I Tiled this Shower with FLEX SEAL!!! --- ACTUAL JOB

Welcome to today's episode. I show you how I built a

tiled

shower

on a real job using only Flex Seal as the primary waterproofing. That's right, you heard me right. I used Flex Seal on a real job. How do we get here? You're probably asking why are you using

flex

seal

on a

shower

job when we have kerdi, we have red guard, we have laticrete products, we have all these good methods, why would you use a product that is sold on TV? Well,

this

is my reasoning, but before I tell you that. which is why i want to let you know that i am not sponsored by

flex

seal

, i am not paid for

this

video, i was not given the product for this video, i bought it with my own money, so if you are a regular subscriber of my channel you will remember I did a video a few months ago doing some testing on Flex Seal and how Flex Seal would work in a tile shower application and at the end of the video I asked some questions and one of the questions was: Do you think I should use this on a real job? ?

I'd like to see myself use this in a normal job. Let me know. Between then and now, one of my viewers reached out and asked me to redo their shower and they wanted to do it. use flexible seal so enough of that let's get started with the video so obviously the first thing we had to do was rip out the old shower that had failed. The shower was assembled with a red protector. It had failed over time. The sidewalk had just turned. mush, that's what was left of the wooden curb, so we redid the plumbing, moved the shower valve, moved the drain from the tub location to the center of the floor, which we like to do in showers, and now we lift the board from the wall.

It is a half-inch gold bond that comes in four-by-eight sheets. We found it at Home Depot, but you can get it at Lowe's or any other big box store. It is similar to the dent guard, so they are basically interchangeable. We only use what is in stock. on the shelves if we can find a dent guard we will use it we will find Gold Bond exp we will use it but we can no longer use drywall in the showers in our area and we did our pre-slope so the method we are employing here is method tcna b441 and if you don't know what tcna is, it is the tile council of north america, it is the recommendations that we follow in the tile industry, so this method is basically the traditional style drainage system and it is most often used with a 40 mil pvc pan liner, a hot mop or in the days when they used copper and lead pans with this same method, but today we are using flexible seal, so now that we have everything prepared and ready to go, I start in the corners because on the walls, if there is any area that is going to have water problems, it will be in the corners because that is where the tiles can move and that is where the grout can crack and water can get in, so I go ahead and use a flex stamp on the corners first and then I go ahead and do the niche as well.

The niche is a common area where we see a lot of water damage again. Those horizontal areas are areas where water will sit and soak into not so much the vertical surface of the walls, but any horizontal plane. It needs to be treated so after finishing the niche it's time to start working on the tray so here is the bottom flange and this is where all the waterproofing will attach. You see, I have a really nice sanded finish on the abs. drainage, what is very important with the flexible seal is to roughen the surface of any plastic so that it adheres very well, so that is where the waterproofing will go through the bolts to this opening and then the clamping ring continues there. it goes on top of the waterproofing and then finally the drain screws into that like this so this is the waterproofing fabric that I've been using attaching them over the bolts cutting off any excess now in the tray we do the same thing. around the corners first embed the waterproofing fabric in the corners and apply another layer on top if you notice with the flex seal it flows very easily so if you were to throw the flex seal away it would all come out in one stream if you did that. with the red guard it would come out as a plop, as a group, so that's the difference, it has a different consistency that is a little difficult to explain, but it flows much better and you can see it in the video as I work.

It's very easy to push it into corners and it's flowing very well, so you can see we have our three piece drain here and everything is very waterproof with this, so the retaining ring is going to go. here and this will allow that once the water gets here through all of the mortar, you'll see that we have drainage holes, it will be able to go under this clamping ring and the clamping ring has little channels for drainage, so when put this in and that's clamped on, all these drain holes and the drain channels at the bottom will allow this to weep and when we put the drain cover on, we'll fill it with mud from the deck again.

Protect all of these drain holes so that as the water goes down through the system, it hits and runs very well. You see, I have a really nice slope and even a little indentation on the edges here, okay, this is so cool that we

actual

ly have water. in our pan doing our water test so after the two coats of flexible seal we go ahead and put an inflatable test plug in the drain and these test plugs are required by code to do a flood test on a pan and that is a 24 hour flood test. We put a little mark with a silver pen here to make sure the water level stays the same when we come back tomorrow and I think this is so amazing, it's just amazing that I

actual

ly built a flexible seal shower pan and You know, I think Mr Phil Swift would approve of what we are doing.

I think he'd think it's cool too, so we have a nice Phil Swift sticker that we're going to put on the shower tray. and um, Phil is going to be like showing off this shower pan for the next 40 50 years or however long the shower is here before someone takes it down and replaces it, but I mean this is a very high quality installation and I think Phil Swift would approve. Phil if you come in to watch this video leave a comment in the section below let me know if you approve of this install we'll let it soak for 24 hours and come back fine so we've waited 24 hours for the flood test it's still perfectly fine.

