I did my first Schluter Kirde Shower. These are my observations:
They send you a DVD which helps. I ordered my materials on-line. Installing the kirde material is a two man job, and plan on spending a whole day doing it. They recommend using a 3/16 or 1/4″ trowel, I found 1/8″ better, as you have to squeeze the material onto the thinset, and squeeze out all air pockets. I ended up using a mud pan with an 8″ and 12″ knife, drywall tools are perfect for working this product. The thinset needs to be very wet.
The shower we are building is 6′ wide, 36″ deep, and 8′ high. The schluter material cost around $500. The have an extremely limited selection of pre-formed pans. I was not able to take advantage of their pans on this job because of the non-standard size of the shower.
A pre-formed pan would have definetly speeded up the job.
Schluter is more expensive labor and material wise, but you get a completely waterproof install. Also you can put it on over drywall.
Also this material is not yet available in stores, so if you run out your job stops.
Schluter also makes a product called Ditra. This is an uncoupling membrane, strictly to help counteract lateral forces in the subfloor. It is completely useless when trying to beef-up existing floors that are not stiff enough.
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I just ordered about $400 worth of Kerdi stuff for my first shower. What kind of thinset are you using to set your tile, and what kind of tile? I'm using porcelain and I think I'm going to go to the trouble of tracking down Kerdi-set thinset (from Bostik) because it meets their spec. Otherwise they spec unmodified thinset, which I never use for anything except bedding backerboard.
David, Just use unmodified thinset for setting porcelain over Kerdi. You can use a lightly modified thinset (think Versabond, but not Flexbond), but it's not "officially" accepted by Schluter. Their tech guys sorta kinda say it's sorta kinda okay, but not officially.I water spray bottle the cement board til water runs down. Then I dry fit the sheet of Kerdi, then snap a line, trowel on one sheet's worth of thinset from floor to ceiling, then comb from floor to ceiling, then hang the sheet.Work fast to get the sheet hand set so the thinset doesn't skin, then you can slow down when using the drywall knife.I pat it in place by hand, first across the top, then top to bottom and center to edges, then I go over it with a 4" drywall knife to bed it in the thinset. Same pattern, top to bottom, center to edges. Squeeze out excess thinset at the edges for a feathered transition. It changes from bright orange to muddy brownish orange as it gets embedded, so voids are easy to spot.I find it easy when working alone.I took about 400 pics of an install. A couple are even in focus!Mongo
"I took about 400 pics of an install."
Have you posted any here? If not, is there any way you could? Romania wasn't built in a day.
You know, I should probably grab a few beers and spend a few hours putting together a pictoral.I originally took the pics for a FHB article, but Tom already had one in the works.They did accept another proposal, so if it gets published soon I'll be "Crazy Legs Jr."<g>Hope you're doing well jb, give my best to your wife.Mongo
Mongo
If I am using a preformed acrylic/fiberglass receptor for a corner shower would you (or anyone else) reccomned using Kerdi on the walls? Do they make a small enough roll to make that viable? I only will need 56 sq', 2 4' X 7' walls. I built a shower like this once before and just hung cement backer over 6mil poly on the studs.
wondering what the best long term option would be.
While I don't see a reason why it wouldn't work, I'd recommend you call or email Schluter's tech department and ask them; [email protected] They used to have a warning about emails to them being blocked due to their spam filter, and to call if you don't get a timely email reply;Phone: 1-800-472-4588 Fax: 1-800-477-9783I don't see a whole lot of reason why you couldn't set the pan and use Kerdi-Fix to adhere the membrane to the flange of the pan, or they might just recommend lapping the membrane, unadhered, over the flange. I'd definitely call and ask them, as the call would give you some verbal back-and-forth.Most places sell a 5-meter roll, the material is 1-meter wide. You overlap seams by 50mm, or about 2", so you'd be losing a bit of coverage there. A little rough guesstimation (1 yards by 5 yards = 5 sqyds; x 9sqft/sqyd equals 45 sqft; times 1.2 to add 20% to convert to metric, the 5m roll would have about 54 sqft of material on it. A little less than you need, plus you'd lose a bit due to overlapping the seams.Most places also sell cut pieces, or "Kerdi by the foot". Tell them how long of a piece you need, in your case a 21' long piece (three 1 meter wide by 7' long pieces), they'll cut a piece 1 meter wide by your desired length. You would have a little bit leftover. You do pay a slight premium though. You could also get a the small 5m roll plus an additional cut piece to make up the difference.Hope this helps,Mongo
If i read you correctly are you saying to lap the seams vertically?
