When we go a front loader I read of problems some of them had on anything but a concrete basement floor. We had a carpeted sub floor on a crawl space with normal joists. To improve stability I merely cut a 4x8 piece of A-C grade exterior plywood to fit under both the washer and dryer. i figured it would srpeat tha weight over more joists and add stability. We had it installed over the very short napped carpet with ring nails and then put a Hardy board underlayment on both the rest of the carpet and our "island". Then we had porcelain tile installed. This has worked just as we expected and is doable and cheap.

i am planning to remove my old deck boards (which I plan to use in my pasture) and put down treated 3/4" plywood. I've been told i can put ceramic tile on that and grout it in, but i'm not sure so I plan to put backer board on top of the plywood and then lay the tile and seal the grout. Should I use regular thinset or construction adhesive to adhere the tile? Should I use grout with or without sand? How much grout space should I leave? This is an uncovered outside deck. Will this hold up outside?

Engineered is real wood and if you look around, you can find unfinished engineered, so you can have it finished in place and not have the bevels if that is important to you. I didn't look at the videos provided so this might have been covered but here in Texas almost all houses are built with slabs at grade level and most of the new ones have wood on the ground floor.. There are several acceptable ways to do it: Plywood subfloor nailed to concrete and solid wood nailed to that (solid wood probably not as good in your case, these slabs all have vapor barriers under the slab, which you won't) or engineered glued to the plywood subfloor Engineered wood glued to slab (do a calcium chloride or other approved moisture test first) Vapor barrier and engineered wood floated over that. Many of the engineered woods allow floating installation, you have to glue the tongue and groove together. Different products are labeled for different types of installation, you have to be sure to check what they are labeled for. Find a reputable, knowledgeable NWFA installer, get them to do the moisture tests (the glue down a piece of plastic is not considered reliable) and then have them spell out your options. Now guess how I know all this? :-)

I do recommend the Noble Drain on occasion to my clients. I have a current client in the US now doing a slope subfloor and Noble FreeStyle Drain. Here is a drawing I worked on two months back What I have learned over the years is that the ease of cleaning these drains is key. The linear drains from many company's have raised grates. This leaves the thin-set and grout open to every shower. This gets nasty in time. Drains from Laticrete, Noble, Proline and Schluter are all much like this. On my current steamer I had a Kerdi Line drain to deal with. So I tweaked it some and framed it. This will improve the maintenance of the shower drain I think and make the Kerdi Line drain more like a ACO Plain Edge. I do not think water is migrating to the drains like we are led to believe. I have been design my showers with improved weep hole and weep channel technology. Lots of theory - not a lot of showers to study. So far my initial builds with my new design are showing great success and looking pretty. Ditra Heat. Wow - I can not go there. I think you will see this product off the shelves in less than five years. You will never see it in any of my builds. When you study the cross section it contradicts everything we where pitched about Ditra. That with the restrictions in the wire choice and thin sets and you have really dog of a sku in my mind. I would not use it. When you plan your wet zone plan on slope outside thew shower back the the shower 4"-6". Plan a capillary break if you think my style (adopted from the Aussies) is worth it. Plan on 1 1/4" of grade change to the top of the drain grate. Skip the tile insert grate for added safety and skip the hair strainer at the same time. I have helped a lot of people plan these showers. Most of the key planning is in the tile layout and material selection. This past year I have recommend mostly ACO drains but have on certain jobs recommended Schluter, Noble and Quick Drain USA. It depends what the hurdles are. It is this reason why the first five years I was diligent about working with and understanding all the drains and their limitations. No one online to my knolwledge has installed anywhere close to the number of drains I have. Lots of men have opinions. But I always wonder where they take their data from. Me - I have learned the hard way. In the field. Building these showers. it does not take much research on the subject to see most men talking about have maybe installed one or two. And then they are the expert. When heating a shower floor we always add the waterproofing over the heating. Not under it. Ditra would not be wise choice. To get the best heat transfer you need to do a little creative planing and design the shower like a divot method. This gets tricky and to do this I would be recommending a NobleFlexFlashing and standard drain. Then you could do something like this job. The picture below shows a heated shower floor. The tile edging is Pro-Parts by Butech. I call this a Kwaywk Style shower Drain. Rod Kwawk is one of the Countries top installers and I was inspired to do this build after following his work for many years. In order to achieve the grading with a regular point drain and large format tile I used a medium bed thinnest from Ardex. X32. The drain is by california faucets and comes with a powder coated cast iron rough in. Sexy. Good Luck.