Buoyed by a positive response to me recent experience of laying a new wooden
floor I thought I would share an experience from last year on laying a
kitchen floor.

First I have to say that this was the most depressing job I have ever done,
partly because of the time pressure of having to finish within a few days,
but also because I had no kitchen, and the work was physically draining.

The floor I had was concrete, nice and flat but covered in a horrible
bitumen substance. Fortunately having read this group I knew that I couldn't
just put the floor tile adhesive onto the bitumen as it wouldn't take.
Incidently the salesperson at the local specialist tile supplier in Ewell
told me not to worry about it and it would probably be alright! Nice one!

Unfortunatley I worked out that I needed to remove the bitumen the day
before I was doing to do the work. The only way to get it off that people
thought would work was a breaker with a comb attachment. The idea being to
touch the breaker on the surface and break it up a little to expose the
concrete underneath.

So I hired one for a day. It weighed a tonne and the rental shop tried to
pass me off with a flat breaking bit saying that would work. If anyone tried
to tell you this will work dont believe them. It does break the surface up -
into big chunks. The slightest touch was enough to release a chunk of
concrete.

Having insisted on the right attachment I set to work. The process of
touching the breaker lightly on the surface really tests your arm muscles, I
was shattered after 30 minutes. Unfortunately it took 6 hours jsut to get
about 50% of the surface exposed in a 10m2 room.

With hindsight I should have hired a smaller breaker which would have been
gentler and been easier to handle. Incidently also make sure you get lots of
the comb attachments as they get worn down competely each half an hour. Also
with hindsight I would have isolated the kitchen more from the rest of the
house and used a better dust mask. The amount of dust doing this job was
huge.

The next problem was that I thought I should start with a flat surface
before starting the tiling. I had heard about self levelling compound and
thought I would use this. With hindsight this was not really necessary. It
was expensive, a nightmare to mix (the hired manual mixer ground to a halt
once more than half the mixture was introduced - I had to put my hands in
the mix to break up the lumps by hand!). Having poured it all into the floor
and thinking I had it flat I dicovered after it was dry that there was a
hump in the middle. Looking back the best thing to do would have been to use
a cement and sand mix to fill in most of the holes as best I could and tried
to use the original bits of the floor to make it approximately level. This
would have been far cheaper and a lot less hassle.

As it was I then had to use lots of extra floor tile adhesive to try to make
up for the not so level floor. This pushed up the cost again. Fortunately I
had the sense to hire a cement mixer which made the job a lot easier.
Incidently if I had to do self-levelling compund again I would also hire a
cement mixer, The break of being able to make a cup of tea while the mixer
does it's work is invaluable - and they're quite cheap to hire.

Using all this extra floor tile adhesive meant that I had a harder job
ensuring that the tiles were level. I made the mistake of starting at the
highest point (which happened to be in the middle of the new french window)
and using too much adhesive. A bit more time spent establishing the highest
point and using the minimum adhesive there would probably have reduced the
amount of adhesive used by about 30%-40%. I thought afterwards I should have
poured on some water to find the level. It seemed a messy idea at the time
but it would have been smarter looking back.

Another thing to watch out for is the level gradually creeping up. If I did
it again I would spend a lot more time on getting the outside tiles exactly
level. Extra time doing this would have saved time later. It also increased
the amount of adhesive I needed even more

When it came to laying the tiles I found a couple of useful tips. I found it
a good idea to remove the spacers before the adhesive had fully set.
Otherwise getting them out was a real pain. It's usually possible when its
OK to walk lightly on the tiles before fully cured. Secondly I would
recommend getting a diamond blade tile cutter. I got one from Screwfix for
about £50 and it made light work of difficult corners and straight cuts. I
tried a hired manual cutter and there was no comparison. Care needs to be
taken at the end of the cut though as the corner could break off - even if
you got really slowly. I found it best to stop a little short and cut in
from the other end although this needed some care to get it aligned. It was
best to score the line to cut along and then use a permanent pen to mark the
ceramic. This way you could still see the line through the rush of water
over the blade.

On the laying of the tiles I would warn people to look carefully at the
pattern on the tiles if it is feint. My tiles had a slight horizontal
pattern which I didn't pay enough attention to when laying some of the first
tiles. Fortunately you have to look closely to see that some are at right
angles to the way they should be, however I know they are there - which is
annoying.

So gradually I managed to cover the entire room and it started to look good,
apart from the gentle rise into the corner which I tried to compensate for
by adjusting each tile slightly as I back filled. I discovered that as long
as I back filled and ensured the three corners were pretty aligned as I
filled I any slope was not rally that noticeable.

Fortunately The highest point is now under the cabinets and the kitchen
fitter was able to work with the height difference so I got out of jail. In
fact as slope goes away from the wet area water tends to run out from under
cabinets which is quite useful.

