On Tue, 3 Sep 2013 05:42:32 -0600, "Hot-Text"
wrote:

"micky" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 02 Sep 2013 12:34:44 -0400, wrote:
On Mon, 02 Sep 2013 10:16:04 -0400, micky
wrote:
On Mon, 2 Sep 2013 00:02:19 -0600, "Hot-Text"
wrote:
"Ivan Vegvary" wrote in message
...
Small basement bathroom (5' x 8') on concrete slab, new construction.
Sheet vinyl = no seams, harder to install (for me), more expensive
(have
to buy the full 12 foot width.
Tile = easy install, but seams. After many years will these edges
start
to curl up, etc.
Which is best
Thanks,
Ivan Vegvary
Ceramic Tile is $3.50
and the only way to go on a concrete slab in a basement

You way overstate the situation. I don't have a cement slab, but I
have a cement floor in the basement. Same thing as a slab from the
pov of floor covering, right?

He only "overstates" it because there is no need to spend $3.50/sf. It
can be done for less (or more). A "cement" (it's not "cement", rather
"concrete") floor *is* a concrete slab.


if it was my basement bathroom
I would go with natural stone
it would look good on that
cold slab of concrete

That's personal taste thing. I like natural stone, too, but have never
used it on a floor. The big thing is that it should have a
substantial texture.

Some would say that a slab has to rest near the surface and have the
entire house above it. But I gave Hot-Text the chance to agree that
from the pov of floor covering, that distinction doesn't matter. I'm
glad you don't think it matters either.


But it matter
A slab can be 1'x 1' x 1"
it call a 1' slab
be it above the house or
below the house it will always be
a 1' concrete slab
true

But where the surface of
the concrete slab is always matter

It's on dirt. ;-)

Would you put vinyl Sheet or vinyl Tile
on a surface of the concrete slab
above the house
You know we call it
the Roof

A concrete slab roof? In a *house*. Roofing material should have
significant weight, but that's ridiculous! ;-)

Now a basement bathroom
is below the house
not in the house

It is *in* the living space of the house. A crawl space is "under"
the house.

Now I know you not doing
to roof the basement floor

is it matter and always will

Huh?

remainder is too hard to follow - snipped

On Tue, 03 Sep 2013 07:58:39 -0400, Norminn
wrote:

On 9/1/2013 10:07 AM, Ivan Vegvary wrote:
Small basement bathroom (5' x 8') on concrete slab, new construction.

Sheet vinyl = no seams, harder to install (for me), more expensive (have to buy the full 12 foot width.

Tile = easy install, but seams. After many years will these edges start to curl up, etc.

Which is best

Thanks,

Ivan Vegvary


IMO, sheet vinyl is, by far, easiest to install. I have never seen
vinyl tiles that looked good, and those with pre-applied adhesive stick
once they touch the floor. I seemed to recall that sheet came in 6'
widths, so did a google search. Lowes here sells it, not very
expensive. If sheet is difficult to install, then you probably don't
want to consider ceramic, which would be a great choice. Gotta make sure
the concrete is without lumps or ridges.

Nonsense. Ceramic tile is a piece of cake, particularly on a surface
that's already prepared (concrete floor). It can be somewhat more
work if the floor isn't stable enough but a concrete slab is easy.

On Tue, 03 Sep 2013 13:36:06 -0400, wrote:

Ceramic tile is a piece of cake, particularly on a surface
that's already prepared (concrete floor). It can be somewhat more
work if the floor isn't stable enough but a concrete slab is easy.

Post retirement I went to work for a few years for a contractor. Fred
decided I would tile a hallway on a job. He set the first few tiles
and all I had to do was follow his instructions.

He came back, told me it looked good, but wondered why I was not done
in the hall. I replied, "Fred I'm good, I never said I was fast!"

DIY tile IS easy as long as one is not in a hurry.

On Tue, 03 Sep 2013 11:20:09 -0700, Oren wrote:

On Tue, 03 Sep 2013 13:36:06 -0400, wrote:

Ceramic tile is a piece of cake, particularly on a surface
that's already prepared (concrete floor). It can be somewhat more
work if the floor isn't stable enough but a concrete slab is easy.

Post retirement I went to work for a few years for a contractor. Fred
decided I would tile a hallway on a job. He set the first few tiles
and all I had to do was follow his instructions.

