Floating bench question.

[workhurts]

Linear drain question.

Attempting to place a linear drain approximately 5' long between two walls 5' apart. Neither the wall has been built or the drain purchased.

Should the drain butt up against the walls? Ideally, I'd say yes it seems that would be rather difficult. You mess that up and you have a sliver left instead of a grout line.

Do you purposely miss it by a couple of inches and slope a piece of small tile into the drain from the sides or do you do something else altogether?

Another question. How far should the glass door/wall be from the linear drain in a curbless 5'x7' shower on concrete with the drain 6-7' from the back wall.

I was thinking of leaving about 4-8" between the linear drain and the glass door.

[Houston Remodeler]

1- We use Laticrete drains which have a one inch flange. That flange gets butted against the sole plate because; 1/2" for foam board + tile + thinset = just shy of one inch.

2- We have put the drain against the glass, but slightly inside is OK as long as the tile between the glass and the drain is sloped toward the drain

[Davy]

Ali, your question may be hard to answer without knowing which drain you plan to buy. In the past, I have purposely used a linear drain that was 2-3 inches short and center it between the two walls.

[workhurts]

Yeh. No drain yet but leaning towards Schluter or Laticrete but need to see them in person.

Been busy working with my new 40lb jackhammer thingy. Need to find a showroom and look at these drains.

[workhurts]

And a picture to kinda visualize the preliminary plan. Excuse my horrible sketch up skills.

[Sharon @ LATICRETE]

Yeh. No drain yet but leaning towards Schluter or Laticrete but need to see them in person.

Ali - can you tell me your zip code and I can try to pull a few distributors close by that stock LATICRETE drains. Or you can use our online locator here. We just recommend calling first to make sure they have it in stock (not all distributors carry our full line).

[workhurts]

I called the the closest distributors and neither had any in stock, unfortunately.

Side question. Can you do a linear drain with a drain that doesn't have a flange? Excluding all drains that still use a clamping drain.

Seems like Schluter has a flange and integrated Kerdi band. Laticrete has a flange that you hydroban over. There's a couple of others that have flanges too.

[Sharon @ LATICRETE]

Agree with Houston Remodeler:

1- We use LATICRETE drains which have a one inch flange. That flange gets butted against the sole plate because; 1/2" for foam board + tile + thinset = just shy of one inch.

2- We have put the drain against the glass, but slightly inside is OK as long as the tile between the glass and the drain is sloped toward the drain

[workhurts]

On a scale of 1-10, how horrible is this idea? Recall, curbless shower using a linear drain in concrete. Using a no hub connector.

Since I've move the drain pipe and trap I was thinking while backfilling with aggregate and adding some concrete I should probably put something like a 3" pipe around the 2" pipe coming out of the p trap that way i don't incase everything in concrete. Once everything sets I'll have access to my p trap and would just drop my drain, hub and prefitted pipe on top of it. Almost like you would with a subfloor when you don't have access from beneath.

Are there any better methods to do this in concrete. I have a nice 60" x 18" hole in my concrete to work with.

Thanks in advance.

[jadnashua]

Back to your bench...Schluter has edge support material to stiffen their KerdiBoard to aid in free-standing walls, etc., and they make a tileable profile for the edge that in combination should be more than enough to strengthen your bench, especially when you will have 3-wall support for the edges. The edge supports are U-shaped metal (rustproof) that you would attach to the walls, and potentially to the front edge. When you can support it on three sides, almost your entire load to the walls will be in shear.

Call them, their tech support can guide you.

[Tiger Mountain Tile Inc]

Why do you need a linear drain with no flange? Are you still going with a direct bond waterproofing system?

FYI, the better bench doesn't need the corbel underneath if you use their new bolt system. It's these giant long bolts that screw in from the front. But they don't have a bench that looks like what you have configured in your picture.

[workhurts]

I've given up on the no flange idea for the drain. Was just trying to find the perfect sized drain channel and was contemplating waterproofing methods.

I'm leaning towards a complete Schluter system and just making the drain channel be 3" short from either wall.

Attaching the 2" drain line to the Schluter drain with a no hub connector.

Attach everything, backfill and pour concrete. As simple as that?

[Tiger Mountain Tile Inc]

Aren't you dealing with a 60 inch width? I don't understand why the drain wouldn't go wall to wall.

[workhurts]

Jim. Mostly because I actually have a 63" space stud to stud and don't know exactly what tile I'm going to use.

Figure 1/2" for cement board, 1/8" for thinset and 3/8" for tile plus some Kerdi and I'm up to a smidgen over an 1". So 61" overall now. My fear was and is that no matter how exact I try I'll miss it by a 1/4" or so and will have to deal with a tiny gap or a tiny sliver of tile. Would rather just get the next size down of drain and just have 2-3" tiles on either side. That's the thinking for now. Could very well change

[Tiger Mountain Tile Inc]

That makes sense. The 60 inch drains are actually around 58 inches so if you're rough in is 63 there's not way you would make it.