How To Install Durock On Subfloor Thickness Plywood' title='How To Install Durock On Subfloor Thickness Plywood' />How To Install Durock On Subfloor Thickness Under MortarA New Level Of Performance. USG Structural Panels are highstrength, reinforced concrete panels for use in noncombustible construction. Lighter than precast or poured. How to Build a Shower 20 How To Build a Shower Framing and Plumbing. This is the first of three articles in our Building a Shower series How To Build a Shower. The FloorElf compares ProvaFlex tile underlayment with Schluter Ditra. Based on an actual tile installation as well as deconstructing a piece of each in a side by. Tile Subfloor, Thickness, Deflection Installing Electric Radiant Heat Pouring Self Leveling Mortar Leveling Flattening the Subfloor Installing Cement Board CBU. The FloorElf describes the proper method of installing cement or cementious backerboards on a floor for tile installation. Wonderboard is the brand name for a cement backer board for wet applications, mostly under tiling. Is it any goodWonderboard Backer Board Cement Board Review. Wonder. Board is now called Wonder. Board Lite and is 2. But is this change enough to help this backer board compete with other big dogs of the industry, like Durock or Hardie. Backer  Wonder. Board does have some limitations, such as edge integrity. But it has other advantages, lower pricing being the chief advantage. Cement Backer Board  Its What You Need For Wet Places. Wonder. Board is a cement based backer board mainly used for tiling in wet places. Specifically, its components are Portland cement, EPS beads, aggregates and fiberglass reinforcement. The wet places are mostly bathrooms specifically, showers and tub surrounds and the applications tend to be tiling. It is also used for decks, floors, countertops, pools, and hot tubs. When you lay down tile, you need a backing base a backer that will accept the thin set mortar. For flooring in kitchens, that backing is usually just plywood or another type of organic based wood material, because this flooring is not subject to much water. The layers of tile and mortar, seamed with grout, do an admirable job of shedding the minimal amounts of water that splashes in kitchens and even in the general floor areas of bathrooms. Showers and the like are a different matter. Water continually pounds these surfaces and eventually will work its way below. All it takes is a little pinprick sized hole in the grout and that water will travel to the tile base. If the tiler uses green board a type of drywall that is a bit more water resistant than regular drywall those shower walls will eventually fail. Cement board is the only acceptable base for shower and tub surrounds. Tile professional David Hart agrees that cement board is the only way to go, saying In 1. Ive never seen a tile installation over cement backer boards fail, and Ive never had a customer question the virtues of these products. Dimensions  Smaller Is Better. Wonder. Board is made by Custom Building Products. Dimensions are 5 ft. Thickness options  71. Why not big sheets Because at 4. Another reason is breakage  bigger sheets snap off easier in transit. That 71. 6 thickness is designed to mate up with the surrounding 12 thick green board. Where To Download Ifile Cracked. Review  Crumbly and Breakage Prone, But Cheaper. You may find Wonder. Board a challenge to work with due to its crumbly consistency. The only thing that seems to hold it together is the nylon meshing. The moment you cut it, edges begin to fall apart. The edge, thankfully, does not continue inward, due to the meshing. But you can lose a significant amount of board if you arent careful. You can cut backer board in either of two ways  manually with a utility knife or similar sharp, non powered device or with a power tool, such as a grinder equipped with a diamond blade. Cutting Wonder. Board with a utility knife is a difficult task, as it requires multiple passes. Crumbs of cement material fall off, while the meshing resists the knife. Using a grinder is better cleaner, at least. By contrast, Hardie. Backer, a competing cement backer board made by James Hardie Industries, is smooth and easy to cut manually. No crumbly stuff. Durock, by USG, is a similar competing backer board that you may find easy to cut. Custom Building Products advertises that it has stepped up its game by developing an improved version of Wonder. Board.  Termed Wonder. Board Lite, it weighs in at 2. This means that Wonder. Board Lite with the green band across it is 2. Keep in mind that the red band Wonder. Board which also displays the Lite is still 4. If youre looking to save costs, you might want to buy Wonder. Board. It is consistently less than Hardie. Backer about 2 less per sheet but still hovering around the same price as Du. Rock  Cost saving is hardly enough reason to switch to Wonder. Board.  Due to the nature of cement board, you will not using this product over great expanses, like whole house flooring. Instead, its just a few square feet for your shower. How to Build a Shower Pan. In the first article, we covered the initial steps of building a shower shower framing and shower plumbing. In this second article, we will walk through the process of building a traditional shower pan using concrete mortar a. A mortar shower pan or mud shower pan is a hand built shower base constructed from concrete. Once finished, the shower pan forms the drain containing floor of the shower. Shower pans are typically sloped to a central drain and finished with a tile surface. The purpose of a finished shower pan is to create a stable shower floor that quickly empties waste shower water through its drain. While most shower water drains in this fashion through the primary drain, some does not. The finished surface of many showers is not perfectly waterproof. Some water will penetrate the surface of the shower and pass into the core of the shower pan. Grouted tile surfaces are water resistant, but will, especially over time, allow some water to pass through. This leads us to the secondary job of the shower pan. The secondary job of a shower pan is to re direct any water that has penetrated the surface of the shower floor back into the drain. A properly