All About Floor Drains – DSP 262

As Ashkahn gets everything ready for the Start a Center Workshop (happening today) and the Float Conference this weekend, Graham and Jake tackle answering construction questions on the podcast.

Today they’re talking about floor drains. What to consider for drains and how they might pair with different types of flooring. Given the hefty price tag for these more advanced drains, having as much research before making a decision on these is essential. Luckily, the guys have done the hard part already and identified a lot of things to consider.

The Float Conference Start a Center Workshop starts today! There’s still time to sign up for Friday Activities and be sure to check FloatConference.com for schedules, booth info, sponsors, talk descriptions, and everything else.

An example of a clamping floor drain

Zurn linear trench drains

Some good examples of sheet flooring:

Altro

Takiron Pathways

Forbo

Listen to Just the Audio

Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)

Jake: True love.

Graham: Cool. Cool. I’m Graham.

Jake: And I’m Jake.

Graham: And we have some more answers to your construction questions. For instance, today’s question is, “Trench drains, regular circular drains, or dot dot dot no drains?”

Jake: Wow.

Graham: Sorry, I almost feel like the “dot, dot, dot” in here implies something was wrong with that option or, can I just sneak this in there, what if I spend no money on drains, is that okay?

Jake: Well technically you agreed to this, right? No, that’s clearly not the case. No drains is a mistake.

Graham: Yeah, and I assume they mean no drains maybe other than the shower drains.

Jake: Yeah.

Graham: If you have showers in your rooms and you don’t have drains, then-

Jake: No, I assume that they mean just no drains at all.

Graham: Well that’s a serious problem, then.

Jake: Okay, alright. Maybe I should dial back my disbelief then. Okay, alright. Just a shower drain, then, is what they’re saying.

Graham: Maybe? Or I mean certainly otherwise-

Jake: Maybe-

Graham: – know that definitely put in drains. Your shower, in fact, needs a drain.

Jake: So the question here is “Do we put drainage in our dressing area and near our spa pack?” Because, again, we’re gonna assume the shower drain is there. So dressing area, spa pack.

Graham: Or maybe they even have their showers in a different room or something weird like that.

Jake: Oh, that’s a good point. That’s what you get for assuming. That’s what I get for assuming.

Graham: That’s what they get for sending in a short form, abstract question.

Jake: Okay. If you have no showers-

Graham: A really good short form, abstract question.

Jake: – in your room, no drains, still a terrible idea. Because Epsom salts, they’re going to get everywhere. That water is everywhere.

Graham: I guess that’s something. We kinda started out that way, too. Like, we had our shower, which was a little self-contained, little had a lip, like there’s a shower pan-

Jake: There’s a dropped in pan

Graham: – and doors and everything. So all the shower water got drained, but then, outside of that we didn’t really have any drains in our rooms, and-

Jake: No, we had to clean it constantly.

Graham: Yeah, so it is possible, but it sucks. There’s a lot of salt water cleanup, that saltwater dries on things. If you can just spray it down and wash it down a drain-

Jake: So much easier from every single transition.

Graham: It’s orders of magnitudes easier.

Jake: We were backing ourselves out of rooms, changing out shammies regularly. Because once you saturate one with salt, you’re just pushing salt around the room. Also, building materials. The floors, that’s where we see the most damage from these Epsom salts. It’s because it’s sitting there, it’s pooling there. You know, water is pervasive. Salt is pervasive. When they team up, they’re this creepy little duo. They’ll do whatever they want. So, yeah. Floor drains are just super important just to wash away all those Epsom salts.

Graham: Okay so I actually don’t know this, but what’s your preference between circular drains and trench drains, if we were to build Float On from the beginning? In Float On, we have circular drains.

Jake: We do.

Graham: That’s almost –

Jake: We do.

Graham: That’s what we could add in, kind of.

Jake: Right, but with all of our renovations, we’ve had a choice about trench drains at one point in time. And what he’s saying about that is just one long drain, either on the side of the room, and everything sloping towards that, or in the middle of the room. I will say that if it’s in the middle of the room, it becomes one of the design elements for the room, so that’s something to take into consideration. And also, if you change the tank in the room ever in the future, will that drain still be where it’s supposed to be?