He came back, told me it looked good, but wondered why I was not done
in the hall. I replied, "Fred I'm good, I never said I was fast!"

DIY tile IS easy as long as one is not in a hurry.

That's the way I feel about most DIY. I'd go broke doing the work for
a living but I I'll do it because it's fun, and I can do a better job
(spend more time, buy better materials, etc.) than I can afford
otherwise. One of the things I won't do (anymore) is roofing. Too
much work and *NO* fun.

You can wipe the walls down with a towel after a shower in your own home, but how does that help if you're a landlord and your tenants don't bother doing that after they shower? And, most tenants in my building don't know what the bathroom ceiling fan is even for.

When I tile walls, what I'll do is lay out tiles on the floor both end to end and side to side with plastic grout spacers between them. That way, I can measure my wall and know exactly how many tiles wide and how many tiles high I'll be doing in each sitting. I like to do it that way so that I get regular breaks every 15 to 20 minutes during which I don't have any thin set sitting uncovered on the wall and drying up on me. I will mark off the area of the wall I'll be tiling, and then spread thin set on that area of the wall. Then I back butter each tile and press it into the thin set that's already on the wall.
That way, it doesn't matter if the thin set on the wall skins over while it's waiting to be covered by tile, the moisture of the fresh thin set on the back of the tile will reactivate the skinned over thin set on the wall, and the two will stick as well as if I had pressed fresh wet thin set into fresh wet thin set.

Without back buttering the tiles, I'd end up pushing dry tiles into thin set that's already skinned over, and the result would be tiles that aren't sticking well to the wall. By back buttering the tiles, I avoid that problem completely so that the last tile I set in that bed of thin set sticks as well as the first one.

Not at all. Whenever I show a suite where I've tiled the bathroom with 6X8 tiles in landscape mode, I often get people saying things like "Cool!", or "I like that." It's just that you so seldom see rectangular tiles installed in landscape mode that seeing it done that way gives it a "unique" look right off the bat, and people like that. It immediately dawns on them that whomever did that tiling had more than an amateur's level of experience doing that kind of work, and that helps me rent apartments. People like the idea of a landlord that's also an accomplished DIY'er because it means that the building will be well maintained and they won't have to wait for a month to get a leak fixed.

You're thinking of a penetrating sealer.

Film forming sealers form a plastic film over the surface of the grout, just like paint. The shower spray will gradually erode that film so that at some point it will be necessary to apply more sealer to restore the waterproof film over the grout. Silicone based grout sealers stick well to grout, but nothing sticks well to them, not even another coat of silicone based grout sealer. So, if you use a silicone based grout sealer, and you start to notice mildew starting to grow on the grout, it's because the sealer has been eroded in those areas that the mildew can grow into the porous surface of the grout where it's hard to remove. In that case, you have three options; apply more silicone based grout sealer and hope for the best, strip off the old grout sealer with acetone and put on a brand new coat of grout sealer, or start cleaning the mildew off the bathroom tiling with bleach.

In my humble opinion, silicone based grout sealers should be taken off the market because the only people that use them are tiling contractors, and people who naively trust that their tiling contractor knows which products work best.

I use acrylic grout sealer on all my bathrooms, and not only will new acrylic grout sealer stick well to old acrylic grout sealer, but having a film of acrylic grout sealer makes the bathroom ceramic tile really easy to clean. I pour some phosphoric acid based toilet bowl cleaner into a 10inch paint tray and use a 10 inch wide nylon brush on a 2 foot long windshield washing squeegee pole to scrub the walls with phosphoric acid. The phosphoric acid cuts through soap scum like a hot knife through butter, but won't harm chrome, and it won't eat the grout because of that film of acrylic plastic between the acid and the grout. Then I spray the ceramic tiling down with a spray gun hooked up to the 250 psi pump on my carpet shampoo'er, and then vaccuum squeegee the water off the ceramic tiling, ceiling and floor with my Taski "Vertica" tool, which is basically a rubber squeegee you can connect a vaccuum hose to. (I normally have my carpet shampoo'er in an empty apartment cuz I typically shampoo the living room carpet with it, so I also use it's pump and wet suction to clean the bathroom ceramic tiling.)

