on the build show today I'm coming to you from Schlueter training now if you don't know this company this is a German company that does everything for tile installations except for the tile themselves and I just attended a two-day workshop where they did a bunch of hands-on training and I've got Steven one of their main trainers here with me who's actually going to show us how to install one of their products but the main point of today's video is I wanted to talk to you about this this is one of their products that's been on
the market for a long time but not many people know about it and I think this is an absolutely game-changer for builders like me because I've had a lot of pain associated with tile installs and a lot of warranty and a lot of expense because I didn't use this product in the past so first off let me tell you about the product but Steven is gonna do an install for us Steven why don't you get started on this deter install and I'm going to talk about what I like about it and how it's gonna potentially
help you with warranty and call backs and getting a better tile install so first off this is a polyethylene product that looks kind of like an egg crate that's been smashed it's about 1/8 inch thick and it's got a fleece backer on it and what's going to happen is we're gonna use thinset to bond it to the substrate whether that's a plywood or a concrete base if your slab on grade like me and so the first step that Steven's gonna do to apply this fleece side down is he's gonna clean off the substrate and hydrate
it put a little bit of moisture into the subfloor which is what we're mimicking here with this OSB sheet and then he's gonna travel on thinset and actually use the flat side of the trowel to press that fin set down into the subfloor so that we know we're getting a really good bond between this membrane okay now back to the membrane in Texas where I am most of the foundations here or most of the houses are built slab on grade meaning there's a concrete slab and then the house gets built right on top of the
slab which means that we've got a lot of bedrooms and bathrooms that are on the first floor that are right on concrete so we've got tile that's getting installed right on concrete now there's two types of concrete in the world you probably know this already there's concrete that's cracked and the second type which is most common is concrete that's going to crack and that's been my experience over the years you never know where you're gonna find a crack in the future in concrete and if you're installing tile right to concrete what happens is when that
concrete cracks that crack is going to migrate up to the tile because the tile is physically attached and tile is a hard and brittle surface so as that concrete underneath cracks that crack is gonna transfer up to the tile above and you're gonna see that crack and that has been a huge pain in the butt for me as a builder and remodeler over the years where I see a perfect install the day that my client moves in and then at some point later whether it's six months or two years we get a call back on
some tile cracks and that's where this product comes in I've started using deitra probably one to two years ago now on my projects over concrete installs and what's happening here is this is an uncoupling membrane meaning that this little flattened egg egg crate that we talked about gives the ability for that crack not to transfer up to the surface so when we attach our tile to this the tile is uncoupled from the surface below now here's how this works the rest of y'all that aren't slab on grade and that are putting tile installs over what
schmidty's showing here which is basically a wood subfloor let's say when you do a wood subfloor what are you using for tile backer most of the time using some type of cement board typically so you can stiffen up that subfloor and there's no movement that's gonna crack that tile and what is cement door board do for you it also gives you a good substrate to Atty it to adhere tile - because you can't adhere tile directly to subfloor that's not gonna work but what's the problem with cement board well there's a bunch of problems with
cement board but one of the major problems is that it's super heavy it's dusty to cut it's expensive and it's a it's can be a pain to work with now you can get a good install if you do it right but there's a lot of steps to it and it's gonna add thickness to your install now this on the other hand the Schluter ditra this is where it's really awesome also on subfloor as well as Concord installs because this material is about 1/8 inch thick here this is their Detra or the standard Detra it's not
gonna add a lot of thickness to the floor it's also super lightweight a whole roll of this way is just a few pounds I think a total role in this is like 40 pounds or so and they come in two different thicknesses this is Detra XL which is five sixteenths thick and this one is about 1/8 thick so in this installation here our total floor thickness may be depending on the tile thickness of course somewhere between 1/2 or may be 5/8 thick if we were trying to but tile on a wood subfloor to a hardwood
