Tiling a shower cubicle?

[BIGEYE]

I am about to embark ot tiling my shower cubicle. The cubicle walls meet at

90 degrees. Should I grout the tiles where the walls meet at the corner, or should I use silicon sealer? TIA

[John Stumbles]

I'd grout it, unless you expect movement between the walls

[John]

Do both I always do, and seeing as you will be grouting all the tiles up to the corner anyway, why not!

HTH

John

[Andy Hall]

Silicone sealer.

.andy

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[Lurch]

On Thu, 4 Mar 2004 22:07:05 -0000, in uk.d-i-y "BIGEYE" [e-mail] strung together this:

Silicone, grout will crack with the inevitible movement that occurs.

[Grunff]

Oh. I just did ours, but I grouted. Should I silicone on top? Or wait to see if it cracks then grout?

[Robin Davies]

Silicon (A good quality one) wont discolour (fungus) or crack.

[Andy Hall]

I'd wait.

The only problem is that subtle cracks between corner grout and tiles due to movement can go unnoticed and let water through.

Probably grout will be OK if the walls don't move. Mine are stud walls in the particular corner and there is a very tiny fraction of a mm movement with the seasons.

Also, I've looked at how it has been done in numerous hotels in different countries recently, including where wet rooms are the norm.

Almost invariably, the corner joint is left ungrouted and a bead of flexible silicone run in where the grout would be and not at all proud of the surface or wiped with a finger. Probably applied via a gun with fine nozzle. If the colour match is OK, then the corner is not noticable without looking very closely.

.andy

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[jacob]

I'll be tiling a shower room with stud walls. Whats best for the walls under the tiles - just ordinary plaster board or something more water resistant? Also I thought I would raise the floor level to the height of the shower tray by setting the tray in a marine ply floor with the pipe work underneath. Can I tile onto this or are there better ways of doing it?

cheers

Jacob

[Huge]

Sorry, but fungus will grow on *anything*.

I've seen it growing on the glue used to fasten a multi-element lens together.

[Andy Hall]

Plasterboard is fine, or you can get specific bathroom tile backer boards like Wedi.

WBP ply is adequate for this. I used 18mm for this.

Yes you can. The recipe is to make sure that ply is very solidly fixed. Then prime using a tile primer sealer (Dunlop make one) or PVA diluted by about 25%.

Use flexible adhesive and allow to set per recommendation. followed by flexible grout.

.andy

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[Grunff]

One of these walls is a stud wall (3/4" WBP), while the other is 3/4" WBP fixed to an internal block wall. The two sheets of ply are also glued to each other along the join with generous amounts of nonails.

Hmmm, there's probably a good reason for that :-)

I'll keep an eye on it, but I suspect it will end up siliconed at some point in the future.

BTW, thanks for the lithofin tip, it worked very nicely on the grout.

[Andy Hall]

That's probably OK, then.

You're welcome. I'm glad it was effective.

.andy

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