DRY PACK SHOWER PAN For Beginners --- The Easy Way!!!

Alright, welcome to Tile Coach. I'm Isaac Ostrom. I'm so glad you're watching this video because one of the biggest questions I get from DIYers when I get emails and submissions through Tilecoach.com is how to make a dry

pack

and I know it. Many

beginners

struggle with this and it is a great skill to have to be able to make a dry

pack

instead of making a foam for one. It is much more cost-effective to use deck mud, which generally costs about six dollars per bag. than using a foam mold which can cost up to three or four hundred dollars depending on if it's custom or if you can make a dry pack is great not only for a DIY or if you're going to do it more, but also if you're looking to get into mosaic, This is something you'll want to know, so I came up with a great beginner's method on how to make a successful dry pack.

I want you to be successful at this, so I put some thought into how to do it because the way I do it, you know, I do it a lot by feel and with levels and all of this is kind of dry package for dummies, so you've come to the correct video. so let's get started right, so we have this nice little mockup using a Duroc cement board. Well it's actually permabase, it's similar to Durock, it's a cement board, but it has little styrofoam balls that make it a little bit lighter, but for all intensive purposes. a 100 cement board like durock so i did it on the walls i did it on the sidewalk one thing you need to make sure is that your sidewalk is level before you start you need to make sure you have a level sidewalk which we have here and if you don't have it , you need to check it, so if you lay your curb, whether you're using two-by-fours or using foam or bricks or whatever you want to use, you need to make sure it's level before you start. and if you want you can always use a thin layer under the durock on top, let it dry again the next day and then screw it in or you can use shims somehow to get this curb level.

You need your sidewalk level anyway if I'm doing a job, the sidewalk needs to be level, so here we are level. The next thing I did was I took a marker line from the top of the sidewalk level, going around all the walls, so you can see here, I drew a marker line around and that's level off the sidewalk and then you want to make sure mark here to make sure you're still level all the way around, where there are bubbles in the middle, so we have a good line, so this line is level with the top of the sidewalk going all the way around, that's what first thing I did, so the second thing I'm going to do is calculate my slope, the good thing. about these flow effects union flanges or Schluter union flanges is that you can flush them right from the top, so what I'm going to do is use them.

I just received a couple of pieces of duroc. some shims and I calculated it, so we want a quarter inch per foot is what we want for our slope, that's what the code requires, it can be within a quarter to a half inch of slope, so what I do is I take the farthest point which is the diagonal to the drain and I have 18 inches to the inside of the union flange so a quarter inch per foot equals 3 8. So what I did was I used a combination of Duroc and some tile spacers, horseshoe wedges, you could use whatever. you need to do it to get it right and I leveled it so you can see I put some shims I put 3 8 wedges I have 2 8 which is a quarter and I have 2 16 which equals 3 8 and I made it level you can see right here I have a level so that this is the height now that I want my second line to be and I'm just going to mark right there where I need it, so I'm making a marker line right there, so that's where I'm going to need my dry packet to actually be, so now I don't need to draw this line around it, I just need to be able to get the measurement, so I didn't actually need to make a line.

I could just measure here and I have a measurement of an inch and three quarters, so I have an inch and three quarters and I'm going to use that. Now this measurement is arbitrary and will change depending on the height of your joint. flange and the height of your curb, so don't take this measurement in inches and three quarters, it will vary depending on those two factors, so I'm just going to take note in inches and three quarters. Now what I have is this is just some flat mdf material, you could use a baseboard. I like mdf because it cuts very

easy

, cuts very smooth, goes through the table saw very easily, so you will need a table saw to do this.

Most of you have a table saw if you have one. If you are doing home improvement projects I suggest you buy a table saw, even if it is like a ryobi, a cheap one, it will come in handy for a lot of the work you do around your house. If you are a professional, you already have one. so I'm going to cut this so I'm going to cut this to one and three quarters inch and three quarters inch. I'm going to lock my cutting guide and go ahead and cut this, so now I have, I should have an inch. and three quarters here and I make just an inch and three quarters inch and three quarters that's going to work, so now I'm going to go ahead and cut them down to the size needed to go all the way around.

I got 34 and then this is it's going to be 23 and a half so another tool you probably already have and if you don't have one, get yourself a cut so I'm going to put this three quarter inch board right on top of my sidewalk line here. Continue screwing this in so you can see here, this is the top of the curve, it's right up here, okay, so a little summary here, the top of my accounting board is level all the way around, you can see that I have the correct bubble. on the middle level going all the way around and the bottom of my ledger again because we calculated off the slope that we needed, that's going to be where the finished dry pack will be, so now that we have the ledger, I'm going to create a furring strip basically with a notch that lines up with the top and bottom of this furring point, so as we furrow, it will level out from the bottom and this looks perfect.

Actually, I didn't calculate it. a three-quarter piece and I cut this notch so that, as you can see there, the notch allows you to trim from the top and trim to the exact height that we need our mortar bed to be, so now that I have this, I'm going to build another one with the same notch because I want two sizes. I want one that covers the corners and I also need a shorter one because I need this shorter distance as we filter, so I'm going to go ahead. and cut this notch to have my single ribbon for the long sides.

