I’ve spent the last few days preparing my en-suite floor for tiling.
cut out the 22mm p5 chipboard ready for the shower former.
plumb the 40mm shower waste to a 50mm solvent weld pipe, which was a smaller size than the 40mm solvent weld adapter I had. Turns out compression fittings are able to go from 40mm solvent weld (42mm OD) to 40mm OD shower waste.
add batten and 18mm plywood level with the post joists, prime chipboard with SBR.
Lay 12mm tile backerboard (could have got away with 10mm, but went 12mm to match the walls, less waste) on tile adhesive, and screwed at 300 centres. Install 22mm lussostone former on top of the ply, on a bed of tile adhesive. Use a CT1 like mastic for between the joints for waterproofing.
Lay electric UFH at 100mm centres, just to take the chill off the tiles, not intended as a means to heat the space. set packers to level, ready for self leveller. Foam gaps.
Pour flexible fibre self leveller, trowel to packers, spike roller. (Note, the fibres really gnarl up the roller, need tclean between buckets)
Grout flout tile adhesive over the former to the built in falls. Self leveller would ruin this.
Dry lay marble tiles and cut to falls. I was using an electroplated marble blade in my grinder, meant to reduce chipping, but went blunt real quick and ended up ruining a couple tiles, switched to a turbo blade that was actually pretty good. In the future i wouldn’t use the electroplated blade.
Tonight I’ve just started to tile and really struggled. Because I self levelled the room and not the tray, I built up 7mm up to the edge of the former, but only spread 2mm adhesive over the top wires in the former. That leaves a 5mm deficit, that needs to be made up over the whole former whilst tiling. That’s a lot of adhesive if you add in 3mm adhesive bed going over the rest of the room.
I laid 3/4 of the former, but I ripped 2/4 back up again, I was using rapid set adhesive and i wasn’t able to get it to a standard I was happy with, joints out of line, excessive lippage.
if I were to do it again (I’ve got 2 more formers to do), i’d sacrifice a dead level room, to reduce build up at the edge of the former. The former is designed with built in falls, and by building up, I’ve destroyed this. I could have also gone 2-3mm lower with the self leveller and still achieved a level floor, given 3mm adhesive would still be applied over the top of the bare UFH in places.
what a nightmare!
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