I think you need to forget about the chicken wire.

You're only tiling 1' x 2.5'? That's a very small space.
Oak boards would be less stable than plywood, which
has plies alternating in opposite directions for stability.
Also, if the oak ever gets wet it might swell up. If it were
me I'd either take up the oak or at least go over it first
with something like 1/2" plywood. But if it's good and
flat you're probably fine. As long as you seal around the
edges (in case there's ever a flood) you'll probably
never have to worry about it.

"Les" wrote in message
...
| On Mon, 24 Mar 2014 09:11:50 -0400, "Mayayana"
| wrote:
|
| Chicken wire might serve as structure in a sandmix
| bed, like rebars in concrete, though I've never heard
| of it being used.
| For bath floors I normally screw concrete board to
| plywood subfloor and use thinset on top of that.
|
| I know a lot of people use the hardboard. I'm hesitant
| to trust it because it seems to be some kind of glue-
| based composite. Like using flakeboard for sheathing:
| It might work fine, but what if the glue breaks down
| in 20 years? There's nothing else holding it together.
|
| Checking back: I just spoke to someone at Thinset (asking about max
| thickness) and described the general layout without mentioning the
| chickenwire. The lowest layer is oak floorboards, so that may have
| something to do with this. Granted, the guy at their help desk was not
| an installer, but he thought that oak may present a problem in
| dimensional stability. But he also thought that Hardibacker and
| concrete board are the same, which in this case, is not true.
|
| If there is a problem with dimensional stability of oak, it should not
| be of much consequence within the small 1 foot by 2.5 feet rectangle
| that I'm working with. But I would think that any dimensional problems
| would relate to ply or other types of wood as well. Perhaps that's
| where the chickenwire was supposed to come into play.
|
| I ended up using hardibacker for spacing, under concrete board, then
| the large slate tile.
|
| L
|
|
|
|
| "Les" wrote in message
| .. .
| |I understand that the layers under bathroom tile go (from bottom to
| | top):
| | Kerdi membrane
| | Chicken wire
| | Hardboard
| | Tile
| |
| | What is the purpose of the chicken wire?
| |
| | Also, I know that Thinset is used to hold the tile to the hardboard.
| | But where else is Thinset (or other compounds) used in between the
| | lower layers?
|