Barnboy

Our floor tiling had to be pulled up and we're still waiting for it too be re-laid, so the kitchen is still in storage. We decided to not to got down the oak worktop route and are now going to go for quartz. Thanks @olley and @Mike The laser will definitely be out and I'll set a datum from the highest point of the floor and then fix a battern for teh wall units. I've already marked datums for the tilers to work to as their 1st round of tiling had a nice slope across the front of our bifolds where it was obvious to a blind person.

I'd go Marmox, they do various thickness', are waterproof, pretty strong and have a good key for tiling on to.

Thanks all when my tiles arrive I will pass this info on.

Where you tile through an internal doorway how tight do you tile against the door lining ?

@nod Are these the type of rubber door joints?

I'm going to have my ground floor tiled soon and need to let the tilers know what expansion gaps I want then to leave. I've got 65m² over 3 rooms so was going to get then to fit some expansion joint strips in each of the doorways and a 6mm perimeter gap, does this sound correct? They're modular porcelain tiles onto an anhydrite heated screed. What about at my external wooden doors, do you leave the same gap as at the wall junctions and fill with a good bead of silicone?

I understand that the longer you leave it before sanding then the harder it is to sand and the laitance seals the top of the screed and stops it drying. These screeds dry from the top down so they can look dry but still be wet down below. I haven't put any boards down, it's just been left to air, whilst I was plasterboarding I had a stack of boards on bearers laid down, the bottom of the stack was damp and this was a good 2 months after the screed had been poured.

I had an anhydrite screed poured at the start of October. All the info I have found has lead me to give it great care. What I have been told is, after 24hrs start giving it good ventilation, after 7 days give it a sand with a proper floor sander/ grinder to remove the laitance, you'll see it on the surface. I hired a grinder as the floor contractor went over it with a sander but I think he was being chased by Usain Bolt as he hardly touched the surface. You can turn your ufh on after 14 days and use that to help dry it out. I left ours 5 months before turning the heating on and couldn't believe the amount of moisture still coming out of it. I followed the info for tehnal shocking the floor by running my ufh later on, starting at 25⁰c and increasing by 5⁰c per day until at operating temp, keeping it att his temp for 7 days before slowly decreasing it by 5⁰c per day. I've now got a hygrometer box on the floor and am testing the Relative Humidity of the screed, I need to be 75% or lower, I'm at 74% at the moment. If the screed tests ok in a few places then as we're using Mapei adhesive I'll be priming it with their Primer G diluted, once that's absorbed and dry I'll give it another coat of neat Primer G at 90⁰ to the 1st coat before laying the antifracture membrane. I can't get hold of any gypsum based tile adhesive locally, otherwise I'd use that to lay the antifrac membrane leaving the cement based adhesive isolated from the anhydrite by way of the membrane. I'll also be putting in expansion joints at each doorway. 3 days after turning my heating off I noticed 1 crack in the screed, so they do have movement in them.

My water source has a ph 6.53, so I'm a bit worried about putting this straight in being slightly acidic.

I've looked through a couple of different Mitsi and Samsung manuals to try and find water specs but I haven't found anything in any of them yet. Heetgeek say under 1500 microsiemens for conductivity and ph is best at 8.2. I'm waiting on a some ph drops to arrive but I know from an official water test of my supply 2 weeks ago that the ph was down in the High 6's, What's the best way of raising this ? , I've got some salts for swimming pools but do these work long term, or is there something better to use ?

I'll need to find the info for the ashp that I was thinking of using and see what they spec, I also need to test ph etc as I've only had time to do the tdm so far. Maybe I'll try mixing a bit of tap water back in with some of the filtered water and see how it changes the readings.

@JohnMo I filtered my 1st batch of water yesterday, I ended up buying an aquarium filter system as it was a good price and an easy option. It consists of a pump, sediment filter, carbon filtwr, reverse odmosis filter and di unit. It produced 10ltrs of water per hour with a fair amount of waste water, they say 1:4 ratio, I tested the ppm before at 240ppm and after it comes out at a big 0, I had to retest a couple of times to make sureas I didn't believe the tester but it came up with the same result each time. Now I need to build my temporary Willis setup and get a power source to get it running.

