Sawing through tiles on the wall?

Jul 28, 2006 4 Replies

In my rather narrow coal cellar I've got an area which has been tiled to provide a utility space - washing machine etc. The tiles are mounted on plasterboard which is fixed to battons on the wall. I have realised rather late in the day that I may have created ventilation problems under the floor of one of the rooms on the ground floor. The void underneath the floor is only about a foot in depth (the cellar itself doesn't extend under that part of the house. On the external wall of that room there is an airbrick at under-floor level. However, I now realise that the flow of air through this void went through the cellar and out of the coalhole, but my new plasterboard is now in the way.



| | Under-floor void | | | | | Tiles and |_____________________________| | plaster | | board -->| | top to | | bottom | | | | | | Cellar | | | |_________________|


There is no brick behind the top eight inches of the plasterboard wall. The remedy seems to be to put a couple of vents into the the top of plasterboard wall to restore the air flow.



Anyway, getting to the point, how can I do this job neatly? To make the ventillation cut-out through the wall I could drill through the tiles and plasterboard at the four corners of the cut-out. But then I would need to saw through the tile and plasterboard to take out the rectangle. Is that possible? Or any other bright ideas?



============================= Wickes tungsten carbide jigsaw blades (MEDIUM CUT) will do the job perfectly. Wickes No: W 500 960 W.

I suppose other manufacturers make similar blades. Those fromWickes will fit B&D and similar fitting jigsaws.

Cic.

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Buy a Rotozip or Omnisaw and use that?

John.

Small angle grinder with a diamond disc, or a fein multimaster with carbide saw.

All the manual tile saws I've seen are like a coping saw, ie, blade in a frame in front of and behind the cut, and presumably you don't have access for that?

Possibilities...

Drill your 4 corner holes, then chain-drill lots more holes along the 4 sides; hopefully you can break out the middle rectangle without damaging the rest. Clean up the exposed edges with sandpaper/dremel/angle grinder or something.

-or-

Honeycomb the entire area concerned with holes to make a diy vented tile. If it doesn't look right, cover with one of those plastic vents you get to cover airbricks etc.

David

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