You way overstate the situation. I don't have a cement slab, but I
have a cement floor in the basement. Same thing as a slab from the
pov of floor covering, right?
The vinyl tile in the den/club-room is 34 years old and in perfect
condition except for the ones along the edge near the laundry room,
which got wet***** When they were 24 years old, they were in
perfect condition too.
**And two tiles at the base of the stairs which eventually got
damaged when I threw hard heavy things down the stairs and hit the
tiles.
***If you had said tile will get wet in a bathroom, I wouldnt' have
argued with you, but you say it's bad for the whole basement.
For vinyl sheet, one can either use quarter round to keep the edges
from curling up, or use adhesive near the edges, or conceivably for
all I know, nothing is necesssary.
He only "overstates" it because there is no need to spend $3.50/sf. It
can be done for less (or more). A "cement" (it's not "cement", rather
"concrete") floor *is* a concrete slab.
You somehow think a bathroom floor won't get wet? Sheesh!
Ceramic probably isn't appropriate here, either, but it's not the
bathroom, under discussion.
I agree with him. For a finished basement floor, I'd probably not use
ceramic either but I certainly wouldn't use vinyl.
For a bathroom? No, it should be some sort of ceramic or maybe
natural stone. If it's in a cold climate and the bathroom is used as
a full bath (the tub or shower is really used), perhaps some heat in
the floor, too.
On Mon, 02 Sep 2013 12:34:44 -0400, snipped-for-privacy@attt.bizz wrote:
Some would say that a slab has to rest near the surface and have the
entire house above it. But I gave Hot-Text the chance to agree that
from the pov of floor covering, that distinction doesn't matter. I'm
glad you don't think it matters either.
Hot-text was making recomendations for the whole basement. I would
think you would have deleted this line after you read the footnote
below.
Yes, for a bathroom.
Give me a break. It's clear the guy doesn't want to spend much money
or put in much work. Some of the folks here are always recommending
things that cost much more than others want to spend.
Thje floor is in place already. The last thing this guy is going to
do is tear it up to put in heat. And again you're spending time and
money he doesn't want to spend.
If his bare feet are cold, or he's taken a shower, that's what bath
rugs are for.
For me, I will never have the ceramic type of tile in a house again. I
guess that I was too lazey to reseal the tile, but could not seem to keep
the mold from forming in the spaces between the tile.Had to really stay
after it to keep the mold out. That floor had tiles about 1 inch square and
the tub/shower had about 4 inch tiles.
When I moved several years ago I remodled the bathroom. Had a good quality
of sheet goods put down on the floor and a shower installed that was made
out of the plastic stuff that passes for man made marble.
Fix the problem not the symptom. I haven't had a mildew problem in
the last three houses. The one before had problems with mildew on the
bathroom walls and ceiling but none on the tile or grout. Fix the
water problem and mildew is a thing of the past.
No, a "house built on a slab" indicates that there is no basement but
that doesn't change the fact that a basement floor is a "concrete
slab".
You just can't read. Try again.
"Small basement bathroom (5' x 8') on concrete slab, new
********
construction."
<snip> >>>For vinyl sheet, one can either use quarter round to keep the edges
Dumb. Really dumb.
Tile isn't at all expensive, particularly on a concrete floor and it
will last a *lot* longer.
Irrelevant. It can be put in the mud under the tile. It doesn't
change the issue, though. Vinyl is a *poor* choice for bathroom
floors. It isn't a good choice anywhere in the home, IMO.
That's my choice, too but other people have different opinions. Some
like warm tootsies.
Once you get your head out of your ass, perhaps. However, it's not
evident that's happened yet.
With a statement of fact? It *is* dumb. Perhaps it wasn't fifty
years ago but it certainly is today. Tile is cheap and the tools
don't cost a fortune. This is a udoit group.
> quality of sheet goods put down on the floor and a shower installed that
> was made out of the plastic stuff that passes for man made marble.
I have 21 bathrooms, all of which have ceramic tile on the walls around
the bathtub/shower, and I have less mildew in all 21 bathrooms put
together than you'll find in most single family homes.
You minimize mildew problems primarily by minimizing the amount of grout
you have. I like to use 6X8 tiles because they're the largest tile that
you can comfortably hold in one hand, while you back butter it with thin
set with the other hand. By using 6X8 tiles in the landscape
orientation instead of the more usual portrait orientation, not only do
you get a custom look to your tiling, but you also reduce the length of
grout line you have to seal to 1/3 of what it would be if you'd use 4
1/4 by 4 1/4 inch tiles. So, when the time comes to re-seal the grout,
the job takes two days instead of a week.
