Stone tiles on wooden floor

dog-man wibbled on Thursday 18 February 2010 12:30

Firstly you'll need a flexible tile adhesive - get a "Class S2" - that's the best - have a look a Mapei's website. You'll also obviously need a flexible grout too.

You get both in three forms, ready to use tub, powered flexible, and powdered non flexible, to which you add an additional liquid in place of some of the water to get the flexible properties.

Now, the underlying floor must be stiff in both directions - tiling onto floorboards wouldn't work so you tend to overline these with ply (18mm for example).

I've seen a number of tiled floors upstairs over wood and it does work if done correctly.

HTH

Tim

Tim Watts :

We have one (not DIY). Limestone tiles (60x40), heating wire, adhesive, thick plywood, floorboards, joists that are probably undersized judging by the rest of the house.

No sign of cracking between the floor tiles after six years, though there are small cracks between the floor and the walls (also limestone).

A lot to be said for getting rid of the floorboards altogether and replacing with the same thickness ply so you don't end up with a step at the doorway. Plenty of new houses have tiles over waterproof chipboard flooring but I think that's frowned on in the trade

....apart from the step up onto the new tiles...

is that the green tinged chipboard variety?

Cheers JimK

Where a threshold strip would probably cope. You might still have to trim the door bottom though.

That's the stuff. Chip plus tile thickness might just equal your current floorboard thickness. I guess if you have a major flood, the floor would have to come up anyway, whether it's ply or chip.

that's what I tiled over. As long as the floor is stiff enough and the adhesive is flexible and you do do the cha-cha on it, its fine..

Plywood sheet over floor boards screwed at 20cm centres. Tiles on top. The adhesive isn't the main problem. Poor quality grout is. I had to rake out and replace the grout the tiler used several times as it kept cracking and coming loose.

Then I found BAL flexible grout and have had no movement or cracking for over three years of use.

Geoff Beale

In my case it was..too thin and not flexible.

Also you MUST keep water out of the wood - swelling will instantly crack tiles off.

the key is to get flexibility down to the minimum. In one room with a springy floor, I ended up with a structural brace of the floor via a bath enclosure - screwed to the floor AND the main structural wall timbers.