On the line we don't have a single drop of water that has come out of this. This is just amazing, I love it. Phil still approves of this method, so I'm going to go ahead and disconnect the test plug. Little bubbles are coming out. there I am letting the air out of the plug, yes, there it goes, so you can see that we have a very good pre-slope here because everything has drained very well, that is the importance of the pre-slope, almost everything is gone. some little puddles, but that's just beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, look at that, all dry around the drain.

Mr. Phil still loves it, he still loves what we're doing, just tighten them, they don't have to be too tight, just tighten them. well into the plastic and that fits nicely in there, so now that the water test is done, we know the tray is leak proof, we know it's ready to go, we start with the dry pack or what we call mud float cover on the shower tray. Now this will give us the final slope for our

tiled

shower pan, so we start by making a level perimeter base of mortar and then we go ahead and slope everything down to the drain at a quarter inch per foot per tcna.

Recommendations to do Make sure the tray has enough slope for the water to drain quickly, but not too much as it will be slippery and uncomfortable to stand on, so now that I have everything leveled where I want, I'm going to do a little more tamp it down again simply compacting the surface a little more in every way. I'm going to rub it in a little bit to even everything out, make sure my surface is really smooth, I'm going to remove any little high spots and fill in any low spots after I've smoothed everything out, I'm going to take my flat trowel and compact the surface so it's smooth .

You can serve dinner with this baby tomorrow. So smooth, so flat, such a nice surface to lay the tiles on, so after. the pan is done, we are ready to float the walls now again using method b441 which is a one coat trowel that we use a lot here in northern california. The way we do this is we staple chicken wire or batten to the walls and then we use 5 8 inch galvanized roofing nails and fasten the batten or chicken wire to the studs, so once we get the batten up it's time. to start floating. Now what we're mixing here is what we call fat.

Now the fat cocoon is a five to one cement sand to one part lime, so five to one and it's a creamy mortar similar to what brick mortar would be, so you can see once we have all this mixed together In our tub, it's time to start floating, it's time to put it on, so I put my falcon on my paddle and we're ready to go. We need to place our floating strips now. What we are using for the floating strips here are red strips that are about an inch and a half wide by a quarter inch thick. wood and we place these strips on the walls so that we can furrow them, so once we have these strips ready and flat, all we have to do is fill the rest of the areas with mortar and then we can use our straightedge to furrow.

It is removed and we end up with a beautiful flat, square plum colored surface. Once it's flush, we remove the float strips, fill in where the float strips were, give it a little scrubbing and we're happy, happy, happy with a beautiful surface to lay on. I lay the tile and as I lay the tile I'm moving it back and forth to collapse the ridges. I'll see that I didn't have to push, pull, pry to make this wall completely flat, yes, we have a perfectly flat wall and that's a beautiful thing, so I'm probably going to lay down one more row of tiles and I'm also going to check my level of this way as you go, so once we get the walls up, it's time to put in the shower pan for the shower. pan, we are using a flat pebble mosaic that is mounted on a sheet and these are interlocking pebbles.

Now I really like the look of the pebbles, especially in this design. The first thing we do is attach the full sheets once all the full sheets are installed. We make the cutouts so the sheets fit around the drain and any other areas where the full sheets don't fit and then lastly we go in and cut smaller pebbles or half pebbles to go around the perimeter and fill the drain. too and now the next thing we're going to do is install the shower niche tile. Now this glass shower tile is a unique glass mosaic and it is a paper face mosaic.

This mosaic is really special. It's like jewelry for this shower. It's the pop it's the accent it's the drama we're putting in the shower it's a glass called swish and it has waves again we're tying in with that beachy feeling pebbles and waves and this mosaic of paper faces the way it works is you install the sheet and then you wet the paper on the face and then that paper is peeled off very carefully, this way with a paper face you can use a transparent or opaque glass without seeing a net or mesh on the bottom of So once Once this is done, it is time to install the last pieces, such as the piece that goes at the bottom, above the shower tray, on the sidewalk.

We also placed our Schluter molding on the edges and the small trim piece we need to tuck behind it. there to cover the float, all the little finishing touches, the last tiles are laid and this shower is almost ready to go so as you can see we ended up with an amazing finished product that I was very proud of. I really enjoyed putting it on. A lot of time and effort went into this build for the client and again we started with the foundation of using Flex Seal. I am so grateful that you were with me on the journey that I could share this with him.

I mean, just think if I had. I made this amazing project and I didn't have them with you to share it. I just think it's a great relationship we have and again I hope these videos inspire you to think outside the box to really try things. things through asking the questions and I think if we do that not only will the tile trade be better but our world will also be better if we start to think a little more critically and maybe question authority figures in some way , so if you liked this video please leave it in the comments section below.

I love hearing from you and last but not least, before I leave, I love you. I love being your tile coach and I'll see you in the next video.