You should also be aware that no all grout sealers are equal. Most
places will peddle silicone based grout sealers. The problem is that
when you want to reseal your grout, nothing will stick to a silicone
based grout sealer, not even more silicone based grout sealer. So if
you use a silicone based grout sealer, you're limiting the life span of
your tiling because you can't effectively re-seal the grout lines to add
more protection without stripping off the old silicone based grout
sealer first, and that's a lot of work. ACRYLIC grout sealers don't
have that problem, and I've been using nothing but acrylic film forming
grout sealers on all the bathroom tiling in my building since 1986. In
fact, I'm going to be resealing a bathroom in an empty suite tomorrow.
The last time that bathroom grout was sealed according to my records was
1998, or about 15 years ago.
The above paragraph applies to "film forming" grout sealers which simply
form a clear plastic film over the grout. Penetrating sealers
supposedly last longer, but my experience with them is that I got
conflicting indictions as to whether the penetrating sealer was being
absorbed properly when I tried to apply it, so I lost confidence in
them. When it comes to having mildew growing rampant all over my
bathroom tiling, I much prefer a simpler technology that I fully
understand than a newer technology that I don't. That way, if there's a
problem, I can solve it myself.
Mildew growth on your bathroom painted walls and ceilings is NOT usually
a water problem. It's a paint problem. If you use a paint made
specifically for use in bathrooms, it will have a powdered mildewcide
added to it which gradually leeches out of the paint film fast enough to
kill any mildew spores that land on the paint but slow enough to keep
the paint mildew-free for a long time. Zinssers guarantees their
PermaWhite Bathroom paint will keep your painted bathroom walls free of
mildew for 5 years, but if it only lasts that long, you got a defective
can of paint, or you shot yourself in the foot by putting on only a
single coat. If I've taken the trouble to mask off my tiling, my door
frame, my toilet paper dispenser and my light fixture, then I'm gonna
put 3 or 4 coats of bathroom paint on to ensure I have a HUGE reservoir
of mildewcide on that wall which will gradually leech out, giving me 15
to 20 years of mildew free; not just 5. After all, once all the masking
tape is on, how much work is it to put on another coat or three if you
do all your corners with a 3 inch roller and the walls and ceilings in
that tiny room with a 10 inch roller. Hint: Getting the bathroom ready
for the first coat takes a full day of removing towel rods and taping
off what you can't remove from the walls and ceilings. Putting on the
1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th coats and removing all that masking tape can be
done the following day.
"Man made marble" is called "Corian" if it's made by DuPont, and other
trade names depending on who made the stuff. It's actually a thick slab
of Plexiglas to which natural clays have been added during manufacture
to give it a "marbled" appearance. So, man made marble is really just
adulterated Plexiglas. Never use nail polish remover at a Corian
bathroom counter top. That's because nail polish remover is acetone,
and Plexiglas is polymethyl methacrylate. Acetone dissolves polymethyl
methacrylate. The good thing is that polymethyl methacrylate is a soft
enough plastic that you can polish damage out of it much more easily
than you could with a granite counter top.
I've never used "bathroom" paint, only alkyd semi for
baths/kitchens/doors/trim. We had a very mildewy shower stall until we
put a timer on the exhaust fan. Previously, it operated on/off, and if
we left it on, we would forget to go back to turn it off. At the same
time, we had some pin-hole defects in the 35 y/o grout (neighbors in our
condo, all with same tile jobs, had major wall damage due to
deteriorated grout) so I regrouted the 1x2" grout. Don't remember what
sealer I used. Made a point to leave the shower curtain open on both
ends, and spread out loosely, which allows better ventilation.
I'm not arguing with your method, but my logic tells me that mildew is
far less likely to grow on a smooth, dry surface. Alkyd is pretty
impermeable, so a bleach wash/rinse prior to painting is good insurance
to not paint OVER mildew.....it is the universal method of painting
exteriors in Florida where mildew grows in about 5 min. without direct
sunlight.
Four coats? If two don't do the job, two more won't help at all.
I've had none in two decades. It's a ventilation or insulation
problem. If those two are done correctly, no mildew. There is no fan
in the main part of the bathroom in my other house and I never use it
in this one. No mildew.
No, you minimize it by making sure the walls/ceiling don't stay wet.
High gloss surfaces help (tile is about as mildew resistant as it gets
- unfortunately, grout isn't so good).
Tile is done for aesthetics. ISTM that 6x8 landscape will look odd. Is
"Subway tile" 2:3 or 1:2? I prefer larger tile (12x12 or even 18x18)
but the room has to be big enough to handle it.
Back-butter? Whatever for?
If there is sealer there, why would you want to add more? If there
are holes in it, then it'll take more sealer.
