WHAT is this, and WHY do you want it under your floors?

In today's construction program, I come to you from the Schlueter training. If you don't know

this

company,

this

is a German company that does everything you need to install tile except the tile itself, and I just attended a two-day workshop where I did a ton of hands-on training and I had Steven, one of their lead trainers, here with me, who will actually show us how to install one of their products, but the main point of today's video is that I

want

ed to talk to you about This is one of their products that has been on the market for a long time, but not many people know this and I think it is an absolute game changer for builders like me because I have had a lot of pain associated with tile installations. and a lot of warranty and a lot of expenses because I haven't used this product in the past, so first let me tell you about the product, but Steven is going to do an installation for us.

Steven, why don't you start with this? prevent installation and I'm going to talk about

what

I like about it and how it will potentially help you with warranty, callbacks, and getting a better tile installation. First of all, this is a polyethylene product that looks like an egg carton. If

your

slab is level like me. So the first step that Steven is going to take in applying this fleece down is to clean the substrate and hydrate it, put a little bit of moisture on the subfloor, which is

what

we're mimicking here with this OSB sheet and then he's going to trip over a thin layer and use the flat side of the trowel to press that fin set into the subfloor so we know we're getting a really good bond between this membrane.

Well, now back to the membrane in Texas, where I am most of the time. The foundation here or most of the houses are built slab on grade which means there is a concrete slab and then the house is built right on top of the slab which means we have a lot of bedrooms and bathrooms that are on the first floor. right on concrete, so we have tiles that are being installed directly on concrete. Now there are two types of concrete in the world, you probably already know, there is concrete that is cracked and the second type, which is more common, is concrete that is going to crack and that has been In my experience over the years years, you never know where you will find a crack in the future in the concrete and if you are installing tile directly over the concrete, what happens is that when the concrete cracks, that crack will migrate up to the tile because the tile is physically attached and the slab is a hard brittle surface so the concrete underneath cracks that crack will transfer to the slab above and you will see that crack and that has been a big headache for me as a builder and remodeler over the years. years, where I see a perfect installation the day my client moves in and then sometime later, whether it's six months or two years, we get a call about some cracks in the tile and that's where this product comes in.

I started using deitra probably a year or two ago on my projects on concrete installations and what's happening here is that it's an uncoupling membrane, which means that this little flattened egg crate that we talked about provides the ability That crack doesn't transfer to the surface, so when we attach our slab to this, the slab decouples from the surface below. Here's how this works, the rest of you who are not slab on grade and who are putting slab installations over what Schmidty shows here, which is basically a wood subfloor, let's say when you do a wood subfloor, what are you using as tile backing most of the time using some type of cement board, usually, so that you can harden that subfloor and there's no movement that can break that tile and what is the cement door?

The board does it for you, it also gives you a good substrate for Adty to adhere the tiles to, because she can't adhere the tiles directly to the subfloor, that won't work, but what's the problem with cement board? Well, there are many problems with cement panels, but one. One of the main problems is that it is very heavy, generates dust when cutting, is expensive and can be difficult to work with. Now you can get a good installation if you do it right, but there are a lot of steps and it will be added. thickness to

your

installation now on the other hand the Schluter ditra this is where it's really impressive also in the subfloor as well as in the Concord installations because this material is about 1/8 of an inch thick here this is your Detra or the Detra standard that won't add much thickness to the floor, it's also super lightweight, a full roll this way weighs only a few pounds.

I think a total roll of this weighs about 40 pounds and they come in two different thicknesses, this one is Detra XL which weighs five-sixteenths. thick and this one is about 1/8 thick, so in this installation the total thickness of our floor can depend on the thickness of the slab, of course, between 1/2 or it can be 5/8 thick if we were trying to lay tiles on wood. subfloor to a wood floor that is like 3/4 thick, we could use the Detra XL that way we can clean everything, okay, now let me get back to what Schmidty is doing here. Now he used the notched trowel and there is a specific test to use. the Detra or the Detra XL, which will have the right knot size and is now embedding that material with the fleece backing that you see here in that slim set.

