solid, so the Schluter is really a little flimsy, so if you have this installed and you step on it, it's a much thinner plastic, so I don't know, I really like the way laticretes are, it's nice. and beefy, uh, but this doesn't have any fleece, so you know, I asked my rep about this when we first made it. First I was covering it with liquid hydraband and then putting our sheet membrane over it with a thin layer and you know. That's the way I thought, but then I talked to him and he said, "Oh no, you can apply a thin coat directly to the joint flange, I mean, I trust them, but it seems a little strange to use a mortar thin to bond directly to the plastic and You know, rely on that as the main waterproofing and it's a really vulnerable area, because all the water falls every day into this area.

You know, I mean, we've been putting them up, so I hope that. work, but you know. That whole common sense thing that we think about sometimes and then put it directly into plastic, I don't know, so the jury is still a little bit out on that, so this one has the fleece, but again it emulsifies in water, so it comes off over time. It's probably better to have nothing than something that's going to delaminate, so it's similar to Kerdi. Oh yeah, I didn't review it, so you have to buy it for. separate. The big kit for the schluter comes separately and is a setup like this, it has an adjustment ring. and that's how you adjust the height of your tile, so you set that no matter how high you need it, it sets there and that's it, at that point you know, put some adhesive here, put it on the tile.

Schluters, this is the five inch five inch drain grate. It has a screw mechanism, so the only thing that might be a hindrance is that if you get your height and lower it, you can't just push it. down you would have to turn it down and then you know, then you would have to remove the tiles so schluter I really like how they drained really well I really like how it fits because if you had this installed and your tile was a little bit low , you could just push it down, well this one is a little tight, I think it just has a little bit of dirt on it, but usually you can just push it down and it will adjust in height, you can usually tap it down to get in there, um laticretes. you have to turn it down which again I haven't had any problems with it and they both adjust so if your tiles come up to you you know if you're trying to get rid of a small cut you can adjust it one way or another so that be the laticrete and the schluter now I'm really excited to show you this one because I'm super excited about this so these are the flow effects and um Chase sent this. to me last week and I took a look at it and my first response was that it's almost like he took everything that he had problems with and corrected it and did a drain and I said, look man, I'm making videos.

I'm totally interested in drains, I'm crazy about them, I think about what could improve them and it seems like you address all the things that were problems with the others, so what you did in the first place is you have this system that does not absorb moisture. of fabric that is actually part of the injection molding process, so this doesn't shed like Kerdi fleece and Chase told me it did. He left it under water for seven months in a bucket and nothing happened to it, so this fleece, whatever it is, is thicker, it's more durable, and it definitely feels stronger when you look at the tube side by side. .

This is definitely a thicker fleece fabric and he says it doesn't absorb and doesn't emulsify in water so that's definitely a nice feature, the way these guys work is instead of a screw cap or a fitting of push down and push up friction, there are different spacers, there are a couple of different sizes, it looks like there are three eighth-inch spacers and one sixteenth-inch spacer, etc. after you have this set you put the spacers in there and then this is your drain so here's your uh this is just a skid plate so as you're working you put it in there you tile it and your skid plate comes out and So, and then, yeah, Chase was really cool, he made me this little logo that drains and then your grape appears right on that, so depending on the height of your tile, you're going to put more or less spacers here and then the With figures. inside and again you have a lot of travel to avoid small cuts and if your drain is a little off center you need to center it that's really helpful so yeah they're great here'sanother flow effect feature so these like I showed the link directly to abs or pvc plastic so all of these are available in abs or pvc on the west coast.

We use a lot of ABS here, so there isn't much PVC. I know on the east coast. See you, mostly pvc photos. so here's a two inch piece of PVC again that fits at the bottom like this, now this is the problem that a lot of times customers have if they're doing a remodel or even working with a general contractor and they say one of these drains three piece is already installed and it installs the same way now to go from this to one of these, you would have to cut all of this and then, you know, take your cutter, cut all the drain, you might have to deal with a coupler and a bunch of Sometimes this is underground on a slab and you can't access it, so what comes with each of these drains, which I think was a brilliant idea, is that they have this, I guess It would be a transition and an adaptation, no, no. not a transition but an adapter plate to go from these three pieces so you could remove that part and drill the holes because these types of drains, some have four holes, some have three, the holes can be in a little different places so they don't drill the holes, but basically, you drill the holes and then you would put sealant in here just like you would with a pan liner, you put sealant on it, you put the adapter plate back on, you clamp it on real tight and again, that's not all , this comes standard on all of them and Schluter has an adapter, but you have to order it in the complete kit, it comes with the flange, it is actually a different flange, so you would have to pay for the entire box.

