Bathroom Repair/Aquapanel advice

[James Amor]

Hi,

I'm refitting a bathroom that has had serious water damage to the plasterwork behind the tiles in the shower end of the bath (failed grout.... years ago!). To minimise disruption to the bathroom I was thinking of knocking off the knackered plaster (back to the brick), fixing aquapanel onto the brickwork, and then tiling onto the aquapanel.

My problem is - I've spoken to the manufacturers of aquapanel, who are adamant that it must be applied to batons (drylined), but they have not explained why it can't be done any other way. This causes me a problem as the bathroom is only 2m square, so drylining will take up precious space.

My question is - can anyone see a problem with (or had experience with) using an adhesive and plugs/screws at 400mm centres to fix the aquapanel straight to the brickwork? Aquapanel instructions are to fasten it at 600mm centres, so adhesive plus smaller centres should be belt and braces shouldn't it, or am I missing something?

Thanks in advance for any advice. James

[John Rumm]

Have you thought of simply rendering the wall using a sand cement mortar with some waterproof admixture in it, and then tiling straight onto that?

That is (sort of) what I did with mine, although onto ply rather than brick:

[James Amor]

I had thought about it, but I'd like to keep the amount of time the bathroom is out of use to a minimum and I don't really want to have to wait for render to dry. Also, I'm not sure if I could manage to get it flat enough to tile!

James

[Chris Bacon]

It would only take a week, and tiling onto render as JR suggests is far better than tiling onto gypsum plaster for this situation.

Easy peasy, do it in sections if you really need to, or get a plasterer to do it (after you've done the prep.).

[John Rumm]

The render need not be that thick, so will be dry enough to tile in a couple of days.

Do like I did and cheat ;-)

Stick a batten either side to set the depth, then all you need do is slap the stuff up and rule it off against the battens. Once you are happy that it is level enough (final tweaking can be done at adhesive spreading time), let it go off a bit and pop the battens out, and fill in the gaps.

[Andrew Gabriel]

IME, it will need longer than that. Tile adhesives usually specify the background must be completely dry.

Also, after the first stage cement setting is complete (~12 - 24 hours), you can go over the surface with a wooden or plastic float to "sand" it flat if you didn't manage to lay it down flat in the first place. This won't give you a polished surface (actually, it will destroy any polished surface you have), but it will be fine for tiling over.

[Chris Bacon]

You can also just fill alternate bays, let it go off, remove battens, and fill in in between. As you say, it's a good cheat.

[Vaci]

I've fixed some Aquapanel directly onto a wall like that, and the problem I found was the rather brittle panels developed stress fractures anywhere the wall was even slightly out of true. You need the batons to ensure that the fixing points of the panel are raised away from the wall, and not causing unfixed areas to bow out and snap. However, the batons could be very shallow - just a few mm would do.

It's also easier to plane or pack the batons to get a true line if your wall is wonky, than trying to pack directly behind the aquapanel.

I would agree with fixing the panels at 400mm centres or less; I noticed the panels would flex at 600mm.

Even so, I was more confident in the surface for tile fixing than onto plaster, especially as I was replacing a terrible mess where the old tiles were falling off the soggy, lumpy gypsum coat!

Vaci

[Mr Fizzion]

Hmm, as aquapanel is brittle, can you break it after you have tiled on top of it - for example by tripping and putting your hand out against it to steady yourself, or banging some heavy object against it?

Mr F.

[Lobster]

Hey, cast iron is brittle!

No, providing you've fixed it as per manufacturers instructions it's very strong; any impact such as you describe would have to be huge, far greater than needed to cause similar damage to a plasterboard wall. And if this happened to a tiled plasterboard wall, there would be much more likelihood of it flexing slightly (with concomitant damage to tile adhesive/grout, with leaking ensuing) which is why aquapanel is so much better for showers...!

David

[Vaci]

It seemed to survive ok once it was in place, and I did try and fall through it a few times :)

I guess I should have tried hitting it with a batten. Or a baton. :)

Vaci

[Simon]

Why not use something like these:

of tiles? I fitted out a shower cubicle with them recently and they look really good. They only need to be fitted at the edges, so it didn't matter that the plaster underneath was in a bad way. One side was fitted over a stud wall that had big holes where I'd hacked out the old soggy plasterboard.

[Peter Taylor]

Have a look at WEDI Tilebacker board. It's made of dense styrofoam with reinforced cement surfaces, so it's much lighter and not so brittle as Aquapanel, and it's easier to cut. More importantly, it can be fixed with adhesive direct to bare brick or blockwork.

[Lobster]

What's the cost like versus tiles?

David

[Mr Fizzion]

Wedi board looks nice. However they don't appear to have any online stockists which makes doing any kind of price comparisons very difficult. They also don't answer the phone...some companies seem to want to make things awkward :-(

Mr F.

[Stuart Noble]

I've stuck Aquapanel to brickwork in a kitchen. I used PVA cement mortar as an adhesive with no fixings, and it worked fine, but the 4 x 4s were standing on the ground. I would probably use fixings for anything above that. Heavy stuff. The styrofoam stuff sounds a better bet though. I'll check that out myself.

[Simon]

I guess it depends on the price of your tiles! I think the 2400x900 boards we used for our shower were about =A3120 each. You'd need about

200 100mm x 100mm tiles to cover that area, so that would be about 60p per tile.