Alright, so for me, I think it depends on what the waterproofing material is over your floor.

Graham: So like whether it’s a laminate, or an epoxy, or tile, or-

Jake: Yeah, exactly. Like if you’re using some kind of sheet flooring with heat-welded seams and everything like that, or if you’re doing like an epoxy resin system.

If you’re doing an epoxy resin system, you’re gonna encounter the same problems with a trench drain that you are with regular drains. It’s just that bond on the edge of the drain. I would almost argue that a long, straight drain, you can get a better, cleaner line around that. You know what I mean? So maybe we’re not even looking at circular drains. Maybe we’re looking at rectangular drains, might be the ideal thing. Because right now we’re keying in in a circle, and I think a long trench drain, you might be able to get a better key in, which is basically grinding out the concrete right at the edge of the drain and then letting that reservoir fill with the epoxy resin so that you get a really good bond between your protective flooring and that drain body.

If we’re talking about sheet flooring, I would love to use a trench drain. There is not one exists that is capable of clamping the surface level membrane in place. When I say that, it’s a lot of words right there.

Graham: It is a lot.

Jake: Yeah.

Graham: I was like, “Is he going to explain this or just breeze past it?”

Jake: No, I’m just going to breeze past it. I assume everyone is on the same page. No.

So, surface level membrane, that’s what that sheet flooring is. It’s a membrane that’s on the surface that’s protecting your substrate from water. So surface level membrane clamping floor drain, which basically mean I’m taking that surface level membrane, I’m clamping it down into the drain body, and then I cut a hole where drainage actually is. So the idea there is that all the moisture, all the water, all the Epsom salts that come into that drain, they flow over that sheet flooring until they’re actually recessed down at a lower level and in the drain body itself, so there’s no possible way for salts or moisture to back up and start destroying your substrate underneath. And that’s far, far, far superior for sheet flooring type of drains. The old, classic way to do it is to take your sheet flooring and cut around the drain. We’ve seen that fail many times. At Float On, actually. We had-

Graham: And I guess, to backup a little bit-

Jake: Sorry, I get on a roll and just-

Graham: It’s good, it’s good.

Jake: Passionate about floor drains

Graham: So the surface clamping membrane drains-

Jake: Yes

Graham: – are not available in trench drains, at least right now. We haven’t found them. Maybe-

Jake: We haven’t found them. We have heard in folklore, like secret salt circles-

Graham: Passed down through the generations-

Jake: -people talking about the salts. No, we have heard there are a few people trying to fabricate them because, you know, a talented metal worker could definitely make something like this. We’ve heard of somebody trying to do it in Detroit and we’ve heard of somebody doing it over in England. We have not got confirmation, nor have we been able to get our hands on these. And once we do, then we’ll let you know. We’ll write a blog about it probably, because again, we’re passionate about floor drains.

Graham: So moving on. The damage that can happen if you don’t use these is potentially copious.

Jake: No, for sure. Think about it. If you don’t use this floor drain, you’re cutting a sheet flooring up to the edge of the drain. And then you’re banking on that this contractor, that she nailed it, that she just basically got a perfect cut all the way around, and on top of that, the adhesive that’s holding your sheet flooring down, hopefully it’s an epoxy based adhesive and not just some water based glue. Hopefully that has a solid bond all the way around. Because it only takes one small pinhole, one small air bubble, one small nick with your blade, and then all of a sudden, a little bit of moisture gets in there and it’s impregnated with salt, and then the salt crawls. We’ve seen it destroy concrete. We’ve cut out around-

So we had to do this. Okay, we almost got into when I was on the train a few minutes ago. I might be back on the train, actually.

Graham: It’s fine. It’s a good train. Just make sure the audience has the tickets, too.

Jake: Make sure you guys are all with it. Alright, everybody get on the train, alright.

Okay. So, if you don’t do this, you’re gonna end up having to cut out the sheet flooring around it. And if you come out to the Float Conference, you’ll be able to see this. You can come check out our rooms. We have older sheet flooring that we’ve had for six years in a couple of those rooms. We did not use these newer style of drains and you see the damage, and then you’ll see the repair, obviously, because we repaired it.

