Which Bal adhesive for Porcelain Tiles on various backgrounds

Hi All,

First post. I have had a search around and answered a few questions, but I have a few more I was hoping people may be able to help me with.

I am tiling my family bathroom. I will be using porcelain tiles that are 30x60 cm on the wall and floors. I am a experienced DIYer and have used porcelain tiles on the floor before, but not on walls or in a bigger room (although this is only 2.3m x 2.4m, so not huge). Planning to use Bal adhesives, but not sure if one adhesive will work for all or if I need two or three different ones!

Start with the floor. It is upstairs, so floorboards which are sound and level. My plan is to overboard with 12mm ply and then use underfloor heating. The heating kit comes with primer. If I use that can I then tile straight over onto the ply and which adhesive?

The walls are more complex! The walls are these preformed platerboard with sort of carboard squares inside. They are not great and there is a little movement in the largest wall. I can see no way to sort this, but the last tiles were on for 30 years and seemed to cope. The wall that moves most will be behind the toliet, so not exactly where people will be leaning on a lot!

So, for the shower area I have aquapanel on wooden studs on one wall. On the other wall I intend to attach aquapanel directly onto the thin wall and screw into the wooden batton inside the wall. Tiling onto the aquapanel, does it matter what adhesive I use and does the aquapanel need priming?

Finally the rest of the walls are plasterboard, a mix of new and old. Does the new need primed and what adhesive? The old has some rips of the top surface and some old adhesive. Does this need primed or sealed? I can't replace this old stuff as it is the internal wall stuff. I don't want to batton and board as we can't really afford to loose 5cm as the room is tight as it is! I have pulled all the board off the outside wall and I will dot and dab new plaster board to that wall.

Cheers
Iain

Hi Iain and welcome...

A lot of what you have mentioned needs changing to suit BALS guarentee....

We can recommend other products that will suffice but for bal then you will need to ring thier tech line....if you deter from what they say then all is void...guarentee wise..

Not fussed by the gaurantee, just want to know what will work! It is only my house, so if a tile falls of the wall I'll know it cause I did something wrong and I'll not be on the phone to Bal! I just need an idea of priming and which adhesive to use so I can minimise the risk of something going wrong.

I haven't yet bought adhesive, so happy to consider something else. I just got the feeling that Bal stuff is good quality, widely recommended, and I know I can get it locally.

Cheers
Iain

Hi Iain,

My 2c for what it's worth: If the floor boards are nice and solid and screwed down to the joists at 200mm centers then I would personally use a cement board rather than ply. NoMorePly is a 6mm cement board and is a much better substrate to tile onto compared with ply. Even more so in this case as it won't be affected by the moisture and has excellent insulating properties for the UFH (this will not need priming).

The paramount board that has movement in should really come out so you can build a stronger wall. If you don't fancy that then you could remove a segment where the flex is at it's greatest and screw it back in flush with battens - this will reduce the flex greatly.

The large format tiles you are using will need a bagged cement adhesive and needs to be flexible. I would personally use Mapei's Keraquick.
Prime all the plaster based walls with an acrylic primer and try to remove as much of the old adhesive as you can. The aquapanel wont need priming but I tend to prime everything as it's cheap to buy and can be used diluted.

Put some pics up as you do the job as we love that kind of thing on here and you would then get the very best advice - good luck with the project

Guarantee's are usually there because that's the way it will work mate.

Make sure you at least follow their recomendations, even if you don't want the guarantee.

Originally Posted by iaincameron

Hi All,

First post. I have had a search around and answered a few questions, but I have a few more I was hoping people may be able to help me with.

I am tiling my family bathroom. I will be using porcelain tiles that are 30x60 cm on the wall and floors. I am a experienced DIYer and have used porcelain tiles on the floor before, but not on walls or in a bigger room (although this is only 2.3m x 2.4m, so not huge). Planning to use Bal adhesives, but not sure if one adhesive will work for all or if I need two or three different ones!

Start with the floor. It is upstairs, so floorboards which are sound and level. My plan is to overboard with 12mm ply and then use underfloor heating. The heating kit comes with primer. If I use that can I then tile straight over onto the ply and which adhesive?

The walls are more complex! The walls are these preformed platerboard with sort of carboard squares inside. They are not great and there is a little movement in the largest wall. I can see no way to sort this, but the last tiles were on for 30 years and seemed to cope. The wall that moves most will be behind the toliet, so not exactly where people will be leaning on a lot!

So, for the shower area I have aquapanel on wooden studs on one wall. On the other wall I intend to attach aquapanel directly onto the thin wall and screw into the wooden batton inside the wall. Tiling onto the aquapanel, does it matter what adhesive I use and does the aquapanel need priming?

