Thank you for the quick and thorough responses.
I will ping them on facebook and twitter and email you. the Rep I called indicated he was traveling next two weeks, but I'll apply pressure, I don't really want to be cutting tile in middle of December.
to answer the questions, that may help uncover if I did something wrong and where...
When I leveled the floor, the leveler bag (RS stuff from orange box store) specified lb of material to quarts of water, so I weighted that on my mailing scale to the oz and measured fluid. But when I read the ditraset instructions, I don't recall seeing any measurement, maybe I missed that? I thought they said mix it to a consistency"mix to a flairly fluid consistency but still able to hold a notch". so I added water and added material and mixed til I got a consistency and let it slake 15 min and remixed then applied it immediately. It is possible some of it sat too long when I did the walls as that took a long time to apply, but I mixed it in batches of about 1/3 or 1/4. the floor piece which is what is leaching, was mixed fresh.
Possible I mixed it too dry.. definitely was not too wet, It seemed workable at least 1/2 hr...
When I applied it, I used the notched trowel size they recommended. The parts over the durarock, I wetted the durarock and the back of the kerdi a little, although that was hard to wet. I pressed the material into the durarock and notched over it. It is possible I applied it too thick and held the trowel at too much angle. then I went over it with the flat side of the trowel and pushed the kerdi in to get the bubbles out per watching the videos. I wonder if I worked it too much and pushed out too much thinset? I got a lot of thinset out. In the video it looked like they were pressing and worked it in, so that's what I did.
I pulled back a few sections especially on the edges and looked ok like was coverd, but didn't do that on the floor piece. pushing the material into the thinset I figured would resolve any issues around that and if no bubbles...good??
it is hard to see in the photo but the leaching at its worst was 3.5" in. other areas maybe to 1.5 or 2. again, I called Schluter and they indicated some leaching was normal and that's why they have a 2" min overlap, but mine was excessive. the tech rep indicated he hadn't heard of this before....makes me wonder about this product and how difficult it really is to install.
color looked the same all over when installed other than the leaching area after water test.
the part that is wicking is around the edge ontop of the kerdi band and ontop of the foam base. I also see it wicking around the drain and the kerdi (wicking in). One would think the kerdi would stick well to the kerdi band on their stuff. I didn't see a problem on the walls where the durarock is, but didn't test very long there. this was a brief several minute test with a drain plug that didn't work.
I will try the shop vac test. any size shop vac with no attachment? I have the Rigid big vac, just not sure if any amount of pressure should pull it away.
Also, suggestions on plugging the drainhole completely on this test? I hadn't figured that out yet.
I'm glad to hear there is a way to seal those seams. if I pass the shop vac (e.g. the stuff is attached to the walls good enough that the tile won't pull it away, then I'll give a little time for the rept to look at it and at least have a way to seal the seams. Thanks for the picts as it helps to see there is a decent solution. I went looking for the Ardex 8+9 and couldn't find it at big boxes or local hardware. I'll call the rep, probably only specialty tile shops have it.
on another note, I have to say I was quite "challenged" trying to find a thinset for this job. Schluter says modified premium, well that can't be found at most places including the orange big box store I bought the shower kit. after reading many reviews, I looked at laticrete 317 and Ditraset. Since I wantd to put up porcelain tiles with unmodified per the Schluter instructions, I used Ditraset.