I'm using Macphersons eclipse at the moment at 40% water as per the label, I've just put some tape on a wall I mist coated earlier in the week to see if its bonded. I used Teknos upstairs at the 10% water ratio as was listed for it, that didn't work out of well !

Thanks @JohnMo that's one of the ones I was looking at so nice to know its good.

I'm going to be filling the system with a pump out of cans of water that I've sent through a reverse osmosis and DI filter so I won't jabe mains pressure to set the system pressure, what should I be setting the system pressure to and what pressure prv should I add to my willis setup ? Thanks

Has anyone used a hygrometer and be able to give a recommendation on which one is a good one please ? I have an anhydrite screed that I need to commission and check the relative humidity of. I've been quoted £220 per test, I could need more than 1 if the first test shows the screed is still to damp but looking online there are plenty advertised for less than £200 so I'm thinking I'd be better to buy one and sell on afterwards, I can then carry out multiple test on deifferent areas of the screed to be more confident that it is dry enough to tile. Thanks

@Nickfromwales I need to commission it, its an Anhydrite screed that the spec is to heat it up gently until at running temp and then turn off to let it cool again. It's supposed to force the last of the moisture up to the surface as well as force any expansion cracks to occur. It would also be nice to maybe use it for some heat possibly later on as I have no power to where the ashp will go.

@JohnMo I need to comission my screed and don't have my outside area anywhere near ready for an ashp yet so need to run it on Willis heaters and I might run it on them for rhe winter depending on running costs to save shivering for a couple of months.

I'm needing to run my ufh heating screed before I can get an ashp, I'm going to build a willis setup and I've been looking at all the talk about this on here but still have some questions. * What pressure should I be setting everything to when initially filling it up and maintaining? * Do I need a circulation pump and pre circuit as well as the pump on the manifold. * What size expansion vessel should I be getting, 10% of complete volume? * Do I need a prv ? Sorry I know these sorts of things have been covered before but I've seen all arrangements and can't afford to get it wrong or spend money that I don't need to Thanks

I built all of my non structural studs off of the concrete slab, no trnches required. I laid marmox blocks down 1st as a thermal break followed by a single course of std 4" blocks on edge, I then bolted my sole plates in to the 4" block, you could probably add a soapbar block onto you std block to give you more height. If you lay everything out carefully then by the time you're insulation and screed are down you'll be up to the top of your blockwork with just the sole plate to show.

@Blooda what grade sand paper did you use no to damage the plaster below ?

It was Teknos paint, the literature I found said 10%, I was spraying it and had only ever sprayed vehicles before so watched the videos and had the same finish as them. I thought no more of it until it pulled off with Masking tape, I've had a friend's well know painter have a look and he says the plaster is perfect and it's the water content that's the problem. Searching some more and Teknos UK shownin their own videos that they mix at 40%, why their literature says 10% i don't know, all I do know is that I need to sort it as I'm totally gutted about it.

As in my other thres, it looks like I've put my mist coat on too thick which hasn't adhered brilliantly. I've removed my bathroom ceiling paint quite easily, it scraped off in sheets, my walls are slightly different, they will scrape but are more flakey. What recommendations would people have for removal, I saw something about water and a scotch pad and have also been looking at Peelaway but I haven't tried either yet. Thanks

I've now stripped the bathroom and put a mist coat of Macpherson at 40% water with a roller, what a difference, there was some damage from removing the last lot of paint so I did some filling after the mist coat, when sanding now the paint just feathers out nicely. I'm pretty sure my original problems are down to not watering down the originality coats enough even though I followed the instructions from the manufacturers. My next problem is removing the paint from the rest of my 1st floor walls .... it scratches too easily for my liking. I'll start a new thread for that.

@ProDave How long have you had your worktop fitted and being used ?