The other thing you have to remember is that you have to use the correct thin set depending on your substrate and now Smiddy is lifting it up to check it now we're on the edge here so this is not a perfect demo but look it still has this backing of fleece shown here but everywhere else is perfect with full adhesion, you

want

to do whatever you want. to lift up a section to make sure you're getting good adhesion, okay now there's a good example here in this section, it's not great adhesion if you can move it towards the camera, just the hair, look it's not adhering very well there, which means we're not going to get a good tile installation there, we might have some slack later on, so you're going to need to Rinat that thin set and tie a nice knot there or really press it down and I think that's the last case.

I didn't press right I think I heard him say yesterday that they need about 30 pounds of pressure at that rate, remember to insert it right, now here's something, oh, that's perfect, look you've checked it, now we're ready to Well, there's something plus what's really interesting about this and what I really like: this membrane on the body here where you have the polyethylene is totally waterproof. This is a waterproofing membrane, so we are not in the shower portion of this demonstration. it's shown on the other side here but on the body here we are completely waterproof if I got splashed in the shower waterproof here however where the seams meet we are not waterproof because we have cut this material and it has two seams Here is a kind of seam in the shape of What is going to be waterproofed and how to do it.

They have a waterproofing membrane for their shower system that we won't have time to get into today. Stay tuned for some huge future videos on that thing called Kirti. and you're going to use a couple of inch band so you can get two inches of coverage on each side of that turn and then you're going to waterproof that seam and you've already given it away a little bit, but you're also going to be able to waterproof that Kirti, that transition floor to wall and this is really cool, it means I can get a custom shower tray basically on my tile floor outside of my shower area, where could this definitely be useful in showers if you had kids? bathroom, you're worried they're going to stick a cannonball into the tub and splash a bunch of water in here so we can waterproof the entire floor.

It would also be amazing in the laundry area, you know it more than once in my house in the last 10 years, my washing machine overflowed on my floor and if you were on a second floor and that happens you will have a ton of water , it will be a big problem and that is where massive insurance claims occur every year. Water seeps into a wet area of ​​the second floor and seeps into the structure, so if you could waterproof that floor, what a difference it will make for your clients. The next thing I wanted to mention is that we won't spend a lot of time on it.

In today's video on the shower system, we'll do that in the future, but look at how you could also waterproof between the floor of this trench in the shower curb area, so that hump over there simulates a shower curb. and then we're going to In fact, I'll also be able to do that kerdi band between the shower curb and this Detra, so now that I have to uncouple, I have a lightweight material that's easy for the installer. I have thinness which means I can rinse everything and I don't have a bunch of big thick strips wobbling between my tile and areas of my hardwood floor and I can waterproof this completely because it's a really awesome system.

I have really enjoyed the two day training if you are interested in attending one of these events, I will put a link in the description below. I think it's Schluter events com. If you are a builder, remodeler, architect, tile installer or if you are a builder like me, I brought my tile installer with me. and I have two or three tile installers who haven't done it yet. I'm going to have them come on a future episode of this roadshow because they're doing this. I think I heard him say like 30 events a year or something like that.

They are huge so they are doing this all the time, very impressive hands on stations, great classroom training, a group of very experienced tile installers who are also doing this training so man I've had it, I've had it. I had a great time. Couple of days, big thanks to Schmidty for doing this live demo for us today guys look for a link in the description. If you are doing tile over concrete or wood you should check out this Detra system, it is very very impressive and like I said, stick around. Tuned in for some future videos on shower waterproofing systems.

We just had that classroom training today. I haven't actually installed one of their shower waterproofing systems before and in one of my houses I've been doing it with more traditional methods and I've been really, really impressed so anyway follow us on Twitter, Instagram, if you haven't already you are, make sure you hit that subscribe button. We publish new videos every Tuesday and Friday; otherwise, see you next time in the build program.