Tiling Timber Floors - Preferred Method? - Tile Advice

[billthetiler]

Hi all,
I do a lot of my work for a bathroom fitting company and the fitters constantly discuss the best method for dealing with wooden floors. I was brought up on 9mm WBP screwed every 100mm and primed, but I am now leaning towards anti crack matting. Others use Kudos Aqua4ma or Hardibacker. Any preferences guys? I am open to suggestions!

 

[White Room]

6mm Hardie is my preference....

 

[Unused Account 1]

Ive used ply on 500 jobs not one problem ,

 

[Dhtiling]

Ditra, strata mat, spiderweb2, permat, anything is nicer than carrying boards up the stairs. Nothing wrong with hardi though.

 

[Andy Allen]

Cement boards or insulation boards and I use bal single part fast flex adhesive on all wooden substrates .

 

[Ian]

Hardiebacker for me, 5 years since I last used ply on a floor.

 

[billthetiler]

Thanks lads, I was in the ply camp just like Protiler 68 without incident for 30 years but we had a couple of loose tile situations last summer on 2 separate jobs, different fitters and different tiles so that's what made us look around for alternatives. I may try hardie. Can you bring floors back to level by varying bed thickness? Do I need to prime substrate or Hardie?

 

[p4ulo]

Hardie for me too.
No need to prime your subfloor (wood) as you will be laying some tile adhesive down under the boards before you screw them down. Yes, you can vary bed thicknesses to help levelling, but be careful when screwing it down because you don't want the boards to warp to the shape of the dips!
I've started sponging off and priming Hardie once fitted as advised by other users on here, no problems so far!

 

[hmtiling]

No more ply for me. Never had a problem with it and done 1000's m2 with it.
Also, like marmox with ufh.

 

[SJPurdy]

Personally I prefer Hardie to "no more ply" as I feel it is better if there is cupping on timber floor boards (the bumps and hollows of the cupping get filled with cement based addy when fixing to give a solid bed). However if under tile heating then Wedi, Marmox etc give better heating performance; they're also much lighter and easier to cut, but more expensive!

 

[StevieBoy]

Hardiebacker for me, 5 years since I last used ply on a floor.

So it did used to work then lol ?

 

[Spud]

I used blanke permat recently and like it ,it is similar to the old eml mesh but a 21st century version

 

[hmtiling]

I used blanke permat recently and like it ,it is similar to the old eml mesh but a 21st century version

Looks good. Decoupling and reinforcing. Where did you get that from?

 

[Spud]

Looks good. Decoupling and reinforcing. Where did you get that from?

Trimline sell it they are in Sydenham

 

[Ian]

So it did used to work then lol ?

Still does work, so long as it's 15mm or thicker but, why would you when there's thinner products that do a better job. Get yourself out of the stone age and move with the times. You're making yourself look very stupid by continually arguing the toss and going against everything the manufacturers recommend, if you end up having to defend a failed floor in court one day, you'll get laughed at when an industry professional looks at it and sees the 6mm ply base.