Tiling over wooden floor

[stephen.hull]

Can you successfully apply stone tiles over floorboards?

Stephen.

[The Medway Handyman]

In theory yes, using a special adhesive.

Inpractice IME its difficult to do properly. The sub floor has to be 110% rigid. That means IMO a layer of 18mm ply screwed down every 150mm into the joists.

If you do this & follow the adhesive instructions you have a fair chance it will work.

However I come across many instances where it hasn't worked. Not saying it can't be done, just saying it has to be done 100% right.

Last job I did was a newly laid 18mm grade 5 chipboard floor. I extra screwed it down every 100mm into the joists, PVA primed it & used a flexible adhesive. Two months on I've had to re grout one tile where it had started to crack a little.

[Rod]

At the end of some refurb progam the other day, they had the people in for first view ("would you buy it?"). They walked over a ceramic floor and immediately I assumed that it was actually ceramic over chip or ply. The noise level and character was distinctly unpleasant. It would have been acceptable in a bathroom or WC - but not a kitchen/diner where it has a chance to echo around and compete with radio/cooking/chatter/etc.

Do you find this in reality? Or is it just unimportant in the precise location? Or does your fixing methid overcome this adequately?

(I am well aware that even ceramics fixed to concrete will echo a lot - usually too much to my ears. But it was particularly the noise of feet/shoes on the floor that I noticed.)

[The Natural Philosopher]

That depends a lot on what else is in the kitchen. Once you sart adding curtains and in fact all sorts of other stuff into a room, it loses or at least transforms the characteristic reverberation. All hard floors - wood, tiles, whatever..are very 'clacky' with hard shoes.

The thing to do is to have a stiff enough floor to take the fundamemtal resonant frequencies up high enough so it doesn't 'boom'.

Generally that means making it stiff enough to not crack the tiles as well.

I had a bit worry in one barthroom built over very shallow and flexy oak beams.

I finally solved that by boxing in the bath using structural ply for bath ends, screwed very firmly to the wall and floor ~ (19mm chip) - that braced one whole section: the bath side was similarly massive 19mm MDF screwed hard to the floor and the bath ends. A massive shower tray on 19mm ply base screwed to the bath end made that whole side of the room a unitary structure. The span of the floor that was left was narrow enough to allow thick tiles in a thick adhesive base to make a very fair job of stiffening. The boom from the floor has completely gone.

I have a 9" thick suspended concrete floor at ground level. It resonates a surprising amount.

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[stephen.hull]

Thanks for that, The floor is in a bungalow built during the 1950's, the floorboards are thick and solid with no movement when walked on, the feel underfoot is like walking on a solid concrete floor, unlike the feel you get on modern new builds especially with chipboard (weetabix) constructions.

The intended tiling of the floor is in a small kitchen 10x6ft, I don't really want to use vinyl or laminate.

Stephen.