Finally the rest of the walls are plasterboard, a mix of new and old. Does the new need primed and what adhesive? The old has some rips of the top surface and some old adhesive. Does this need primed or sealed? I can't replace this old stuff as it is the internal wall stuff. I don't want to batton and board as we can't really afford to loose 5cm as the room is tight as it is! I have pulled all the board off the outside wall and I will dot and dab new plaster board to that wall.

Cheers
Iain

You will find that paramount board is 1.20m wide and battens were only fixed on the edges of the boards and on floor and ceiling lines which dos'nt leave a lot of area for fixing. Could you try and dot and dab boards over the existing wall and overlap on the joints that allready exist.

hi,use flexi adhesive with porcel bond built in for porcelain tiles

Porcel bond is just polymer additive hydrated into an adhesive..nothing special......

Most rapid sets have small amounts of polymer to help with adhesion to porcleain tiles.. etc....

Just thought i would point that out........so peeps don't get confused by a symbol on packaging...

Originally Posted by whitebeam

You will find that paramount board is 1.20m wide and battens were only fixed on the edges of the boards and on floor and ceiling lines which dos'nt leave a lot of area for fixing. Could you try and dot and dab boards over the existing wall and overlap on the joints that allready exist.

Yep, that sounds like what I have. Would screwing 12mm ply directly to the battons round the edges help, or would that not add significantly to the strength? The wall is only about 2300mm long, so I could lay a single piece on the side. If I dot and dab should I use 12.5mm plasterboard, or is 9.5mm sufficient. What is the min depth of gap that I can leave between the board and paramount board?

Thanks for the suggestion.
Cheers
Iain

Originally Posted by Dave

Hi Iain and welcome...

A lot of what you have mentioned needs changing to suit BALS guarentee....

We can recommend other products that will suffice but for bal then you will need to ring thier tech line....if you deter from what they say then all is void...guarentee wise..

Dave,
Would you be able to point out what needs changing, or am I better phoning Bal directly? I figured phoning a company I will end up with a solution that will last a hundred years, whereas a far easier solution might last 20 years, which would do just fine!! Any pointers about real big issues with what I described are welcome. As my previous post suggests I am particularly nervous about my "flexible" wall! But I don't want to give up too much space in the room as the suite we have bought is a tightish fit!
Cheers
Iain

You usually find that the guarantee meets the standards in the industry. And although it might be fixed solid if you follow their recommendations, you could find it'll fall off next week if you don't.

A wobble in the wall isn't good no matter what brand you use. And fixing porcelain to it wont stiffen it up for sure. Can you not just overboard it or something to give it some rigidity?

I'd give BAL a call personally. Get their techies on it, they'll sort you out.

Originally Posted by iaincameron

Yep, that sounds like what I have. Would screwing 12mm ply directly to the battons round the edges help, or would that not add significantly to the strength? The wall is only about 2300mm long, so I could lay a single piece on the side. If I dot and dab should I use 12.5mm plasterboard, or is 9.5mm sufficient. What is the min depth of gap that I can leave between the board and paramount board?

Thanks for the suggestion.
Cheers
Iain

This method may help you so the board dos'nt sit out to far http://www.british-gypsum.com/pdf/sb...ner_200701.pdf The sealant should available from a builders merchants/larger store of B&Q, you may need to purchace a gun as well, the powdered adhesive could also be an option and use 12.5mm board for strength

Whitebeam is your guy here Iain.....He is a plasterer by main trade and knows what will work regarding sorting that wall out....

Whitebeam, thanks for the link, looks like a decent guide to follow for dot and dab. I will defo follow that for new plasterboard on the outside wall. I think you are suggesting I dot and dab onto the flexi wall with 12.5mm plasterboard. Happy to do that if it is the best solution, but I am still wondering if I can screw plyboard to this wall. I will need to fix quite a few bits like the loo roll holder, a chrome towel radiator and and mirror etc onto this particualr wall. Having a plyboard backing would make this very easy, after drilling holes with one of those nice 365 drill kits. Can you dot and dab plyboard to a wall (that could be a stupid question!!), or would that be better/OK to be screwed?

Thanks all for the comments so far. It has been really helpful to write down what I am doing! As a result of the advice so far I plan to replace all the plasterboard on the external wall and also now realise I have to strengthen the flexi wall. That should give me a good new surface all round I think, except for a small step in where the tiles came off OK and there are not many tiles. So I think I should have a decent surface.

At the moment I am thinking of Bal SPF as a suitable adhesive or Mapei's Keraquick. I guess if both are suitable it will depend what each will cost!

Cheers
Iain