Laying floor tiles over vinyl tiles ?

[TonyB]

I have some tiling questions ? I'm going to lay ceramic/porcelain floor tiles in my small downstairs cloakroom. The house was built in the 80's, and the existing floor covering is hard (brittle) vinyl tiles, with a hard black bitumen like adhesive onto a concrete floor. Can I lay the tiles onto the existing vinyl tiles or will I need to strip the vinyl tiles and adhesive back to the concrete ? If I do this will I need to prepare the concrete in any way before laying the new tiles ?

Thanks for any help Tony

[Stuart Noble]

If by going back to the concrete you can avoid a step at the doorway, I'd strip it all off (a lovely job). That's probably not the case though, so I'd probably just slap them down on the vinyl. However, choose the adhesive carefully. IME pva/acrylic sticks very well to vinyl but cement based products may not.

[NT]

The waterproof tile adhesive I used stuck remarkably well to vinyl tiles. I'll check the brand later.

NT

[Tim W]

TonyB wibbled on Saturday 10 October 2009 12:47

Ideally you'd grind the bitemen adhesive off, but realising that may not always be practical (I did, but the grinder made a *hell* of a mess - luckily I had an empty house to do it in).

But, as vinyl *may* accept tile adhesive, you would be best advised to ring BAL, Mapei or another reputable adhesive maker. They all have technical contact numbers on their websites and Mapei are IME very helpful.

I would imaging that you would require a flexible adhesive - but you also need to make sure it will actually stick.

Failing that, there may be a smoothing underlayment (self levelling compound) that could be persuaded to stick, but again a phone call to the likes of Ardex or F Ball would be a good idea - don't just sling down something random from B&Q without checking with the manufacturer.

HTH

Tim

[Tom]

Hi Tony,

I had the same problem about a month ago in our cloakroom. Our house is circa 1910 and had really dodgy vinyl tiles stuck on a tacky bitumen surface. I took the tiles of (Much swearing) leaving as little bitumen as possible, then applied a coat of 50/50 pva water, let it dry and lay a screed of Wickes Pro Latex floor compound over the top. The result was remarkably impressive giving a sound floor to tile on using Unibond Floor adhesive for concrete floors. I was lucky as the floor in cloakroom was about 20mm lower than the hallway so it could take the screed. I was tempted to tile over the vinyl tiles in the first place but reading up on the net i thought it best to go back to as far as possible. Given the small area it was not to much of a problem.

Good luck!

Tom

[NT]

Dunlop waterproof walltile adhesive, from screwfix. It took hammer, chisel and acid to get it off some vinyl.

NT