floor tiles on floor tiles

[dotto]

Hi guys. The property in question is a first floor maisonette.The existing bathroom floor tiles have been laid on what seems to be 25mm plywood on suspended floor and this friend of mine wants to do up her bathroom and change the floor tiles. 1) If i lay new floor tiles on existing tiles, would the timber joists be able to support the extra weight?2) Or should i try to remove the existing tiles? 3) Is it possible to remove the existing tiles without damaging the plywood or should i lift up the whole lot? Thank you ever so much for your time and your superb pieces of advice.

 

[lancenotalot]

Remove the tiles,I would be suprised/disappointed if you can remove them without damage to ply so work on the basis that you will need to rip the lot out and replace.

 

[dotto]

hi lancenotalot and sorry for the late reply. Actually the existing floor tiles have been laid on quarry tiles. Would it be easy to lift the existing tiles up, keep the quarry tiles as a good solid base and put new tiles down? How doable is it to get rid of the existing tiles and adhesive in order to obtain a nice and level surface for the new tiles to be laid? I would like to avoid to lay the new tiles on the existing tiles because i do not want to end up with three layers of tiles and put the suspending floor under strain. Thank you very much for your time.

 

[iwaters]

The best method would be to rip the lot out down to the joists and repalce with 25mm plywood. That may take some doing. If the existing tiles have been laid well on the quary tiles then removing them and leaving a nice flat surface is going to be very difficult.

I know a lot of people tile over tile but I would personally prefer to strip everything back so you know where you are starting from.

 

[dotto]

Hi iwaters and thanks for answering. I know that the ideal situation would be to strip everything down to the joists but time wise it would take me far too long and i do not have much time at my disposal unfortunatelly and that's why i was asking if i could get a flat surface to work on by removing the existent second layer of tiles only. Could i use a sds drill with a chisel blade to lift up the tiles and remove the adhesive with an angle grinder? Thanks for your advice.

 

[iwaters]

You could try, but I unless you are carefull with the SDS drill you are going to damage the quary tiles. Also then having to grind off all the adhesive is going to take a long time too. I guess there is no harm in trying. If it goes horribly wrong you will just have to rip it out.

As I said I have never done it before but I believe if you are tiling over tiles there is specific adhesive you need to use - perhaps someone else can confirm or deny?

 

[dotto]

Thank you for your time iwaters.