| Number 1 likes it...
|
| http://makeitright.ca/products/appro...ter-ditra-heat

"Number 1"? I've never heard of whoever it is.
Should I have?

The job I need to fix has the heated pad. The
heat is poor and uneven. Tiles are coming loose.
Grout is cracking. As I said before, I didn't see
the job done, so I don't know whether it was
done properly, but just from looking at the pad
I can see that the tiles end up standing on little
mortar feet. The floor as a sheet can't be very
strong, given the waffle design. Yet it's floating
as a sheet. And how could even a bad install
have affected the heat so much? I found that
when touching different areas the tiles varied
from cold to room temperature on a cold day.
If the wires are built in I'd expect the heating
function to be almost failsafe.

With concrete board the floor becomes
a single slab of mortar. I've also installed heating
wires between concrete board and tile, embedded
in thinset, and it worked well.

The selling points mentioned on that page are
not convincing. "Even if your house shifts, your
tiles won't". They're implying that a mortar bed
or thinset on concrete board install will crack, which
is not true. They also make a claim about being
waterproof. Waterproof is a main feature of tile.
It doesn't need a plastic pad underneath for that.
If water gets through it's going to do so around
the edges, under the basboard. A plastic waffle isn't
going to help that.

I don't say that I know it to be a bad method. I'm
just saying it's not time-tested. It's a private (no
doubt patented) invention that logically has no
selling point that I can see, and raises questions
about the integrity/crack-resistance of the final slab.

My suspicion is that, like many things, it's becoming
popular because it's quicker and easier than concrete
board.

I imagine lots of official people will also highly
recommend the new plastic plumbing hoses. They're
easier than soldering copper. Will they still be holding
in 20 years? There's really no way to know. I doubt
that's a consideration for most plumbers. It's legal. It's
easy. So they use it.
There's already a problem with corrugate stainless
steel flexible gas hose. Lightning strikes blow holes in
it. Yet it's being used throughout houses. It's easy.
It's "high-tech".
The whole thing makes me curious
about what kind of lobbying happens between the makers
of these products and the state building commissions
who approve them.

I'm wary of the constant flow of new inventions that
may seem fancy and get marketed heavily, but won't
necessarily stand the test of time.