Still I would recommend spending more time than I did paying attention to
the slope in the first place as it was very fiddly checking each tile at a
time as I had to in the end.

Anyway hope this help anyone considering laying floor tiles on a concrete
base, especially it there is bitumen on the existing concrete surface.

Elliot

"emv" wrote in message
...
Buoyed by a positive response to me recent experience of laying a new
wooden
floor I thought I would share an experience from last year on laying a
kitchen floor.

First I have to say that this was the most depressing job I have ever
done,
partly because of the time pressure of having to finish within a few days,
but also because I had no kitchen, and the work was physically draining.

The floor I had was concrete, nice and flat but covered in a horrible
bitumen substance. Fortunately having read this group I knew that I
couldn't
just put the floor tile adhesive onto the bitumen as it wouldn't take.
Incidently the salesperson at the local specialist tile supplier in Ewell
told me not to worry about it and it would probably be alright! Nice one!

Unfortunatley I worked out that I needed to remove the bitumen the day
before I was doing to do the work. The only way to get it off that people
thought would work was a breaker with a comb attachment. The idea being to
touch the breaker on the surface and break it up a little to expose the
concrete underneath.

So I hired one for a day. It weighed a tonne and the rental shop tried to
pass me off with a flat breaking bit saying that would work. If anyone
tried
to tell you this will work dont believe them. It does break the surface
up -
into big chunks. The slightest touch was enough to release a chunk of
concrete.

Having insisted on the right attachment I set to work. The process of
touching the breaker lightly on the surface really tests your arm muscles,
I
was shattered after 30 minutes. Unfortunately it took 6 hours jsut to get
about 50% of the surface exposed in a 10m2 room.

With hindsight I should have hired a smaller breaker which would have been
gentler and been easier to handle. Incidently also make sure you get lots
of
the comb attachments as they get worn down competely each half an hour.
Also
with hindsight I would have isolated the kitchen more from the rest of the
house and used a better dust mask. The amount of dust doing this job was
huge.


Would an air powered scrabbler not have done a better job? Never used one
but they look much lighter than a breaker. Saw them for hire at HSS. Or am I
barking up the wrong tree.

The next problem was that I thought I should start with a flat surface
before starting the tiling. I had heard about self levelling compound and
thought I would use this. With hindsight this was not really necessary. It
was expensive, a nightmare to mix (the hired manual mixer ground to a halt
once more than half the mixture was introduced - I had to put my hands in
the mix to break up the lumps by hand!). Having poured it all into the
floor
and thinking I had it flat I dicovered after it was dry that there was a
hump in the middle. Looking back the best thing to do would have been to
use
a cement and sand mix to fill in most of the holes as best I could and
tried
to use the original bits of the floor to make it approximately level. This
would have been far cheaper and a lot less hassle.

As it was I then had to use lots of extra floor tile adhesive to try to
make
up for the not so level floor. This pushed up the cost again. Fortunately
I
had the sense to hire a cement mixer which made the job a lot easier.
Incidently if I had to do self-levelling compund again I would also hire a
cement mixer, The break of being able to make a cup of tea while the mixer
does it's work is invaluable - and they're quite cheap to hire.

Using all this extra floor tile adhesive meant that I had a harder job
ensuring that the tiles were level. I made the mistake of starting at the
highest point (which happened to be in the middle of the new french
window)
and using too much adhesive. A bit more time spent establishing the
highest
point and using the minimum adhesive there would probably have reduced the
amount of adhesive used by about 30%-40%. I thought afterwards I should
have
poured on some water to find the level. It seemed a messy idea at the time
but it would have been smarter looking back.

Another thing to watch out for is the level gradually creeping up. If I
did
it again I would spend a lot more time on getting the outside tiles
exactly
level. Extra time doing this would have saved time later. It also
increased
the amount of adhesive I needed even more

When it came to laying the tiles I found a couple of useful tips. I found
it
a good idea to remove the spacers before the adhesive had fully set.
Otherwise getting them out was a real pain. It's usually possible when its
OK to walk lightly on the tiles before fully cured. Secondly I would
recommend getting a diamond blade tile cutter. I got one from Screwfix for
about £50 and it made light work of difficult corners and straight cuts. I
tried a hired manual cutter and there was no comparison. Care needs to be
taken at the end of the cut though as the corner could break off - even if
you got really slowly. I found it best to stop a little short and cut in
from the other end although this needed some care to get it aligned. It
was
best to score the line to cut along and then use a permanent pen to mark
the
ceramic. This way you could still see the line through the rush of water
over the blade.

On the laying of the tiles I would warn people to look carefully at the
pattern on the tiles if it is feint. My tiles had a slight horizontal
pattern which I didn't pay enough attention to when laying some of the
first
tiles. Fortunately you have to look closely to see that some are at right
angles to the way they should be, however I know they are there - which is
annoying.