I'm going to cut another one that's shorter and goes all the way there. I just don't want it to go over the other side of the binding flange because the binding flanges have a slope so I don't want to remove them. I want to protect them, so I'm going to make that cut with the circular saw, so now with the short one I'll be able to Use it like this is really nice, that's going to be my short for both sides and I'll be flush. I actually need to make it a little shorter because I don't want to ride that, so I'll just take another one. a quarter inch now, now we should be ready, okay, now that I have all this set up, I have my rules, I have my ledger set up, everything is ready to go, the next thing I have to do is go ahead and mix the mud of the platform. um what I'm going to mix up is this satcreta deck mud and I'm pretty excited because we found this at Home Depot and that means if you're anywhere other than California, you can probably find this at your Home Depot. o Lowe's, at least in California, sells some type of deck mud.

If you can't find what we call deck mud, there is a four to one mapei available at Lowe's or, if you have a laticrete supplier, their 209 mud bed, I think they call it, but basically it's a Santa cement mix four to one and it's really nice. This is what we'll be mixing, so let's get started. The water, the water ratio is two and a half to three quarters per bag, so I have a handy little meter here. so I can do it, there are three quarters. I'm going to start with two and a half because I like a little bit of dryer mix just to get to our two and a half.

You can usually find these paint buckets. the paint section where they have the ounces and often have leaders. These are really good at measuring water, so how I'm going to mix this deck mud or dry pack as some people call it, it's just in one. of these heavy duty construction garbage bags, I think they're four thousand or I think they're four thousand, so it's just a plastic garbage bag, the heavy duty one, so I'm going to go ahead and pour the mud from my platform here. If you have an open bag, I'll go ahead and just put the sludge from my deck into the trash bag.

You can also do this and if you have a wheelbarrow you can cut it that way. just put it on a tarp and move it around and mix it, but I have the right amount of water, so Luke, why don't you come over here so you can see this. So I just have the mud from my deck here. I'm just going to add the water, I'm going to put my water in here and then I'm going to pick it up and I'm just going to move it around and roll it back before I take out all the corners and voila, we've got it. our deck mud was mixed so that's the consistency you can just make it into a ball like you're building a sand castle and that's a very

easy

way to mix a bag of deck mud okay super easy right , we have our cover. mixed mud, the next thing I need to do is put a layer of grout on this model because it is a concrete base.

I made it to look like a concrete slab. This is typically what you're going to see in homes if this is a plywood floor, if you're looking at plywood when you

shower

, you're going to need to put down some plastic sheeting and you could actually use like cut up that garbage bag as plastic sheeting. and a ribbon like this. We will staple the batten onto the plywood subfloor and then float it. There is no need to grout if you are over plywood and using battens. If you're going to use concrete we want the mud from the deck to stick to our slab so we're going to use a grout now the grout is just a thin layer that mixes a little looser than normal and I'm just using a trowel toothed You can use any old thinset, this is laticrete 253 gold, but it doesn't matter, you can use whatever you want and we're just going to put this on the cement slab to help bind the mud from the deck to the concrete and while we're at it , we are going to put some grout in the bottom of the flow effects to help the mud from the deck adhere to the bottom of the flow effects drain.

You want to see how I place this flow effects drain. I'll put the link in the description so you can watch that video. Okay, now that I have my grout. down, I'm going to plug my drain hole. I probably should have done it first, but it's okay and I'm using thin tape, it will take a little longer but it's not a big deal, that will keep the mud from going away. Now I have mud from my terrace down the drain. I'm going to move on. I'm just going to go ahead and spread it around, get it where it needs to go and so you can see, a whole bag is enough to do, uh, so much. so this is probably an average of about an inch.

I would say it's like a one inch dry bag and this is equal to six square feet. If a bag has a typical six-foot-square

shower

, it's three by five, which is 15 square feet, which would mean that's three bags. what you would need to mix to do this, but for us it's just one, so I'm spreading it with my flat trowel and I also want to pack it under the joining flange. I want that union flange to have good support underneath. so I'm packing the dry pack under the flow effect strain this would be the same if you're doing a schluter it doesn't matter again the nice thing is you know at least on all three sides I have a good indicator of where the mud needs to be and I also want to make sure it's packed all the way under that ledger, so I'm going to take my mud and make sure it's packed up to the wall under the ledger, that's pretty easy to do.

I can see I'm not tamping it down yet, I'm just putting it into place on where it's going to be. I'm going to put the rest of the mud here so it's a little bit low here, I dipped a little bit. a little bit under my ledger in this corner so I know exactly where to go and speed is important when you do this and that's one of the reasons I wanted to make this method foolproof because, The more you work with the clay, the more likely it is to crumble a little and come off the top, so the faster you work the better, that's something to take note of.

