FLO FX SHOWER DRAIN ON ACTUAL JOB --- TUTORIAL

We're ready Hello, welcome to Tile Coach. I'm Isaac Ostrom. I am a licensed tile contractor in Northern California. Thanks for watching another of my videos today. I'm very excited to present my video for the first time on one of my installed flow effects

drain

, so this is the flow effects union flange. I made a video a couple of weeks ago about the differences between the major bonding flange

drain

manufacturers and the great thing about using a bonding flange drain as opposed to a traditional one. style drains you don't need a pre-slope, you just slope it, you're waterproofing and that's it, but of all the drains I've used, I've used kerdi drains for almost 10 years.

Laticrete drains we stocked a couple of years ago this is by far the best train. I'm very excited about it. I also put them on my website, so if you want to buy one, you can go to atilecoach.com and find them there. I'm really excited to show them off today, so we're going to do a mortar bed installation. What we have is a plywood subfloor and every time we have plywood we make a partition membrane and chicken wire on the floor and that will give us the proper substrate to place our clay deck mortar or dry pack most of you They call it dry pack here we have California we call it deck mud it's a five to one mix of sand and cement we use a premix from a company called dynacrete and it's mixed very dry, it's not loose like you might think in a brick mortar, It's almost like you want it to build sandcastles, so we mix it up.

One of the features that I really like about flow effects is that it has this. mechanical bonding feature for the bottom, so when we put this into the deck mud, it will

actual

ly lock and stick to the deck mud. The other flanges are smooth on the bottom, they are plastic, so the mortar doesn't stick to them much. Okay, so what we're going to do with this one is have a multi-max light and before we do anything I'm going to go ahead and put a little layer of mud here so that this gives it a really nice look. bonding the surface to the mud of our deck, I really want to like the drainage and the mortar layer to be one that way, there's no movement and I'll explain it to you a little bit later, there you go Kurt, can you rinse it off for Me, please, do I have it?

The good thing is that we also use multi-max light here. A multi-max light has a 40 minute open time, which means I can let it sit for 40 minutes before it starts shining on a really cool feature of the multi-max light. I'm going to put that aside here, okay, the first thing I'm going to do is put the mud from my rig into the tray. I like to start by extending a perimeter so, as you can see here, this is a little bit different. We have a crawl space underneath, so if this were a concrete slab or an area where we couldn't get under, we would have to have the two-inch piece sticking out already prepared, but the homeowner, Doug,

actual

ly He is a plumber by trade.

Which was really nice. He found me on YouTube, so that was cool. He really he knows what he's doing. He was able to prepare all the plumbing. Perform the demonstration. You did a really good job, but you're going to come in from the bottom and attach the rail so most of the time the trap is already installed, you pulled the piece out and, um, we're going to go ahead and we're going to glue this little one, we call it tube vertical, at the bottom of the joint. iron and then I'm just going to glue it on and he's going to clip on from the bottom, so yeah, give me a little bit, here we go, give me a little bit there, but not too much, not too much, not too much.

One of the interesting features of the x-flow ii, unlike the kerdi um, is that the connection is very low, you know, it's bell-shaped, the two-inch piece goes right to the bottom of the flange, I'll see. that here in a second so that is the connection that is actually the two-inch ABS tube that reaches the surface, so what that allows is that when you already have a piece of output prepared, if the height of that piece output is It's going to be at the height of this right here, whereas with the kerdi you actually have to have those two inches under the subfloor, so sometimes you have to get an internal pipe cutter, it's just harder, you can't have that connection up here and to me, that's a much better flow.

You know you're going to have a much better flow going through there with the straight pipe, so I'm going to go ahead and put some mud for the cover around where the drain is and I like it. I like to have a minimum of an inch, I mean you can put three quarters in the mud on your deck, but I like to have at least an inch, so I'm going to get about an inch here and then I'm going to tamp. down, so one thing to keep in mind with the x flows is that we have a square, it's not a circle like a kerdi flange, so when you set it up you want to make sure you're pretty square to the back walls or I want it to be square on all the walls, but I'm going to measure the back wall to make sure it's not crooked because when you go to attach the rack I'll show you that this is the big bracket. it's not the grate itself, but this goes here, so you have some play here to square the drain afterwards, but if it's too far away you won't be able to square it, so you'll want to do I'm sure you're putting this square in your holes .

Now I'm going to put it right there and I'm going to move some mud out of the way so I can check my measurement here. Look. this tape measure what a ridiculous tape measure I mean, I don't know, this was a gift, but look, you go crazy trying to read these little lines, I agree, we have centimeters, we have inches, yeah, oh, here we go, Good old Stanley, there we are. Wow, I can leave that guy, yeah, one word per inch in there and when I tighten it up it'll be perfect, so the first thing I'm going to do is measure and make sure it's close to square.

I'm 11 and a quarter. I'm 11 and 3 16 so I just need to go around here just a little bit now we're just under 11 and a quarter just under 11 and a quarter so I think we're good there and the other thing you want to do is make sure you turn up the level so I'm going to see where we are for the level and somehow I'm dead because you're a man there I know the level knows we're recording so yeah there it is. we're going okay, so we have a nice level square drain, so I'm going to start and again, this is really good because we're going to have an area to furrow. from here I'm just going to make sure that this is packed really well around the drain and again, so when this is all dry, I mean this is all going to be one solid piece tied together with the mud from the deck, uh. in the past using the kerdi and laticrete would end up happening when you go in to work on it, if someone steps on it or something, it's not attached to the mud so it can flex and it appears like it stands up, so if we go, we want, we want a quarter inch per foot drop to the furthest point and then I'm going to level all the way around, so I have 32 inches here and this is a 30 inch level, so 32 I'm going to want, I'll call it two. feet and a half, so that's, what's that half inch, almost like quarters?