What if one were to cot the 1m wide sheet and ran it from left to right through the inside corner and lapped them horizontally like any exterior drainage plane??
You can do it either way.
The key is that once you put the thinset on the wall and comb it, you want to get the membrane up on the wall ASAP, as you don't want the thinset skinning over in the least bit.
You only have two walls and one corner to bridge, you just want to make sure that everything is plumb and square so that if you do run the membrane horizontally, when you transition the corner, the "levelness" of the top edge of the sheet of membrane doesn't get pitched up or down by the corner being slightly out of whack.
Shouldn't be a problem for you, though.
I find it quite easy to hang the membrane vertically. I've done corners two ways...I've wrapped the corner, with the membrane going from one wall plane, through the corner, and finishing on the adjacent wall plane. See first pic.
I've also hung the membrane on each wall, holding the edges of each piece back a bit from the inside corner. I then come back with a strip about 6" wide and run that vertically through the corner, so it overlaps each sidewall piece. For that vertical strip, you can use Kerdi-Band, which is thinner than Kerdi. I simply use a length of regular old Kerdi cut right off the roll. See second and third pics.
As far as installation goes, this stuff can be seamed vertically, horizontally, diagonally...as long as you keep a minimum 2" overlap, you'll be in great shape.
First pic is a corner where I ran the membrane through the corner, the second pic shows a butted corner, the third shows the butted corner covered with a vertical piece of membrane.
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Big Thanks Mongo!!!
That was GREAT!
I will check the local good tile shop and see what they sell, if I have to let a few inches of the tile that is going to actually "frame" the perimeter of the glass enclosure hang past the Kerdie it wont matter because it wont get wet any way.
Using a 42" Kohler Corner Receptor, quick and easy.
Your shower looks great, i will save the info for when I start building in March.
Thanks again.
The reason you use unmodified thinset is that highly latex modified thinset such as Flexbond would take forever to cure between the waterproof membrane and the substrate. I use Custom's grey floor thinset (forget the number offhand).
If you have doubts about which unmodified thin-sets are OK you can call Schluter's 800 number. They have one of the best tech support numbers I've run across and they'll give you a list of acceptable thin-sets for every major manufacturer. I think, like Mongo, I would now feel comfortable doing another installation by myself but, on the first one, a second person was really helpful. By the way, it's sort of like hanging wallpaper. I went with cement board on the walls instead of drywall and used the spray bottle technique to wet it down before the thin-set went on. Schluter shower kits are available at Home Depots in Canada (around $500 Can.) but I haven't seen them at Home Depots in the States.
ChipTam
Lowes has Mapei Kerabond, which is a standard recommendation at johnbridge.com/forums. I didn't find 'hanging' the Kerdi membrane to be a two person job at all. Awesome system, costs a little more but the piece of mind is worth it. Also, I like the idea of a dry shower pan.
Our install was definetly a two man job. What with the corners, then inside corners, outside corners, mixing fresh thinset, cutting the kerdi sheets to fit, etc. The DVD shows a single guy doing the install, but my experience was not like that. I guess you could do it yourself if you precut every single piece. Our shower alone had around 25-30 separate pieces. At the end of the day I felt completly wiped-out.
We have a few contractor tile stores that stock some Schluter products or can get stuff in fairly quickly. HD carries some of their transition pieces, and I'm pretty sure they could order Kerdi for you, but I don't know how quick the turnaround would be.