The Natural Philosopher wrote:
wrote:
On 30 Jan, 11:20, "Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:
Been tiling the bathroom with large (450 x 300mm) porcelain tiles. Much
of it was tiled before so removing the old didn't leave a perfect
surface.
However...

Did the one wall which is old (100 years) plaster on brick. Some of the
skim came off which I made good before tiling. Fine. Looks great.
Moved on
to another which is plasterboard and skimmed and in excellent
condition -
this one was wallpapered. Did about half and ran out of adhesive. Which
was Homebase 'waterproof' adhesive and grout. Bought at the same time as
the tiles.

Now my closest shed is Wicks and they are rather cheaper than
Homebase so
bought some from them. And this morning while finishing off that wall
all
the tiles fixed with this stuff yesterday fell off. Quite a shock
when the
first one went. The adhesive remained stuck to the tiles and you
could see
it had been flattened where it contacted the wall but had come off clean
as a whistle from the plaster. The ones stuck with the Homebase stuff
are
absolutely solid on the same wall.

I'm obviously going to get the Homebase stuff again - but what's wrong
with the Wicks product? Stored past its best or just no good? And do I
just take it back and complain?

Luckily not one tile was damaged by falling 6 ft or so.

--
*Middle age is when work is a lot less fun - and fun a lot more work.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.


I learned my lesson with Wickes adhesives when laying a 6m x 3.5m
slate floor. The adhesive didn't go off. Now I use BAL adhesives and
grouts and would simply refuse to use anything else. I'm a particular
fan of their flexible wide joint grout. I use it instead of silicone
in places.

T

I use Ardex adhesives for floors, and Evostik water proof for walls. Bal
for grout.

They may not be the best, but after trying a few others they were the
first ones I came to that actually could be relied upon. Neither are cheap.

I gave up on 'cheap' after many bad experiences.



My experience of Wickes ready mixed products is varied. Their plaster
and filler seem to be of the lightweight type, which makes them cheap
and easy to use, but they're not particularly "sticky" IYSWIM. I wonder
if their adhesive is just a variation on their other tub products.
A wall tile should become immovable after about 5 minutes, and you know
the adhesive has bitten. Once that happens I've never had one
subsequently fall off. The Wickes stuff has obviously not been able to
cope with the porosity of the wall, which is a pretty poor show for a
tile adhesive.