floor that's like 3/4 thick we might go with the Detra XL that way we can flush everything out ok now let me back to what Schmidty is doing here he's now used the notched trowel and there's a specific trial to use for the Detra or the Detra XL which is gonna be the correct knotch size and now he's embedding that material that fleece backing you see here right down into that thin set the other thing you need to remember is you need to use their correct thin set depending on your substrate and now smiddy's pulling
it up to check it now we're on the edge here so this is not a perfect demo but see he's got this fleece backing showing here still but everywhere else perfect in full adhesion you want to do that you want to pull up a section to make sure you're getting good adhesion okay now there's a good example right here on this section not great adhesion if you can move that towards the camera just the hair look at that he's he's not adhering really well there which means that we're not going to get a good tile
install there we might have some looseness later so he's gonna need to either Rinat that thin set and get a good knot chon there or really press it in and I think that's the latter case he didn't give a good press down I think I heard him say yesterday that they need about 30 pounds of pressure on that beat remembering to really embed it okay now here's something oh that's perfect look at that he's checked it now we're good to go okay here's something else that's really interesting about this that I really like is this
membrane in the body here where you've got the polyethylene is totally waterproof right this is a waterproofing membrane so we're not in the shower portion of this demo the show on the other side here but in the body here we're totally waterproof if I had a splash over from the shower waterproof here however where the seams come together we're not waterproof because we've cut this material and he's got two seams here kind of a t-shaped seam that he's gonna waterproof and how does he waterproof that they have a waterproofing membrane for their shower system which
we're not gonna have time to get into today stay tuned for some huge future videos on that called Kirti and he's going to use a band of that a couple inch bands so that he can get two inches of coverage on either side of that lap and then he's gonna waterproof that seam and he he's already given it away a little bit but he's also gonna be able to water proof of that Kirti that floor to wall transition and this is really cool it means that I can get a custom shower pan basically on my
tiled floor outside of my shower area where could this be helpful certainly in showers if you had a kids bathroom you're worried about them making a cannonball into the tub and splashing a bunch of water into here so that we could waterproof this entire floor it also would be awesome in a laundry room area you know more than once at my house in the last 10 years I've had my washing machine overflow onto my floor and if you were on a second floor and that happen you're gonna have a ton of water it's gonna be
a huge issue and that's where massive insurance claims every year happen is from water leaks on a second floor wet area leaking down into the structure so if you could waterproof that floor what a huge difference that is gonna be to your clients the next thing I wanted to mention is again we're not spending a bunch of time on today's video on the shower system we'll do that in the future but look how I could then also waterproof between this ditcher floor in the shower curb area so that that hump right there is meant to
simulate a shower curb and then we're gonna actually be able to do that kerdi-band between the shower curb and this Detra as well so now I've got uncoupling I've got a lightweight material that's easy on the Installer I've got thinness which means I can flush everything out and not have a bunch of big fat teetering dition strips between my tile and my wood floor areas and I can fully waterproof this because this is a really impressive system I've really been I've really enjoyed the two-day training if you're interested in coming to one of these events
I'll put a link in the description below I think it's Schluter events com if you're a builder remodeler architect tile installer or if you're a builder like me I brought my tile installer with me and I've got two or three tile installers that haven't been yet I'm gonna get them to come to a future episode of this roadshow because they're doing this I think I heard him say like 30 events a year or something massive so they're they're doing these all the time very impressive hands-on stations some great training in the classroom a bunch of
really experienced tile installers that are doing this training too so man I've had I've had a great couple days big thanks to Schmidty for for doing this live demo for us today guys look for a link in the description if you're doing any tile over concrete or wood you should absolutely check out this Detra system very very impressive and like I said stay tuned for some some future shower water proofing system videos we just had that classroom training today I've actually not installed one of their shower water proofing systems before and one of my houses
I've been doing it with more traditional methods and I've been really really impressed so anyways follow us on Twitter Instagram if you're not currently be sure to hit that subscribe button we publish new videos every Tuesday and every Friday otherwise we'll see you next time on the build show [Music]
