I would absolutly follow Mongo's advise that he posted above on Fri, Mar 22, 13 at 22:31. Ditra is put under all kinds of stone and ceramic. As I understand it, it is a decoupling membrane that helps prevent shearing (horizontal) movements from cracking the tile. The subfloor and joist deflection issues help with preventing vertical movement that can also crack the tiles. How I understand it from the Ditra instructions is that, depending on the subfloor, you select the appropriate thinset to lay the Ditra. Then you lay the tile on the Ditra using appropriate recommended thinset. The orange will be completely covered. It will raise the floor a bit (1/4"?) more because the Ditra has a dimension to it. It is not recommended to be used for tiles smaller than 2" because of the waffle shapes. I bought the appropriate thinset that Schluter recommended at my HIGH END tile shop. It was expensive but a gem to work with. I have never used low end thinset and don't plan to. I have linked the site that makes Ditra. Look it over very well. There are great illustrations on how it works either on this site or others. When I did my floor (first time floor tiler) I used it and, while I took part of it up to get the lumps out, I thought it went well. The beautiful jobs of tiling by Bill V, and Mongct are all on top of Ditra, I believe. Here is my DH adding extra joists 2x8's to our under qualified 21"oc floor. Now it is 9-10" oc: Here is after I put down the (specific recommendation from Bill V.) underlayment of plywood onto the subfloor that was existing, and thick and newly re-enforsed. The only mistake I made was I snapped lines for the grid every 4" instead of the 6" that Bill stated. My mistake, but was not a problem for my DS to do:) Next came my warming floor system, stratigically laid out and planned to the hilt using drawing after altered drawing to get it to all work out. I am proud that I am only 8" short: Here is the floor with the self leveling compound being poured. It has a plastic lath that I put over the wires. I was recommended by the Moderate End tile store where I was going to buy my warming system. I changed my mind because I wanted 240v. But I had the lathe and I then read a tutorial over on the JB forum about using the lathe, so is used it in my installation. So: the BillV recommended underlayment, warming wire and 2 thermostats (1 is laying there not hooked up, as a backup down the road if needed), plastic lathe stapled closely, primer, self leveling compound: If you want to do self leveling compound read Staceyneil's thread on the topic from several years ago, I think it is in the bathroom forum. Here is my Ditra, set with the recommended thinset. After this picture was taken, I did take out some areas, about a foot square, in several places and reset them. I did this because there were large lumps, and I'm a 60yo lady with not as much strength as I used to have. So the thinset was uneven in a few spots. You can see it here. Not all of the lumps needed taking out but several were just too high. When I took it up and reset it it was fine! At this point you can seal the seams with Kerdi tape if you want to water proof it. I was going to do that :( but I forgot!!! If you are installing Ditra in a bathroom, don't forget:) Here I am setting my tile in the pattern I've chosen. Mongo was taken aback when I posted this because I turned the pattern on him :) He had initially helped me plan this out in a 90 degree angle. After it had been all laid and grouted with Spectralock epoxy grout: I post this to help you see the process and that it isn't difficult. The difficulty seems to be when people don't want to make adjustments with installations. There are a lot of people using this stuff. Edited to add: Please correct me if I am incorrect in anyway. This is how I installed my floor and I may have made an error either in the installation or my description. Here is a link that might be useful: The Schluter Site. This post was edited by enduring on Sat, Mar 23, 13 at 12:47

