Hi, my husband has given me the awful job of taken off the tile adhesive from the back of ceramic tiles. He's taken the tiles off the bathroom wall, and wants to reuse them. He's updating the bathroom so thankfully it's only about 40 tiles. Any ideas what's the quickest solution to this dreaded task? I would be grateful for your advise
Jen
Unless it's special tile adhesive designed for constant submersion just leave the tiles in a bucket of water for a few days and it should then just rub off with a cloth. You will have to let the tiles dry before reusing them though or they won't stick properly.
If that doesn't work you could try a surform or some thing like that but you would need to be careful that you don't chip the edges of the tile.
Graham
Jen wrote:
If it were me I'd sneak out and buy 40 new ones...
Husbands? If I were a) female & b) the OP, I'd be inclined to look for a new one!
------------- I have tried but they have been discontinued. They are nice tiles, they were only put on about 5 years ago and still haven't dated. Oh well I'll have to get the elbow crease out.. ah.
If it's ordinary tile adhesive rather than a cement based one leave them soaking in water for a day or so and it will wipe off.
Drop them in a bucket of brick acid.
Brick acid will kill the cement based ones. Its the waterproof or epoxy ones that are a bugger..
I've done this before, but only for valuable tiles like Victorian encaustics, or for the decoratives inset into a cast iron fireplace. For plain old wall tiles where you _can_ just buy more of them, then don't be so silly.
Remove the adhesive by soaking it for a few days in slightly acidified water. Then use a Plasplugs "tile file" (an open mesh, not a solid bar - coupel of quid from B&Q) to remove the softened adhesive.
Don't use any concentrated acid. If they're anywhere near old enough to be worth recycling, then there's a risk that existing and invisible crazing on the surface will light up in glorious Technigrimecolour if you do.
If they've been laid on bitumen, then &deity; help you. I used cyclohexane and _gentle_ warmth. Knowing how flammable cyclohexane is will tell you how hard work this was.
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