I meant that mildew growth on bathroom walls and ceilings is not a problem with water leakage out of a plumbing pipe or the result of a roof leak. Yes, you need water to have mildew, but mildew growth won't be a problem in bathrooms where people have baths instead of showers.

The reason for this is because people use bar soaps in the bath and shower. Bar soaps are made with vegetable oils such as Palm and Olive oil (from which the Palmolive Company gets it's name. Vegetable oils are a food source for various kinds of fungi, including those that we call "bathroom mildew". While you also use bar soap when having a bath, you don't get the bar soap all over the walls and ceilings, which is what happens when you wash that bar soap off your body with a spray of water from a shower head.

In my experience, I can always tell when a tenant is having showers instead of baths by the growth of mildew on the silicone around the tub, on the grout lines of the ceramic tiling (cuz soap scum will accumulate there). The mist from the shower sticks to all those areas, depositing soap residue in all those places and mildew feeds on that soap because it's made of natural vegetable oils.

Mildew grows especially thick on ceramic tile grout, but only if that tiling is around a shower. I take baths. I've had maybe 3 showers in 25 years. There is no mildew on any of the ceramic tiling in my bathroom, and it's entirely because there is no food (namely vegetable oils) on the ceramic tiling in my bathroom for the mildew to eat. Nothing can survive without food.

But, as soon as you get someone in that bathroom having showers with bar soap, then the mildew will start to grow right away, if not on the grout lines because they're sealed, then on the silicone caulk around the tub or shower.

You can buy skin cleansers that don't have any vegetable oils in them. Most drug stores sell Cetaphil and/or Aquanil, and both of these advertise themselves as "lipid free skin cleansers". Loosely speaking, a "lipid" is a triglyceride, which is what a vegetable oils and animal fats are. So, by using a lipid free skin cleanser like Cetaphil or Aquanil, you can still have showers without mildew growing all over the place because the mist that gets all over the walls and ceilings won't contain any food to sustain mildew growth and reproduction. Essentially, by switching from bar soap to a lipid free skin cleanser, you can prevent mildew growth in your bathroom by denying the mildew a food supply.

"nestork" wrote in message Mildew grows
especially thick on ceramic tile grout, but only if that
tiling is around a shower. I take baths. I've had maybe 3 showers in
25 years. There is no mildew on any of the ceramic tiling in my
bathroom, and it's entirely because there is no food (namely vegetable
oils) on the ceramic tiling in my bathroom for the mildew to eat.
Nothing can survive without food.

But, as soon as you get someone in that bathroom having showers with bar
soap, then the mildew will start to grow right away, if not on the grout
lines because they're sealed, then on the silicone caulk around the tub
or shower.


That probably explains why I had so much trouble with the mildew and mold in
a tiled bathroom in my other house. With 4 people taking 99% showers with
that bars soap, the mildew had plenty of 'food'.

On 9/1/2013 7:07 AM, Ivan Vegvary wrote:
Small basement bathroom (5' x 8') on concrete slab, new construction.

Sheet vinyl = no seams, harder to install (for me), more expensive (have to buy the full 12 foot width.

Tile = easy install, but seams. After many years will these edges start to curl up, etc.

Which is best

Thanks,

Definitely vinyl.

I've got some vinyl in a family room that people always ask, "is this tile?"

I think that vinyl is easier to install than tile.

On Thu, 5 Sep 2013 11:19:55 -0400, "Ralph Mowery"
wrote:


"nestork" wrote in message Mildew grows
especially thick on ceramic tile grout, but only if that
tiling is around a shower. I take baths. I've had maybe 3 showers in
25 years. There is no mildew on any of the ceramic tiling in my
bathroom, and it's entirely because there is no food (namely vegetable
oils) on the ceramic tiling in my bathroom for the mildew to eat.
Nothing can survive without food.

But, as soon as you get someone in that bathroom having showers with bar
soap, then the mildew will start to grow right away, if not on the grout
lines because they're sealed, then on the silicone caulk around the tub
or shower.


That probably explains why I had so much trouble with the mildew and mold in
a tiled bathroom in my other house. With 4 people taking 99% showers with
that bars soap, the mildew had plenty of 'food'.

Not buying it. There was some reason the walls weren't drying. I had
the problem in one house (tile and insulation fixed the walls but not
the ceiling). I've never had mildew in bathrooms since. I often take
two showers a day and always use bar "soap".