I've always used the penetrating type.
It's *ALWAYS* a water problem. No water => no mildew.
If that were the case, mildew would never form on grout, or tile (it
rarely does).
<snip> >"Man made marble" is called "Corian" if it's made by DuPont, and other
Huh? Why would I ever use acetone on Corian and what does either have
to do with mildew? OTOH, I would never install Corian, so...
if it was my basement bathroom
I would go with natural stone
it would look good on that
cold slab of concrete
But it matter
A slab can be 1'x 1' x 1"
it call a 1' slab
be it above the house or
below the house it will always be
a 1' concrete slab
true
But where the surface of
the concrete slab is always matter
Would you put vinyl Sheet or vinyl Tile
on a surface of the concrete slab
above the house
You know we call it
the Roof
Now a basement bathroom
is below the house
not in the house
Now I know you not doing
to roof the basement floor
is it matter and always will
Yes the whole basement
Not the whole house
Quality control
the den/club-room is in the house and above ground "right"
Not in same Environment as a basement or roof
it's ok he spending time
and money in about two year
to tear it up and put new floor
For Quality control all surfaces
That's "expensive" stuff. I've seen decent looking stuff at the BORG
for as little as $1/safe.
I have it in two bathrooms and the laundry (the other two baths are
ceramic - don't know why the builder did that). All three need to be
replaced (none are on a slab). The house is only six years old. Vinyl
is crap for bathrooms.
On Sun, 1 Sep 2013 07:07:04 -0700 (PDT), Ivan Vegvary
For a bathroom? No question; tile, ceramic style. It's not hard to
install (it's a lot of work but it's not difficult). It's the *only*
flooring for a bathroom.
IMO, sheet vinyl is, by far, easiest to install. I have never seen
vinyl tiles that looked good, and those with pre-applied adhesive stick
once they touch the floor. I seemed to recall that sheet came in 6'
widths, so did a google search. Lowes here sells it, not very
expensive. If sheet is difficult to install, then you probably don't
want to consider ceramic, which would be a great choice. Gotta make sure
the concrete is without lumps or ridges.
Nonsense. Ceramic tile is a piece of cake, particularly on a surface
that's already prepared (concrete floor). It can be somewhat more
work if the floor isn't stable enough but a concrete slab is easy.
That's the way I feel about most DIY. I'd go broke doing the work for
a living but I I'll do it because it's fun, and I can do a better job
(spend more time, buy better materials, etc.) than I can afford
otherwise. One of the things I won't do (anymore) is roofing. Too
much work and *NO* fun.
You can wipe the walls down with a towel after a shower in your own
home, but how does that help if you're a landlord and your tenants don't
bother doing that after they shower? And, most tenants in my building
don't know what the bathroom ceiling fan is even for.
> thin
When I tile walls, what I'll do is lay out tiles on the floor both end
to end and side to side with plastic grout spacers between them. That
way, I can measure my wall and know exactly how many tiles wide and how
many tiles high I'll be doing in each sitting. I like to do it that way
so that I get regular breaks every 15 to 20 minutes during which I don't
have any thin set sitting uncovered on the wall and drying up on me. I
will mark off the area of the wall I'll be tiling, and then spread thin
set on that area of the wall. Then I back butter each tile and press it
into the thin set that's already on the wall.
That way, it doesn't matter if the thin set on the wall skins over while
it's waiting to be covered by tile, the moisture of the fresh thin set
on the back of the tile will reactivate the skinned over thin set on the
wall, and the two will stick as well as if I had pressed fresh wet thin
set into fresh wet thin set.
Without back buttering the tiles, I'd end up pushing dry tiles into thin
set that's already skinned over, and the result would be tiles that
aren't sticking well to the wall. By back buttering the tiles, I avoid
that problem completely so that the last tile I set in that bed of thin
set sticks as well as the first one.
> usual portrait orientation, not only do you get a custom look to your
> tiling, but you also reduce the length of grout line you have to seal to
> 1/3 of what it would be if you'd use 4 1/4 by 4 1/4 inch tiles.
Not at all. Whenever I show a suite where I've tiled the bathroom with
6X8 tiles in landscape mode, I often get people saying things like
"Cool!", or "I like that." It's just that you so seldom see rectangular
tiles installed in landscape mode that seeing it done that way gives it
a "unique" look right off the bat, and people like that. It immediately
dawns on them that whomever did that tiling had more than an amateur's
level of experience doing that kind of work, and that helps me rent
apartments. People like the idea of a landlord that's also an
accomplished DIY'er because it means that the building will be well
maintained and they won't have to wait for a month to get a leak fixed.
