I plan to put infloor heat tubing on top of the subfloor in a building I am converting to an apartment. I have about 1 1/4″ from the subfloor to bottom of the doors. The tubing is 5/8″ O.D. and I want to lay down strips of something, weave the tubing around the stuff, and then lay ceramic floor tile on top of that. Durock is only 1/2″ thick. What else is out there that would work?
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Mud- lightweight or regular.
You could use wire lathe and Full Flex or, 1/2 and 1/4 Hardi or, some combination
The correct way to tile over Wrsbo is to lay down 15# felt and metal lath under the tubing. Then lay down a base of dry-pack mortar which is basically sand and portland. It is sold locally here in MN by twin city concrete under the name "tile-crete". You should be at least 3/8" over the top of the tubing with the mud base.
What does the metal lath do for you? If the subfloor flexes, I would guess the lath would flex too.
The metal lath is stapled down to the subfloor and acts as reinforcement for the concrete as well as a way to "bond" the 2 floors together. Generally, mud pack floors are usually only 3/4" thick or so and without the lath, the concrete would crumble over time.
It's easy to cut doors off shorter. Do the tile bed right and don't limit yourself to the door elevation for thickness
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These are exterior doors; one is metal. Not so easy to cut off. The other is an inswing patio door. I don't know how I'd cut that one off either.
I'd still like to nail/glue/screw down a cementacious board material of some sort and leave space to weave the tubing between, then lay the tile on top of that. I suppose, as somebody suggested, build up with 1/2" and 1/4" tile backer to give me about 1 1/4" total stack. The doors will open, but just barely. Forget the rugs in front of the doors.
You're pretty far from any industry-standard install with the detail you're talking about. You can staple the tubing to the floor, pour 1-1/2" of lightweight concrete, and then tile. You could possibly install something like Roth panel, install backerboard over that, and then tile. Or you could install backerboard, install an electric heating mat, install SLC, and then tile over that.
They actually make a subfloor material that was designed to take the tubing - look in an issue of FHB, there should be an add for it there. You should go down as far as possible before you go up again, to make sure you end up with the most maintanence free floor possible.
Check out the John Bridge tile forum for help on figuring out exactly what would be best (Not just what will work).
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