stuart noble wrote:

1. Fill the bigger holes with mortar.
2. Coat the floor with a couple of layers of bitumen paint (to stop
damp getting to adhesive/tiles - the whole floor wont be coated as the
areas under the kitchen units will be left).
3. Then use a leveling compound over the floor part to be tiled.
4. Apply tile adhesive and lay the ceramic tiles.


Treat the area with 1pva: 4 water before filling. A general purpose mortar
(Readymix etc) works well.
Forget the bitumen.
Use a latex screed (the one that comes with a liquid additive). I'd cover
the whole floor to 5mm thickness as you won't want damp getting up into the
units. Not the easiest stuff to work with though.
You could skip the screed and rely on the adhesive as a waterproofer but
using it to pack the tiles/level the floor can become expensive and will
take forever to dry. The latex is walkable in a couple of hours.




I'll take a different tack on this.

First of all stabilsie with PVA. This really does bind loose mortar
together.

Then ether rescreed or use levelling compound. That gets it roughly level.

Forget DPC as teh tiles are water oproo anyway, but use waterproofing in
the grout.

Lay tiles on a fairly thick bed of rapid set, using strings and levels
to get the levels spot on accuarte. Tamp tiles down gently with a rubber
mallet.

Wash off any tile cement immediately on laying. Rapid set mixed stiff is
recommended as it doesn't slump and sets fast enough to be walked on
gently in a couple of hours.

Use quality grout (I swear by Bal, YMMV) and a waterproofing additive:
clean it all immedairely grouted - I use those scrubbing pads and scrub,
wipe and squeesze, and finish off with a shaping tool to make teh grout
look sexy.

If there is a slight damp problem up the walls, cut tiles in half for
skirting, and run them up to at least 4 " above outside ground level. In
general in a solid brick wall this will force the damp to rise, and it
should evaporate outwards raher than inwards.