So gradually I managed to cover the entire room and it started to look
good,
apart from the gentle rise into the corner which I tried to compensate for
by adjusting each tile slightly as I back filled. I discovered that as
long
as I back filled and ensured the three corners were pretty aligned as I
filled I any slope was not rally that noticeable.

Fortunately The highest point is now under the cabinets and the kitchen
fitter was able to work with the height difference so I got out of jail.
In
fact as slope goes away from the wet area water tends to run out from
under
cabinets which is quite useful.

Still I would recommend spending more time than I did paying attention to
the slope in the first place as it was very fiddly checking each tile at a
time as I had to in the end.

Anyway hope this help anyone considering laying floor tiles on a concrete
base, especially it there is bitumen on the existing concrete surface.

Elliot

On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 00:05:17 +0000 (UTC), "emv"
wrote:



Anyway hope this help anyone considering laying floor tiles on a concrete
base, especially it there is bitumen on the existing concrete surface.

Elliot



Interesting co-incidence. My neighbour has just pondered the same
problem after lifting his vinyl floor and finding bitumen underneath.
He spent an hour or so trying to scrape it off, and tried a few other
things. Then he read the instructions on the adhesive he'd bought to
go with the new tiles. It said "Can be used on bitumen".

MJ

On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 01:35:59 GMT, wrote:

On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 00:05:17 +0000 (UTC), "emv"
wrote:



Anyway hope this help anyone considering laying floor tiles on a concrete
base, especially it there is bitumen on the existing concrete surface.

Elliot



Interesting co-incidence. My neighbour has just pondered the same
problem after lifting his vinyl floor and finding bitumen underneath.
He spent an hour or so trying to scrape it off, and tried a few other
things. Then he read the instructions on the adhesive he'd bought to
go with the new tiles. It said "Can be used on bitumen".

MJ

I thought this along with my dad when I helped him do his kitchen
floor, I said it would be best to remove as much as possible (think
they were remains of really old tiles).

When you lay the wet cement on the stuff the water softened the "tar
stuff" meaning the tiles would have been set onto a treacle like
surface. :-)

Mark S.

"emv" wrote
| When it came to laying the tiles I found a couple of useful tips. I
| found it a good idea to remove the spacers before the adhesive had
| fully set. Otherwise getting them out was a real pain. It's usually
| possible when its OK to walk lightly on the tiles before fully cured.

Haven't actually tried this, but if you looped string round each spacer as
you put it in, could you not stand at the edge of the room, pull the string,
and pull out all the spacers in one go. It's how new telephone connections
are cut in in exchanges.

Owain

wrote in message . ..
On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 00:05:17 +0000 (UTC), "emv"
wrote:
Interesting co-incidence. My neighbour has just pondered the same
problem after lifting his vinyl floor and finding bitumen underneath.
He spent an hour or so trying to scrape it off, and tried a few other
things. Then he read the instructions on the adhesive he'd bought to
go with the new tiles. It said "Can be used on bitumen".

MJ

My entire ground floor is concrete with bitumen covering. There is
absolutely no problem tiling over this. It does not need to be lifted
providing there is a good bitumen to concrete bond and the bitumen is
properly keyed (Pva works okay). In my case if I found any
cracked/porous areas I carefully cut them back to sound material and
filled with mortar.

Problems can arise as a result of carpet gripper rods being fixed as
the bitumen is too hard and becomes brittle at the edges when nails
are hammered in. This is all very well for tiling purposes, however I
wouldn't be too certain that a flat enough surface could be obtained
for overlaying with wood/laminates. I haven't personally tried
levelling compound on top but I would imagine that it might not 'take'
to the bitumen surface. Perhaps keying with series of drilled holes
and pva, just not sure.

Thanks for the replies.

The scrabbler sounds like it would have been better. If I did it again I
think I would spend more time up front investigating suitable power tools.
The trade is, I suspect between getting something that is light enough to
handle and something with enough oomph to get through the concrete. It would
be interesting to hear anyones experiences on this.

I'm guessing MJ's neighbour wasn't laying ceramic tiles which is why they
would work with bitumen. I hope so anyway, otherwise I put myself through a
week of hell because I got the wrong adhesive! :-)

Owains idea of the bits of string sounds great fun although I'm sure I would
have the patience to do it while I was laying the tiles.

Elliot

On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 21:51:44 +0000 (UTC), "emv"
wrote:



I'm guessing MJ's neighbour wasn't laying ceramic tiles which is why they
would work with bitumen. I hope so anyway, otherwise I put myself through a
week of hell because I got the wrong adhesive! :-)



Elliot


Sorry......he IS laying ceramic tiles. Oh well......

MJ