5 Tips for Installing Floor Warming on Shower Floors
The comfort of heated floors can bring a touch of luxury to any room in the home. That luxury can now extend right into tiled floors in the shower.
Can you put a heated floor in a shower?
The simple answer is yes, it is possible to heat the shower floor.
By using a dedicated heating cable and ensuring the shower area has completed required waterproofing steps the shower floor can be warmed, just like any other tiled floor. Installers should heed specific details around curbs, drains, and corners.
For comprehensive installation requirements and instructions, refer to Schluter installation handbooks and watch the DITRA-HEAT and Schluter®-Shower System installation videos.
A few tips to keep in mind:
1. Heating cables
Schluter recommends using a dedicated heating cable inside the shower area and a separate cable for the bathroom floor area.
2. The shower curb
The heating cables cannot be installed under or through the curb as this could cause overheating and damage the heating cable and the curb. The cable must be installed over the curb in a routed section. A hot glue gun or similar can secure the cable into the routed section and the section then filled with thin-set mortar. Schluter-KERDI must then be installed over the routed section after it is filled with thin-set mortar.
3. Waterproofing
After the curb is installed, Schluter-KERDI waterproofing membrane is installed over the DITRA-HEAT system on the shower base and all other waterproofing steps must be completed.
4. Temperature sensor
The floor temperature sensor should not be installed inside the shower area, rather on the bathroom floor. This will prevent the thermostat from turning off the bathroom floor warming cable prematurely when the shower is in use.
5. Local building codes
Prior to installation, approval of electric floor warming in shower applications must be verified by the local building code official or authority having jurisdiction.