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The 2017 FHB House is a production-built house in a small development of net-zero-ready houses in Wilder, Vermont, all with a focus on affordability and universal design principles. It’s designed to be quickly built and easily duplicated while meeting stringent air-sealing and performance standards and a strict budget.

Vermont 2017

Tools & Materials

Electric Radiant Ditra-Heat in the Bathrooms

Schluter's Ditra-Heat adds warmth to an uncoupling membrane

By Tim Biebel
Article Image

Nothing beats the feeling of warm tile under your feet on a cold morning. It’s not that I would know from personal experience because I don’t have it at my house, but I hear that from everyone that does have it. Are they rubbing it in or are they so smitten with it they can’t stop talking about it? It’s probably a little of both.

The bathroom floors in the FHB House are finished with soapstone tile, which provided a perfect pairing for Ditra-Heat to be installed in the Schluter underlayment. On past projects we have always subcontracted out the tile work, which included Ditra-Heat if it was called for. On the FHB House we decided to do it ourselves. This meant I needed to figure out how much material was needed for each bathroom.

It was easier than I thought to figure out. Schluter Systems has an online calculator that automatically spits out the material list once you insert the square footage of the project. As an example, the second floor bathroom is 57 ft². The online tool determined that 40.99 ft² would be heated, which required 37.5 ft² of 240V heating cable, one programmable thermostat, and seven pieces of Ditra-Heat-Duo–an uncoupling membrane with sound control and thermal break.

The heating cable cannot be cut, so the biggest mind bender is determining the layout of the cable without coming up short or ending up with too much excess. It’s important to maintain the proper distances from walls (2 in.), other heat sources (8 in.), floor drains (4 in.), and toilets (7 in.); but in the end it wasn’t too difficult.

The rest of the project was no different than a normal tile job. I like this product a lot. It’s simple and much less involved than water-based radiant heat, not to mention less expensive.

Schluter’s Ditra mat is an uncoupling membrane so that subfloor movement doesn’t crack grout and tile. The bottom of the membrane has a fleece fabric that’s adhered to the subfloor with thinset.

 

Rolling the Ditra helps ensure good adhesion.

 

 

The heating cable snaps into the space between studs on the Ditra-Heat-Duo membrane.

 

Once the cable is installed it’s tested–more than once–to ensure there are no cuts before the tile goes down.

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Vermont 2017 Videos Behind the Build: Rhode Island 2016 Behind the Build: California 2018 Behind the Build: Kentucky 2019 Behind the Build: Connecticut 2020

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View Comments

  1. pjamme | Jan 09, 2018 04:33pm | #1

    I just finished my install of Ditra Heat in my bathroom. It had a hotwater radiator that had to go as it was too close to the 70 year old toilet.
    Floor is now a cozy 82 degrees during use age time. The thermostat and one of the sensor leads were bad, but Schulter replaced quickly at no cost. Very happy with this and will be doing the powder room next.
    Be sure and get the recommended tester to check everything out, as once it is installed would be difficult to replace.

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