The last note on that is that these are very, very expensive drains. I don’t want you to have sticker shock. A standard drain, 30 bucks, whatever. These drains, $400 to $600. We’ve seen some models as high as about $800. Which adds up when you start adding all those floor drains into your room. And then the question becomes, “How many floor drains do I want in my room?” Alright.

Graham: It’s weird when you start asking your parents for floor drains for your birthday. It’s like when I realized-

Jake: Not unnerved, though.

Graham: -that I’m no longer a child. I’m an adult now.

Jake: “I would really like the Zurn.”

Graham: So the bottom line is as a result of this, if you are using sheet flooring, like Altro or Takiron-

Jake: Forbo, there’s a whole bunch of them.

Graham: You would probably not use trench drains just because they’re not available in really nice sheet floor friendly-

Jake: That model is not available yet.

Graham: Okay. So then for epoxy, though, you think either one could work.

Jake: I think either one would work.

Graham: And potentially, the trench drains would actually be better.

Jake: I think so. Like in practice, right?

Again, we just have single drains in our rooms that have epoxy resin, so we’re keying in around those and they’re actually circular drains. In hindsight, 2015 being what it is, I would like a square drain. Something that’s easier to get a good, solid edge around. And in those rooms, we’re always playing with different products. We tried one of those cheaper, just for the drain body itself. That’s what’s below the hair strainer and actually connecting to your plumbing, just in case anyone doesn’t know what a drain body is. We tried one of those chromed ones and we’re seeing that rot out, you know what I mean? So, yeah, interesting stuff.

Graham: What about for tile?

Jake: Floor drain. Tile kind of the same thing. You’re cutting your tile around a floor drain and you’re using epoxy grout.

Graham: I guess it’s very similar to the epoxy you’re using.

Jake: Again, we’re just covering, protecting our surface with some armor. And that armor has to get to the edge of the drain, and that’s the weak point in the system. No epoxy system’s technically seamless, I guess. Tile systems, clearly we like epoxy grout and a lot of seams, and we actually don’t even like tile that much on our floors, just for slip resistance and what not. But that’s a whole ‘nother podcast.

Graham: Yeah, I’d say it’s a tricky thing if you try to use tile. It’s why, if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, we bring up laminate floors and epoxy resin floors so often. Those really do seem to be the least problematic of the floors you can install. Not absent of problems, but least problematic.

Jake: Alright. Anything else about drains?

Graham: I will say it’s less to do with the drains itself, but the concrete sloping going up to the drains-

Jake: Literally the same idea.

Graham: I’ve just seen so many bad concrete sloping jobs, which is a good thing to pay attention to. Definitely invest good money in finding a good concrete guy, because if they mess that up, it is not a fun experience as a float center owner. But what I was going to say is I feel like I’ve seen less problems with concrete sloping leading up to a trench drain. Probably just because you don’t need to slope in a circle, which is a harder thing for us to do. You just need to make a linear slope, almost in a straight line, going from one side of a room to another, which is really nice-

Jake: And you only have one grate there, as opposed to if you’re dropping multiple single drains in. You’re looking at several drainage areas-

Graham: Kind of overlapping in a weird mathematical way-

Jake: And so how do you do that? Either you’re busting up the slab and then pouring each of those individually, which can be expensive, or you’re building up a portion of the slab, where your tank is, and then you’re setting your slopes down to where the curtain grate is. A contractor or a building owner may not want you cutting open their slab, or you might be in a situation where on a post-tensioned slab over a parking garage that’s 16 inches thick, or something like that. Sloping is definitely a huge, huge thing. So getting a talented mason is important.

Graham: Yeah, and I feel like a trench drain is a little easier to slope with.

Jake: For sure. I agree with you. Absolutely.

Graham: I’m in favor of a trench drain. I think that’s it. I think that’s the only other thing we didn’t cover so far that comes to mind.

Jake: Alright. Cool.

Graham: So, yeah. Good question. And, if you have your own, go over to floattanksolutions.com/podcast and we will read them and we will enjoy them, we’ll savor them, and then we’ll share our answers with the world and you’ll have contributed with the great human dialogue.

Jake: Alright. Everyone have a great day.

Graham: Bye everyone.

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