Ceramic onto Quarry Tiles

[cheekychops50]

Please help! We have bought a 100 year old house and want to tile our kitchen floor with porcelain tiles. After reading a few things on the site about uneven floors, concrete floors, bitumen etc, we looked at ours and thought it had Marley tiles, but it's not. We blow torched a small area and discovered it's bitumen. It was around half to one inch thick, with a fibreglass membrane. We have broke it up and lifted it all, to reveal Red Quarry tiles. What should we do now? Can you tile over Quarry tiles? Have we done the wrong thing taking up the uneven bitumen floor? Do we need to lay new concrete floor? Any advice would be really helpful as we are novices and maybe shouldn't have started and left it to the experts!!!!!!

 

[gcol]

If the tiles are secure and level then you can tile onto them. If they ain't level, you want to be using some self levelling compound first. Have a read through this //www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=77709

 

[cheekychops50]

Thanks for the advice, I was worried about taking up the bitumen layer, but we've done it now!
The quarry tiles immediately sweated but then dried out and it did feel colder, but hopefully if we get the right adhesive, it should be okay.
You don't think i'll have a damp issue do you? Or we've taken off the bitumen which may have been acting as a damp course? It was really thick.
We have bought some self levelling compound, so we hope if we whack a bit of that down it should even out the bumps. Should we put a membrane down of some sort?

Anyone help?

 

[gcol]

It's a shame the bitumen wasn't level cause you could've tiled onto that.
I wouldn't worry about damp or a membrane.

 

[cheekychops50]

Thanks GCOL, we'll give it a go! The front room is the same, but we haven't hacked that up yet, but that's like a roller coast ride, dips and bumps! So there's no way we could go over that with ceramics as it's not flat enough, unless we just put self levelling over that?

 

[gcol]

Yes you can normally use self levelling over asphalt - just check the adhesive you have is suitable for this application. Won't you have drastically different levels if you don'y take up the floor in the front room though?

 

[cheekychops50]

Yeah we will, so we reckon strip the whole ground floor floor out? Perhaps there is only concrete not quarry tiles in the lounge and the utility room and under stairs cupboards? We have self levelling compund and the adhesive is in B&Q for £34.99 a bag, it's flexible but was for vinyl or bitumen, can you suggest something different if we are going to use compund? We will only need a rapid set for porcelain?
Sorry to pester you

 

[cheekychops50]

Can i just ask - can you use self levelling over the quarry tiles we have? or do we prime them and use something else?

 

[gcol]

You can if they're secure - follow manufacturers instructions regarding priming.

 

[cheekychops50]

Thanks for your advice, if there's anything else you think of that i might not have asked let me know.
Its hard work all this and its confusing but i dont want to spend loads of money on lovely tiles for them to "pop up".

So, we can use self levelling on the quarry tiles,
prime the quarry tiles as per the adhesive manufacturer?
Then use the adhesive as per the tile maufacturers instructions?

Wish us luck!!

 

[gcol]

Read the post I gave you a link to - there lots of info on that about tiling and adhesive.
With self levelling compound it doesn't "self level" like some people think it would, you need to trowel it out quite even and smooth to give it a chance. Some people think that you just mix it up and pour it in the middle of the room and hey presto, it spreads to fill the whole room and you have a nice smooth level floor. It doesn't work like that.