built shower pan redirects water back to the drain by way of an embedded waterproof membrane that is sloped toward and sealed to the drain. This system forces penetrated water back to and into the drain, through special weep holes built into the side of shower drains. Shower pans built without a shower liner, or similar system of waterproofing, can allow water to pass readily through the shower pan into the floor and wall structures. The concrete used to build shower pans is readily permeable to water and will easily allow water to pass through it into surrounding building structures without the installation of a shower liner. There are many ready made shower pan systems available to use when building a shower. Even so, it is hard to beat a traditional hand made mortar shower pan. Pre made shower pans offer speed and ease of installation, but often lack the rigidity, strength and flexibility of a hand poured concrete pan. Packaged systems Kerdi, others get expensive and complicated without offering compelling advantages over hand made shower pans. A hand built shower pan is built in layers around a shower drain assembly. Building a mortar shower pan is a relatively simple task of assembling these layers. It will take a bit of time and some work, but the reward will be a long lasting, durable shower base. Before you begin building your new shower, you should have a stable sub floor and the appropriate shower drain in place. Once construction of the shower base is complete, you will need to finish the shower pan surface with tile or a suitable surface. More information regarding the prep and finish work of the shower pan can be found in the other shower construction articles How to Build a Mortar Shower Pan Step by Step. Confirm rigidity of the subfloor and proper drain base installation. Prior to building a mortar shower pan, you should have an stable, flat, sufficiently strong subfloor with an appropriate 2 drain installed see Build a Shower Series Part 1 Shower Framing and Plumbing. Stable subfloor base of 34 plywood for shower pan. Before you build your shower pan, you should have a solid subfloor and properly installed drain base. Frame the shower curb. If you are planning on a shower curb, you have several options. You can build a form to pour mortar into or use materials to form the core of the curb and apply mortar on top of this core. I used the core and mortar around method using several stacked 2x. To build a curb using a 2 x 4 core, stack and fasten several I used 3 2x. First screw the bottom 2 x 4 to the subfloor, and then screw the second 2 x 4 to the fastened first 2 x 4 and repeat to desired curb height. To build a curb using forms for a concrete pour, assemble forms using boards or similar and fill the forms with concrete. Stack 2 x 4s or bricks or short concrete blocks to create a curb core. Later, apply mortar around this core to form a shower curb. Cover shower pan plywood with a layer of asphalt felt tar paper or similar. To begin the shower pan construction, add a layer of roofing felt tar paper to the bottom of the shower pan. The felt will serve as a moisture barrier for the first layer of mud helping the mortar to retain moisture while curing. It will also help to isolate the subfloor from the shower pan. To install the asphalt felt, cover the flat surface of the subfloor, cutting around the drain base. Add a few galvanized staples to secure the felt to the plywood. Cover subfloor plywood with layer of roofing felt prior to pouring the first layer of the shower pan. Add blocking to create shower pan box. Next, add wood blocking between the wall framing to create a box for the shower pan. For the blocking material, use pieces of 2x. I used pieces of the 34 plywood I used to build my subfloor. The blocking should be at least as high as the shower curb. Add blocking between wall studs to form shower pan box to retain the shower pan layers. Mount galvanized wire mesh to base of shower pan and over curb. Add galvanized mesh or stucco wire to the bottom of the shower pan, The mesh will reinforce base floor mud layer of mortar and help hold the mortar to the shower curb. Bend the mesh slightly to create waves in mesh to help embed the mesh in the center of the floor mud. Carry the mesh around the curb framing and secure with galvanized staples. Add stucco wire or galvanized wire mesh to reinforce the mud mortar. Carry this mesh around the 24 curb frame to help hold the wet floor mix to the curb. Notice waves in mesh to help embed in mud pour. Bend stucco wire over and around 24 curb frame to hold and reinforce the concrete floor mix used to build the shower pan and curb. Wire mesh secured to wood shower pan curb with staples. Prepare floor mix. Traditional floor mix mortar floor mud or deck mud is a 5 to 1 mixture of sand and Portland cement. To make strong, stable mud, add just enough water to create a thick clay like mixture that just holds its shape when packed. A latex concrete admixture can be added for some or all of the water component of the mortar mix to add flexibility and strength in many cases, however, latex is overkill for typical shower pan mortar. That said, I did substitute about half of the water requirement for my mix with latex admixture I like overkill. To make quality mud, first dry mix the ingredients even if from a premixed bagged product thoroughly with a hoe to ensure proper sand cement contact. Once mixed, add water or a waterlatex blend. Use only enough water to create a mix that will hold its shape when squeezed in your hand, but not release excess water. Dry mixes create strong, stable concrete with less shrinkage and higher compression strength. Mix shower pan floor mud by adding just enough water to hold its shape when squeezed in your hand. Build the shower pan first layer with floor mix mortar. Using the prepared floor mix mortar, build the first layer of the shower pan. Slope this base layer from the walls of the shower toward the shower drain at a drop of 14 to 38 per foot. To help you create the proper slope, first determine and mark the shower walls with the proper starting height for the mortar. This starting height is the mortar height at the wall that will provide the proper slope toward the drain.