Floor Tiling

Hi,

I am about to attempt ceramic tiling my bathroom floor. Can i tile directly to floorboards or is this a bad idea?? If so, what materials do you recomend? If not, how should I go about preparing the floor before tiling?!?

Cheers in advance for your help, it is much appreciated!

You need to reinforce the existing floor with a minimum 12mm WBP plywood, screwed every 200mm.

The old floorboard should be solid and rigidly fixed before you overboard.

Then use flexible tile adhesive and flexible grout available from your local tile distributor.

If you can, best to replace the floorboards with WPB ply to the same thickness if you dont want the floor level any higher.

If i put the WBP over the floor boards what do i do about the floor level being raised? Do i raise the door and tile the bath in??

That what I mean, take up the old flooring and put down the exterior or WPB plywood instead although you don't have but it will lower the floor level to more or less where it is, if not then cutting the bottom of the door etc.

Ok, so how do i take up the floor? Just rip it ot and lay WBP? Is there anything i should watch out for?

Yes and check all wiring & plumbing are in good condition plus any timber dry/wet rot. Make sure the plywood join on the centre of the joists and use noggins on the return edge between floor joists. Also best to use safeplate over wiring or pipe protecting them.

There are a number of ways of reinforcing a floor.

I'll give you the options I use. I generally fit natural products which require more rigidity in the substrate than ceramics, so these will be slightly overengineered for ceramics.

1/ Remove all the floorbaords and replace with 18mm WBP ply then overboard this with aquapanel which is glued and screwed using rapid set flexible tile adhesive. I tend to do this if the floorboards are shot.

2/ Remove all the floorboards and replace with 25mm WBP, bracing any joints that fall across joists with noggins. I tend to use this method if I'm building a wet room and require a seamless floor but it can be a nuisance trying to cut back all the boards around the perimeter especially if the are supporting block walls.

3/ If the existing floorboards are nice and solid then glue and screw aquapanel directly to them. (or simply screw plywood directly to them for a porcelain or ceramic tile.

N.B.

The glue under the aquapanel is not there to adhere the two surfaces together, the screws are doing that, it's actually there to take up any voids a remove all localised movement, a useful side effect is it actually glues it very well also, this gives a similar rigidity to screwing 18mm ply over floorboards but with a smaller height increase.

At no point do you need to use marine ply, WBP is fine.

Aquapanel thermal is not structural, so if your using underfloor heating and decided to use this, it has to be added to any of the above options and does replace any of the reinforcement.

I too am considering laying ceramic tiles on my bathroom floor, assuming the floorboards are sound, how thick does the aquapanel need to be??

In my previous house I layed 6mm ply over the floorboards befor tiling...I never had any problems.

Thanks for any response.

Aquapanel only comes 12mm in thickness.

There is a product called Aquapenl thermal, don't use this, its an insulator not reinforcement.