It's 5 8. So 5 8, I'm going to shoot three quarters and probably end up smashing. that down and it will be closer to 5 8 so over there tcna has a little bit of wiggle room they want between a quarter inch and a half inch per foot okay so I have three quarters I have three quarters drop in that corner, so that's going to be my starting point I kept it, so that's right, so I'm 30 years old, Isaac, this guy, yeah, when I started I still had him, that's great, 30 year stability. Hey, leave it in the comments section below if you have a stability that's 30 years or more we'll see if Kirk has the record so Isaac.

What if we were done with this whole project but then I told you I forgot to press the power button? I did not do it. That would be a Kirk move. Yeah, I'm playing, I haven't done it yet, although, uh, we've had, we've had audio pro, we've had a whole session with audio not working, which would be like, okay, let's take it. everything, we're going to flush the drain, we're going to mix more mud, that's what would happen, okay, so you can see, I've got my perimeter point right there, level, I'm going to do that to the other one. three sides, so now that we have our perimeter set up, we have our perimeter screen leveled.

I'm going to start shaping it from the corners. I'm using my wooden float here. I don't know if this. It's like a California thing or something, but we've always used wooden floats when we do our dry packs, I see a lot of people, especially on the east coast, they just use their steel paddle, either one will work. I push the mud where I want it and leave it about a quarter to a half inch high and don't pack it in until I have it pretty much where I want it. You see, I'm not beating him up. mud, I'm just giving it a good tone, a nice firm tan, if you start hitting it like that it will actually break up the mud and start to come off when it dries, so yeah, you just need a good tan. tank, okay, now I need, do we have edges?

What inch? Can I use this curve? You can use whatever levels you want. I mean, those were great, so the good thing about filtering a union flange is that you have, you have your Point here to remove the ruler, see, I put too much mud here, that's my bad habit. I like to make sure it doesn't have any indentations, yeah, so you can also leave it a little high there, but that's where I want it. It's also easier to get in when you have these three-by-five trays to get in from the side. Work this way. I'm going to try not to get dirty unless you're always unless you're tall like me, yeah that's a The advantage of being a short and final workout is really worth it, we have our joint ceilings exactly, we have our advantages, okay , so I'll do the same on this side, oh, I thought that was the best, so now I have it.

I've got some trap lines here and I can start removing the mud where I want it, little by little, interesting Isaac. I've never seen this technique before, even when you made a video before about this, really yeah, how do you do it? I use a flow strip, I find a flat float strip, I use my level to make sure it's black, oh, and then you go like this to my screen, yeah, yeah, then I don't have to worry about digging, yeah, I'm afraid Yeah. I'm going to dig too much, yeah, so what Kirk was saying is you can, you can take a floating strip, you know, we use redwood battens when we float our walls, so we have these sticks and we just remove it like that, basically.

I'm trying my wooden float has the same thing with wooden floats is they will start to get cement so you just want to keep them clean like that. I'm putting my extra mud down here, so the important part is you don't want to, you don't ever want to dig into your perimeter scree because it's like your lifeline showing you where you need to be, so be careful with the rest of this. field if I dig too. a lot, it's pretty easy to complete, like you could do that and then, you know, sprinkle some more mud, tamp it down and do one of those numbers and I wish the major manufacturers would change their dry pack mixes to five to one. like the one we use in California, it's a much better mix, that's how you get that nice even surface without clumping.

You'll notice I don't have any cement ball clumps here, it's because it's a slightly leaner mix than Mache the Mate, isn't it? Mumbai, I remember Sienna, but hey, I haven't used my Pod Deck mug, I haven't used that one yet. Yes, they call it four to one. They just call it four to one. See, now I can shave bits at a time. I'm going to work really well, so the last thing I'm going to do is take my steel trowel, my flat trowel, finishing test, whatever you want to call it, and compress the last few grains of sand to give me a really smooth finish. finish, so this really makes the surface much more durable.

So if you were to leave it with the wood float finish it doesn't want to slide as much that's the finish we're looking for perfectly smooth flat okay so we've got our mortar bed down nice to go perfectly level level perimeter all leaning towards our flow effects drain this can be set up and you can place the membrane the next day, we're actually going to go ahead and place the membrane with it on fresh mud, but if you want to watch that video, make sure you're subscribed and to have notifications activated so you can see all my videos because many times you will miss them just because of the YouTube algorithm, you know.

I only show certain videos, so if you want to make sure you see all of my videos, including the one I show putting the membrane on the sheet membrane, make sure to subscribe and turn on your notifications if you're on your iPhone or Android, turn on YouTube. notifications, but yeah, we have a really nice mud bed again. The good thing about having a custom mud bed. One thing, I think is a little more solid than thefoam. They are getting a lot better with the foam. I mean, I've been getting some samples. Some smaller companies are really perfecting the foam tray, but when you make a mud bed you can make sure your slope is exactly where you want it and I think if you're thinking about making more than one of these I highly recommend doing so. . learn to float in the pan because there are just going to be some circumstances where it will be very useful to be able to float if you only do it once, you know, if you're just going to say, hey, I'm taking a

shower

at my house, that's it, you never do it.

I will do. Do it again, then maybe the foam mold is a good option for you, so I like to show this so you can learn how to do it, but that's it. I'm so excited, I can't wait to install this. and it shows how we put the Flowfix drain grate and the lid back on, so yeah, we'll show you those videos later, but thanks for being with us and I love you, I love being your head trainer, see you in the next video.