This comes so you can do it in every box you don't need to plan. So, once it's tight, you can now easily adapt it to a three-stage drain. All you would do is once you have that adapter on, oh, it looks good, apply a little bit of ab glue, here, glue it on, you have some. a little bit of height variation depending on how high you want your mortar bed and now it goes straight from a three piece drain to a union flange drain, you didn't have to do any additional plumbing, you didn't have to call the plumber to deal with This and it takes a lot of work, sometimes changing these things may seem like no big deal but it can be time consuming if you don't have access to them so it's a really cool feature that comes standard with every drain and there's also one more feature which I really think was important and should have been addressed because we primarily do dry pack installations and I assume it would also be related to doing it on a preformed foam tray is that it is at the bottom of the flow. effects, they have mechanical

bonding

channels so you can comb your thin coat and it will lock onto your thin coat for anywhere you put it because we usually make a clay tray and then place our bridle in it, look at the bottom of a schluter kerdi -pan is just smooth plastic again, the mortar is not going to adhere to that very well and that happens to me a lot when you put the drain in, you float around, you pack everything up really well, you take it off and then the next day someone steps on it and it flexes and breaks the bond again. very good mud, will also lock into a foam tray very well.

The same goes for laticrete. They do not have any type of mechanical joint at the bottom. All of these drains have screw holes which are really nice so if you want to screw the drain flange all the way to the subfloor you can but I want to show you something else so I noticed one thing uh laticrete and I fought this on each of the ones I went, oh that's cool, they have screw holes so you can screw it in and lock it. in place while you do that and look at how high the screw sits and it may not seem like much, just the head of that screw a sixteenth of an inch or so, but you don't want to just go over that with a sheet of membrane. because that creates a point where the sheet membrane can break, especially if someone steps on it while you're working, so basically what i had to do on all my laticrete drains was use the drill bit and try to countersink all the screw holes, the ones I'm talking about, it would have been really cool if they had known, they made it fit with the flow effects.

Look, if I use a screw, it's countersunk properly so there's no edge, there's no ridge. for the foil membrane to get damaged, that's really cool, I'm serious, it just looks like this and it was like this, I mean, the owner of flowfx, uh, chase, it's made in the USA, It is actually a type of tile and developed these drains. basically working on these things and going out into the field because a lot of these schluter laticrete things, you know, maybe they're developing them in a lab in a closed environment and in a demonstration setup and they don't see these actual workplace conditions that they're dealing with. they run into the tile guys where Chase really came up with something amazing because he has that experience in the field.

He first he is a tile guy and he is developing drains to help the tile guys. Made in the USA. Really cool, here's the guy from Schluter. Likewise, they have screw holes, but you see the entire head of the screw sticking out and if you had a membrane covering that, you know that's a really vulnerable point and you don't want the head of a rigid screw sticking out like that. , so if you use screws on these flanges, I would definitely warn you to countersink them, which takes time, so that's it. I mean, I covered the pros and cons, but if I can tell from the video, uh, probably which direction we're going to go, uh, this is it.

I've used them all, but I'm really excited that this one costs. Let's talk about cost, so schluter, I think the retail price is probably 125 or so. For both the flange and the grid, most tile manufacturers, if you buy in volume, know that if you are a repeat customer, they will give you a break. Same thing with laticrete there will be contractor prices but if buying retail yeah it's like 120 bucks for Schluter laticrete I don't even know I'm sorry you know I buy wholesale so I don't even know I'm sure which are probably trying to beat the price of Schluter a little bit of flow effects for the union flange and the grille, so you got your union flange and then you get the grille separately again.

Chase Chase gave me a demo that was really cool with the tile trainer, I mean I love it, I'll probably use it. that maybe in the showroom or something or just for display, but it also has our tile company logo on it, got it for me, but some really good drainage options, here's a matte black one that I really think will fit It's jamming again. I'll do a showroom display with that one, but yeah, some good drains, uh, a lot of drain options, so you'll buy the union, the union flange set up plus a drain, it's about seventy dollars, so you'll make Less money than the schluter from the laticrete and you know, I think you are getting a better product again, this one is really sturdy, it's not as wide of a union flange, I feel like when it's installed, you're less likely to step on it and break it, you break it down when they're working and um oh oh lastly lastly it's a long video thank you all for sticking with me here I know I'm really excited about these drains and stuff you might be getting a little bored but Please wait, I have it.

One more thing to show you, okay, so say you already have one of these Schluter Schluter setups, it's already installed, you're committed, you have the Kerdi system but you still want to use one of these grills, you can get another adapter plate, this one is actually its great ffx setup kit and will allow you to adapt to the kerdi system, so what it allows you to do is use, you know, its nice flow effects, drains, grab this one again with it, so this guy does it install it the same way it has the Same setup as the kerdi you know you squash it to whatever height you want it fits here actually its neck is a little bit thicker which is good because if you have small tiles it won't you're going to go down like Schluter's Schluter's is so small that you get this dip and you have to build your tiles over here, this one is thicker so that when you put the tiles down it doesn't sink into that valley, we have this little guy that will come out with a knife or a margin. trowel which is just a cover so you can while you're installing, tiling and grouting, save this here, the last thing you're going to do is open it up and then put it on your nice new, nice new grid, that's how it works.

Another feature of this that I saw was that it has wheat channels, so at the bottom it will allow water to weep again. This is where all the moisture accumulates, so it will allow water to flow. Cry, get out of the system where Schluter's doesn't have those cry channels so overall a better price. I think it's working better and you're supporting a small business made in the USA product so I'm very excited, thank you. let us test your drains. I can't wait to start using them in all my installations, so thank you all for watching, thank you for sticking with the long video.

I love them, I love being their head coach and we'll see in the next one. video