In this video you’ll see the easiest shower drain for beginners to install. It’s the Schluter
KERDI-DRAIN and the reason why I like this drain is because it can be solvent-welded to either PVC
or ABS pipes. The first step is to cut out the foam insert that’s in the Schluter shower tray.
You’re gonna need that for the drain. You put it on your substrate or your subfloor. If you don’t
have a tray you can use the spacers that come with the drain. There are either white or gray spacers.
We don’t need the white ones because the gray ones fit the size of our shower tray. And also,
make sure they face up if you’re going to use those. So the first step is to cut the riser
pipe coming up out of the floor if it’s already been solvent-welded in place. I’m going to be
using the Reed Pipe Cutter and cutting off about 4 to 5 inches cause I want this to be closer
to the floor. The reason why I like this manual pipe cutter is because it gives you a square cut
and that always helps out quite a bit when you’re installing shower drains. Then I’m putting the
foam spacer down on the floor again, and I’m also going to be chamfering the top of this
pipe. The next step is to fit the drain and make sure that it’s level - this is really important.
Then you want to measure from the bottom of the bottom flange to the top of the foam insert.
That is the amount of pipe that you need to cut off and what I really like about chamfering
is it allows you to fit the pipe right up to the edge of the drain. I’m also going to be using
this internal pipe cutter that’s adjustable. It’s awesome because you can adjust it to the height
that you need to take off and in this case that’s roughly 6-1/8 of an inch. I put this down into the
pipe, and I just press my drill and it cuts off the pipe perfectly. The next step is to chamfer
the pipe that was just cut because that’ll allow the drain to fit nice and evenly on to the pipe.
You want to make sure it’s level again and just double check that everything is going
to be dry-fit perfectly. Then you can remove the drain and the little foam insert. If you have to,
you can use the foam spacers at this point, too. So for example, if you are a plumber or
you don’t have the shower tray, you can use these spacers instead of that foam donut. And again,
you want to make sure that the drain fits nice and level. Now here’s a hot tip, literally. If you’re
going to be heating this shower with Schluter DITRA-HEAT, you need to cut out a DITRA-HEAT donut
in the shape of the foam insert, the white foam insert. And this is going to act as
a spacer that you can put underneath the white foam insert. You need to raise that foam insert
in such a way such that you can use the DITRA-HEAT mat on main shower tray. Then you can mix up some
Schluter ALL-SET, I’m just manually mixing this up. I’m also cutting the foam insert in half,
you’ll see why here in a moment. And you want to wipe down your substrate, your floor that is,
make sure it’s nice and clean. Put something on the floor for your primer and your PVC cement. I’m
going to be using Oatey purple primer and Oatey PVC cement for this. You want to prime the fitting
first, 4 to 5 revolutions on that, prime the pipe, and then go back and prime the fitting again and
the drain. The next step is to use the PVC cement on the drain pipe, then on the fitting, then once
again, about 4 to 5 revolutions on the pipe. Then you want to immediately put your spacers in place
and push this down on to the pipe and twist it a 1/4 turn and then make sure that it’s level.
This is a critical step, you need the drain to be absolutely level so that’ll drain properly when
your finished shower is installed. Then you can pull the foam inserts. Put those aside, and then
apply some thin-set underneath the bonding flange and between the floor. You want a copious amount
of thin-set between the flange and the floor. Then you also want to put a lot of thin-set on
this foam insert, both on the bottom of it and on the top. So the reason why I split this in half
is because I need to put this between the floor and the drain. So this is going to be supporting
the drain because obviously there’s a little gap underneath there. And this is per the Schluter
instructions. So you definitely want to use this foam insert or foam spacer underneath the drain.
Don’t skip this step because if you step on the drain it could possibly crack or damage the pipe.
So there needs to be support underneath that and there needs to be a lot of thin-set between the
drain and foam insert as well. So just clean that off, make sure everything looks nice and neat,
and that’ll set up. And then you can go ahead and install your shower tray later on. But hopefully
these tips help you install what I think is the easiest show drain for a beginner. I really hope
these tips helped you out, if they did, give this video a thumbs up and also make sure you
subscribe to our YouTube channel for more tips and tricks. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you soon.