Well now that I have it, you know I'm just using my palette again, no. really tamping it down, I could still give it a little package, but I'm not going crazy with it now, sonow I can start filtering it. I'm going to start in the corners, I'm filtering the drain and I'm checking right here and I usually like to do my four corners first and I see that I dipped my staff, I fell off the ledger and I dipped, but that's no problem, look , I just fill it back up and make sure my stick is there, look, now it's very easy to spread out and get that nice level perimeter and I'm not worrying too much about my little bumps and bumps because there will be some bumps like that, so my excess mud I'll probably grab a bucket so I'm going to take some of my extra shot to the bag because I have too much here and I really like this because I'm not stressing about how you know you're perfect because the ledger if I I'm complaining that it's going to be fine so I just wanted to get some mud out of the way and every once in a while you might need to take it aren't you funny I'm using a piece of flat baseboard material it might be better but it's just Yes, from time to time you may need to clean it.

Oops, I'm diving in again. See, this is what usually happens with di cables: they go too deep and mess it up, but as long as you have the ledger here, you can put the mud back in and move on, okay, so now that I've finished the most of my long side, I'm going to go ahead and here you can see that now I'm just filtering from the top of the curb, since that's the level, my ruler will be level, oh, I go down again, you see like three or Four times, my ruler fell out of the notch, but it doesn't matter, I just come back real quick, fill it in, let's create something. more and this is not the normal deck mud we use.

You can see it's a lot more lumpy and stuff, it's a pretty rich mixture of this sakrete, so it's actually a good thing that I'm using it and if you end up using it. If you see little dips and things like that, okay, no big deal, we'll fill them in a little bit, so I'll go back to my longer ruler, I'll go back to the shorter one once you have a lot. of mud accumulated this way, it's good to have a bucket or something to put the extra mud in because it's harder to screed if you have a lot of material to move.

You know, I want so much material to screed, it's just going to make It's easier, so now I'm going to go back to my short, my short here and now I'm just going to take off the excess, so I'm going to take off the excess and make another little street here with my short boy, another. I just got a little ruler now as I still have some excess mud in here. I'll use that mud to fill in any of the holes and whatever I need to do, so I had some holes. I'm going to tamp this down. press this down a little bit, maybe tamp it down a little bit and put a little more in, okay, and I can just take my trowel like this and then put the mud where I want it to tamp again, so basically I have the shape and the slope that I need it, so I'm going to remove this excess mud using my flat trowel.

Okay, now that I've got the basics and it's a little rough, there's still some holes and some lumps and everything, I'm going to use this. wooden float to smooth everything out and camp it out and use a circular motion to fill in any of the indentations that you see here, just tamp them down and then you can rub any of those little holes over and over again. Now at this point you just have to be careful, but even if you ripped it out, you still have your ledger so you can go back and fill it out, and see if you make a circular motion with your wooden float.

I'll fill in those little holes and again, the richer the deck mud, which again is rich in a four to one mix compared to what we normally use, you're going to end up with more of these lumps, but it's basically like having wheels of support on your float. because again, if I were to dig into this, I could always use my ledger still standing, that's a really nice feature of using a union flange drain. You can see I'm working from the top instead of with an if. When you're doing a tray liner, that type of drainage you can't work from the top because you have to count the thickness of the slab, so again I'm just going to sprinkle my little holes and I don't like that.

Do my final tamping until I've got everything full. . I'm just using a circular motion. I see a little hole right there. Just throw some mud in there and like that, fill in any little potholes and when you do. If you are using a wood float when it becomes caked, just take it and remove the excess from there. You want a nice clean wooden float while you work, it fills in my little bumps so it looks pretty good, it's beautiful. Yeah, it's a nice float, so I'm going to take my paddle and now clean up the edges, so the last thing I'm going to do is give it a nice toughness.

I'm putting firm pressure on him. float from time to time I'm putting pressure on the back edge of the trowel. You never want to put pressure on the leading edge because it will simply sink as long as the pressure is on the trailing edge of the trowel. It'll really give you a nice smooth finish as well, so man, I'm really impressed with this method for someone who's never floated before. I think this is a very good way to do it. I'm going to move on. and take me off, I'll call them training wheels, right. I'm going to take the training wheels off and I'm just going to finish the edges and we should be done nicely, so I'm going to take the training wheels off now and that's nice.

Well, I'm just going to have a little. I didn't make it all the way to that corner in the corners, but that's okay, any little holes you can fill like this one last time with my fuel towel just to Pack it up so we can vacuum it up tomorrow. I need to fix that and let's check, let's check the level one more time. Okay, so I'm going to check the check level around the perimeter. Fairly good. Fairly good. Check the level around the perimeter. You can see we have a nice level perimeter slope. We are so close.

I mean, it will never be perfect even if I used my other method. It's never perfect, but you can use your level, but you can see there. how good is that perimeter right there and then lastly we'll check our slope to make sure we have a good slope and you can see we have a good slope going down so there you have it I guess making a dry pack with wheels of training, I guess you could call it that, these videos are meant to help you get better, it's very hard to find qualified contractors and sometimes you guys just can't afford it, so I make these videos to help you if you want to support our cause.

You can go to Tilecoach.com if you need help with a project. We have booking services where I can do one on one training via Zoom or FaceTime with you or you can just pick up some products or one of these flow effects to train anything. anything you can give is greatly appreciated, it helps me make more of these videos for you so I hope this helped in the end but not least I love you I love being your tile trainer and see you next time video.