> add
You're thinking of a penetrating sealer.
Film forming sealers form a plastic film over the surface of the grout,
just like paint. The shower spray will gradually erode that film so
that at some point it will be necessary to apply more sealer to restore
the waterproof film over the grout. Silicone based grout sealers stick
well to grout, but nothing sticks well to them, not even another coat of
silicone based grout sealer. So, if you use a silicone based grout
sealer, and you start to notice mildew starting to grow on the grout,
it's because the sealer has been eroded in those areas that the mildew
can grow into the porous surface of the grout where it's hard to remove.
In that case, you have three options; apply more silicone based grout
sealer and hope for the best, strip off the old grout sealer with
acetone and put on a brand new coat of grout sealer, or start cleaning
the mildew off the bathroom tiling with bleach.
In my humble opinion, silicone based grout sealers should be taken off
the market because the only people that use them are tiling contractors,
and people who naively trust that their tiling contractor knows which
products work best.
I use acrylic grout sealer on all my bathrooms, and not only will new
acrylic grout sealer stick well to old acrylic grout sealer, but having
a film of acrylic grout sealer makes the bathroom ceramic tile really
easy to clean. I pour some phosphoric acid based toilet bowl cleaner
into a 10inch paint tray and use a 10 inch wide nylon brush on a 2 foot
long windshield washing squeegee pole to scrub the walls with phosphoric
acid. The phosphoric acid cuts through soap scum like a hot knife
through butter, but won't harm chrome, and it won't eat the grout
because of that film of acrylic plastic between the acid and the grout.
Then I spray the ceramic tiling down with a spray gun hooked up to the
250 psi pump on my carpet shampoo'er, and then vaccuum squeegee the
water off the ceramic tiling, ceiling and floor with my Taski "Vertica"
tool, which is basically a rubber squeegee you can connect a vaccuum
hose to. (I normally have my carpet shampoo'er in an empty apartment
cuz I typically shampoo the living room carpet with it, so I also use
it's pump and wet suction to clean the bathroom ceramic tiling.)
> usually
I meant that mildew growth on bathroom walls and ceilings is not a
problem with water leakage out of a plumbing pipe or the result of a
roof leak. Yes, you need water to have mildew, but mildew growth won't
be a problem in bathrooms where people have baths instead of showers.
The reason for this is because people use bar soaps in the bath and
shower. Bar soaps are made with vegetable oils such as Palm and Olive
oil (from which the Palmolive Company gets it's name. Vegetable oils
are a food source for various kinds of fungi, including those that we
call "bathroom mildew". While you also use bar soap when having a bath,
you don't get the bar soap all over the walls and ceilings, which is
what happens when you wash that bar soap off your body with a spray of
water from a shower head.
In my experience, I can always tell when a tenant is having showers
instead of baths by the growth of mildew on the silicone around the tub,
on the grout lines of the ceramic tiling (cuz soap scum will accumulate
there). The mist from the shower sticks to all those areas, depositing
soap residue in all those places and mildew feeds on that soap because
it's made of natural vegetable oils.
> made specifically for use in bathrooms, it will have a powdered
> mildewcide added to it which gradually leeches out of the paint film
> fast enough to kill any mildew spores that land on the paint but slow
> enough to keep the paint mildew-free for a long time.
Mildew grows especially thick on ceramic tile grout, but only if that
tiling is around a shower. I take baths. I've had maybe 3 showers in
25 years. There is no mildew on any of the ceramic tiling in my
bathroom, and it's entirely because there is no food (namely vegetable
oils) on the ceramic tiling in my bathroom for the mildew to eat.
Nothing can survive without food.
But, as soon as you get someone in that bathroom having showers with bar
soap, then the mildew will start to grow right away, if not on the grout
lines because they're sealed, then on the silicone caulk around the tub
or shower.
You can buy skin cleansers that don't have any vegetable oils in them.
Most drug stores sell Cetaphil and/or Aquanil, and both of these
advertise themselves as "lipid free skin cleansers". Loosely speaking,
a "lipid" is a triglyceride, which is what a vegetable oils and animal
fats are. So, by using a lipid free skin cleanser like Cetaphil or
Aquanil, you can still have showers without mildew growing all over the
place because the mist that gets all over the walls and ceilings won't
contain any food to sustain mildew growth and reproduction.
Essentially, by switching from bar soap to a lipid free skin cleanser,
you can prevent mildew growth in your bathroom by denying the mildew a
food supply.
especially thick on ceramic tile grout, but only if that
That probably explains why I had so much trouble with the mildew and mold in
a tiled bathroom in my other house. With 4 people taking 99% showers with
that bars soap, the mildew had plenty of 'food'.
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