heavy tiles: floor and wall loading issues?

Hi all

I am thinking of tiling the walls of an upstairs bathroom with ceramic tiles, from floor to ceiling. The tiles that I have in mind are 8mm thick, and hence weigh about 20 kg/m2. I'm wondering if I might run into issues with:

(i) The tiles being too heavy for the walls. For example, could the tiles pull away from the wall, or could the wall buckle under the weight of tiles? About two-thirds of the wall-area comprises Paramount partitions (i.e. a cardboard honeycomb core sandwiched between ~11mm plasterboard). The rest of the wall area is the external wall of the house (i.e. plasterboard with dot-and-dab).

(ii) Floor loading. The wall area is about 20 m2, hence there would be

400 kg of tiles. Presumably much of this weight would bear on the timber floor joists underneath the bathroom.

Any advice appreciated!

thanks,

Julian

Think of a tiled wall as a wall built out of tiles, which is prevented from buckling by some slender studwork behind it.

There is almost no load at all transverse to the tiles.

Really? Are they made of depleted uranium? 8mm means what, 125 tiles to the meter? so you are saying the stone is 125 x 20 k=5 tonnes per cu m? seems high.

Even granite is only about 2.75 tonnes per cu m. The heaviest quarry tiles only just make that...

Still 400kg is not very much. about 5 adults. get the whole family into the bathroom and see if it flexes..

remember a tiled wall is rigid..it won't distribute the load evenly, and may be regarded as a beam it its own right supported by whichever pints of load bearing structure it crosses.

And something must be holding the bathroom up. A bath full of water weighs in the region of 100kg+