Help with my tiling schedule

[milbo1990]

Hi,

My girlfriend and I are in the process of buying our first house which needs a lot of work doing to it. I'm trying to build up some sort of informal specification/bill of quants. to act as a shopping list for us and would appreciate a some suggestions on tiling.

There will be two main areas which will be tiled; first floor wetroom (floor and walls) and kitchen floor. There will be splashbacks too, but I've already got that sorted.

My main criteria are;
-Preferably less than £25/m2
-Suitable for a wetroom with suitable slip-resistance, quite a light colour as it's a small room
-Kitchen floor tiles are to be very durable, preferably suitable for outdoor use too.

It would be nice to have a floor tile in the kitchen which we could use outside too, as we'll be fitting bi-folding doors and I'd like to use matching tiles on the patio to make the space look bigger. For this reason, I'm guessing a natural stone (slate/flagstones) might be the most suitable, but it would be optimistic for under £25/m2 - does anyone have any suggestions???

 

[texasholden]

You might want to get yourself a cuppa before you start reading this one!

Some tiles will have a slip resistance rating (natural stone / flagstones will not because they are not consistent). Basically they put a block onto the tile and then find out to what degree they need to incline the tile to cause the block to slip. This results in an R rating. R9 rated tiles are normally fine for wet areas (bathroom floor). R10 (even less slippy) are often required for commercial wet areas (swiming pools etc). A decent tile shop will be able to provide samples of R9, R10 or even R11 (super rough) tiles. However, if you're going to have a wet-room, then it is likely you'll need a small format tile to follow the gradient to the drain - in which case the joints themselves will probably provide adequate grip for you even when very wet.

Durability isn't a measureable characteristic. However tiles can be tested for hardness (resistance to scratching) and the industry recognised measure is the PEI number. The hardest tiles will be PEI 5 but PEI 4 is still pretty hard.

You might also want a tile which is durable in the sense that it doesn't need treatments to be stain resistant or impermeable (Class 2-5 with 5 being the most stain resistant). And if you're gonna put them outside then they need to be frost resistant.

Not all tile manufacturers will pay for the relevant agencies to test their tiles, so the non-branded tiles often don't have ratings in these areas - but you can do scratch / stain tests yourself using a nail and some red wine.

If it was me i would go for a flagstone (30mm thick if you want it to be frost resistant) or porcelain large format tile in the kitchen / outside, but make sure the porcelain is frost resistant rated (most are) a then do the stain / scratch / slip tests yourself.

With regards to upstairs I would want a small format tile (10cm sq) which will not be stained from the dyes in shampoos etc - so again I'd go for a porcelain which didn't stain having had red wine on it overnight. You could use natural stone (which will need sealing to prevent water ingress) but these can discolour over time and may suffer if you use an aggressive cleaner to remove mould / limescale etc.

I hope this helps!