"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
Tim Smith wrote:

Hi

As I posted a few weeks ago, I was about to embark on tiling a wooden
floor. I have tiled floors before but not on a wooden one.

The floor was a floating chipboard floor which I covered in 12mm marine
ply and screwed every 6" in every direction. I then painted with a coat
of
PVA and water.

Over the weekend (it now being wednesday morning) I tiled about half the
floor (30 tiles) using Unibond ready mixed tile adhesive for wooden
floors. I then stayed off the floor until this morngin but noticed that
about 5 or
6 of the tiles still move up and down by a few mm's. I assumed that I
hadnt glued it properyl so I took one of the tiles up (which happened to
be at an edge). I found that the glue underneath hadnt really set
particularly hard - it was easy to scrape the glue off the floor with an
old chisel. Im assuming that the glue sets when the moisture evaporates.
If this is
correct, does hte fact that the ply is waterproof, thick and painted with
glue make this understandable ? or is something else wrong ?

If it makes any differenece, the tiles are big (45cmx45cm) so there are
less grouting gaps where the air can get in ? Im not sure about the logic
of this but anyway !

Thanks Tim

Yoiu did use a tile cement didn't you - a flexible cement based one, not
that rubbishy stuff that has to dry out and never does?

Hi all

Thanks for the advice and responses.

In the end I took up all the tiles so that I can make sure it is properly
done.

I reckon there were about 30 tiles I took up and I think I broke 2. I reckon
this just gives an indication of how soft the adhesive was even after 5
days.

It was reasonably easy (although tiring) to scrape the semi-drying adhesive
off hte floor using a wallpaper scraper.

End result, SWMBO has banned me from doing it (as I have many many other
jobs to do) and has demanded that we get a tiler in. After the work putting
them down and taking up, Im acutally reasonably happy to agree.

On a good note though, I went back to B&Q where I had bought the 6 tubs of
Unibond and explained that I had used 4 and still had 2 left. They agreed
without so much as an argument that if I took all 6 back (2 full and the
empty tubs) then they would refund the whole lot ! I guess this is probably
what Im entitled to since it didnt work, but it was refreshing not to have
to argue about it....all credit to B&Q in this case.

Tim