Jadnashua
Retired Defense Industry Engineer xxx
As of the first of the this year (2013), Schluter's warranty on a Kerdi shower install has been extended to 10-years to keep it in line with much of the rest of the industry...it's not that they changed the material or the installation instructions, it's just that it was a good, safe thing to do. In talking with one of the reps, he said that in the 100,000 Kerdi showers he'd sold over the years, he had 6 reported failures and after investigation found that they had not been installed per the instructions (primarily, insufficient or non-existent overlap of the membrane with the specified thinset). They showed a picture of one guys installation where he used 8-penny nails as spacers hammered through the membrane (since that's the way he always did it with CBU), that obviously had moisture intrusion issues...I'm not saying that there may not have been other failures, but those were the ones reported to Schluter for resolution. That's a pretty impressive track record. I'm in a workshop to get caught up on the latest products and methods, and this was one of the tidbits that came out in discussion. The system has been around for a long time, works, and works well if you install it properly.