On Tue, 30 Apr 2013 06:44:15 +0200, nestork
wrote:


I'm gonna assume this is your first floor tiling project.

It's all the practical considerations that you're overlooking that would
make such an installation method unworkable. Wire comes on a spool.
It's going to want to curl, even between your staples. That wire is
going to make troweling your thin set onto your tile backer a problem.
And, when you use the cable tie to pull the tile down taught, you're
most likely just gonna pull the wire up rather than the tile down. AND,
with all the extra work you're doing, and the additional time that
takes, your thin set is going to skin over so that it doesn't wet the
back of the tiles you're setting, and your tiles won't be held down
well.

Yes, a very bad idea and quite unnecessary.

I've yet to set my first floor tile, but I've done way more than my fair
share of wall tiling. What you'll find when you set your tile in
thinset is that it'll easily push into the wet thin set up to a certain
point, and then the tile will want to stop. Pushing it any deeper into
that thin set becomes very difficult once the tile wants to stop.

Good description. Floor tiles are even easier than wall tiles.
Gravity is your friend. ;-)

So, instead of your wire/cable tie/dowel idea, what I'd do is simply
trowel the thin set down on your tile backer board holding the trowel at
a comfortable angle so that your thin set is of uniform thickness. Then
push each tile down until you feel that sudden increase in resistance to
further movement. Then, press down with the edge of a spare tile ACROSS
the two grout joints between previously set tiles and the tile you just
finished setting.

Or, at least that's what I do when I set wall tiles with thin set.

Why not just buy a sheet of Wonderboard and tile it with some scrap
tiles on sale just to get some experience in setting floor tiles? The
Wonderboard has two sides, so you can practice tiling twice.

Don't even need wonderboard. Plywood or even OSB (cheaper) is good
enough. This won't give you practice in odd places, though. Corners
and edges are where all the problems occur. The best plan is just *DO*
it. Floors are some work but there is little that can go so wrong
that it can't easily be fixed.