Hi All,

I am about to rip out my current ensuite and start work on a refurb. Whilst ultimately I am in 2 minds about whether I will actually do the tiling myself (probably get one of you guys to do it), I want to do all the prep/plumbing myself. The crowning glory of is the introduction of a glass fronted steam/shower room. I have attached some screen shots of the basic design (made using google sketchup - blinking brilliant tool sketchup designis also included in the zip file for those of you who may have sketchup - download it it's free!). Anyways I digress. I have done some googling on the solutions out there to properly tank/vapour seal a steam room and I am tending to favour the Schluter Kerdi system. Main downside I can see is its pricing and for the membrane alone to cover the 17m2 area its gonna be around £300. I was wondering whether anyone else would have any advise on what to use. I have seen some other posts on here (deanotile?) that favour Wedi but I can't see how this is 100% vapour proof?

Thanks in advance

Ian

when we do steam rooms and wet rooms . the room is fix with wedi or marmorx board the all the joints are seal then taped with water proof tape.the boards are fiberglass renforced and are impermeable to water this gives you a sealed room . so that even it water did get behind tiles ( should not if tiled correctly) it cannot escape the room !!

Thanks Paul,

Guess I am just paranoid about vapour escaping. I have read a few fair articles that say you must have a defined vapour barrier for steam rooms and that a wet room type construction is not sufficient! These were vendor written and perhaps they are simply trying to sell their own products for the sake of it!

we have constructed many steam rooms and wet rooms .never had a call back on any off them!!

Hi Ian,
Wedi and Marmox boards have a polycellular structure and it is the middle layer that is waterproof rather than the cementious faces. You could also construct using water resistant plasterboard and then use a paint on tanking system like PCI Lastogum or BAL WP1 as long as you use a fully flexible tape in the internal corners this form of tanking works very well and is considerably cheaper than Wedi board. There are also competing boards simmilar to Wedi and Marmox that are cheaper. Try Duckkaboard and PCI (Part of BASF) to somthing simmilar as well.

Frankly most failures of tanking systems are due to incompetent/careless installation and little to do with wether its Marmox/Wedi/Lastogum etc....if the same person had installed the alternative system, their incompetence would have lead them to install another leaking seive anyway.

Regards

Terry
Onthetiles.biz