CBinCT: "I can tell you that an oversize pan does damage the element because I had my Le Creuset going and was boiling water on the other element when the element popped. The first thing the repair person asked was "were you using and oversize pot?". The requirement to stay within 1/2 inch of the element size is in the manual." On our first induction cooktop, one element popped when we were frying with a pan that was exactly the diameter of the element. When the repair person came, the first thing he said was that the element had gone out because I did not have water in the frying pan; he had misinterpreted the set-up instructions that directed the installer to test whether the unit was working by heating a pot of water on it to mean that an induction unit needs water in the pot to work at all. You should not put much too much store in what a repair person has to say. As for manuals: the instruction manual for our LG induction cooktop emphasizes that pots used on it must be perfectly flat and has an illustration of how to use a ruler laid on the bottom of an inverted pot to test for flatness. Of course, induction cooktops work very well with ordinary pots that have non-flat bottoms, as most of our pots do, and they have worked well on induction -- including this LG -- for the dozen years that we have been cooking with induction. The LG manual is plain flat-out wrong; the text was probably lifted from some other manual for a thermal glass-top cooktop, where intimate surface-to-surface contact is important for heat conduction. "The largest element on the 30" is 8" so that limits me to a nine inch pan. I had just bought an All Clad set with 10" pans. I use them and sometimes get error codes where I have to flip the breaker to reset the cooktop." I am not sure what you mean by "flip the breaker." No properly functioning cooktop of any brand, hard-wired to adequate capacity house circuits, should ever cause a circuit breaker to trip. If your cooktop is tripping the breaker, either your house's wiring is at fault or the cooktop is defective. Breaker tripping is not normal behavior for a UL-certified wired-in appliance. "Error codes are a common occurance when I have several pans going." Again, if you have several pans going, the circuitry may limit the current that it allows to go to individual burners, so you would not get all the power at one or more burners that you would get if only one or two burners were running, but no cooktop that I am aware of throws an error code in such circumstances; this is a further hint that you may have a defective unit. If yours is still under warranty, you may want to initiate a claim before the warranty expires. (FYI, the largest burner on the LG induction cooktop is 10.5" in diameter, should you decide to replace the Electrolux with another cooktop.) "When I deglaze I slide the pan around which is something else I was told you should not do on a cermaic top. Ceramic is easy to clean but you should not slide pans around on a ceramic top." Schott Ceran is very hard, and does not scratch easily, but hard rough surfaces such as cast iron are capable pf scratching it. The easy solution, if you want to slide the pan, is to put a layer of parchment paper or a silicone baking pan liner between the pot and the cooktop; neither parchment paper nor silicone is hard enough to scratch Ceran.

Welcome Heather, In real life, you won't have much,if any, beeping. Don't lock the controls. That is silly and a cya reaction to your question. I have Bosch but believe there won't be any appreciable difference. The guts are made by the same ppl. Convection in both ovens is more important, useful, than flex induction. Here's my experience. Pots of all sizes work on all hobs, except possibly for those that might be too small. It still works if the pot is not centered on the hob. My pots are sometimes off center and partly off the hob and it still works and works exceptionally well . If it works, it works well. I have taken pots off the hob to add water under the faucet and it works again when I place it back on the hob. Granted my faucet is just a swivel away. Flex sounds so appealing but it just is not necessary unless, possibly, if you want to bridge something, say a huge roaster. And even then I am not sure you cannot monkey with something. At our cottage, with a gas/stove, I might move a pan partially off to control heat and that's monkeying in my book. I use the convection feature in my double oven Bosch for cookies and breads which is about all I bake. So I would not trade double convection for what I see as an unnecessary but sexy sounding flex. Couple of things re induction to help with the learning curve. Rest your finger and don't press. And, use boost to attain aboil, not to maintain a boil. Don't worry or even think about power sharing.

Yes the 220V is the way to go and I would recommend it.. The microwave is a microwave. I think all microwaves are pretty much the same. Someone can correct me if that's not true. I don't think they cook well and we rarely use the microwave function except for popcorn or to melt butter. If you primarily use a microwave save yourself a lot of money and just buy a $100 microwave. The Advantium is an expensive piece of equipment and can do so much more. . It serves as my second oven since I only have one wall oven. You can roast a chicken and it tastes like roasted chicken not microwave food. I make my own pizza and reheat the left overs in the advantium which comes out great not soggy like the microwave. If you buy a lot of prepackaged foods, there are a lot of built in programs for them; ie fish sticks, chicken tenders etc. There is no preheating the oven so that's a time saver. To use the speed cook function, you have to switch out the ceramic plate (used for microwave) to a metal plate. Someone on this forum found that to be way too much work???. If that's too much trouble for you or you have children that can't be trained to follow instructions, the Advantium is not for you. It comes with a cook book which you can use to guide you on the various settings for your own recipes. It takes a bit of thought but not really difficult. Whatever you do, don't get the 120V. they are not worth the money and don't function very well. Happy cooking Inga