tiling on plywood: how to deal with the 3mm gap: plywood joints

[Protilers]

because silicone will allow the live boards to stretch and shrink a bit.......filling the expansion joint with a solid material like adhesive will remove its ability to expand.....

 

[Protilers]

Imo......this is the way to go....

lay ply with a 5mm expansion around the perimiter of the room as well as between each board and stagger the joints of the boards.....



Fill the expansion joints with an expandable material i.e silicone......



lay a suitable decopling membrane......



fill the voids in the decoupler and tile AT THE SAME TIME!



have a cuppa!

 

[DHTiling]

Thanks Lee , your method is appreciated..

The thing is with timber is that as long as it cannot butt to another seperate piece then they will not heave against each other.. filling the 3mm void with adhesive is not sufficient to cause disruption to the tiling field IMHO.. unless as you say no perimeter void is left.. but what we have to do is take from each bit of advice given and see what works for you.. , now of there is deflection in the substrate , then this can contribute to stress cracking at this intersection of the boards and that is another matter to be discussed.

 

[DHTiling]

oh and just to say,., i do not tile to plywood now.. so much chinese poo about it is unreal and if your name is PJC, then you hate ply more than me. :lol:

 

[Protilers]

As you say Dave backerboards etc are better to tile on.....but ply is a neccacary evil....

 

[DHTiling]

Toooo right is it.. i hate ply.. too much to go wrong.

 

[Aston]

its getting more challenging being a tiler now than ever before especially with all this claim and blame culture going on.
tilers are expected to be structural engineers now as well as substrate specialists...just wish some builders and other trades that muscle in on tiling were as concientious and as knowledable as they should be..

 

[Mirjam]

well, thanks for all the advice! it is amazing how much help we get from you! Thank you all very much!!!
Since we have ordered the plywood already, I think we will use it and hope it works fine. it is hardwood, so hopefully... We are laying a small area in the shed to test it before we put it in in the whole house... so if there is a major problem we should find out after a few weeks of testing... The question is now: silicone or flexible tile adhesive in the 3mm gaps? would the flexible adhesive also be flexible enough for the expansion of the wood? what are the disadvantages of silicone? i conclude from what all of you wrote, that both should possibly work fine... any "objections" .

Thanks again!!!!
Alexander.

 

[Aston]

i personally think we are all mad on here.
we give advice to people that puts us out of work...i can just imagine sitting infront of alan sugar and saying,,err ive got a business, its called tiling and i tell people how to do it on a forum and then they go off and do it??

this recessions got me thinking? how about the rest of you?

 

[Dougs Third Go]

because we're a good bunch Ed, full of the milk of human kindness:smilewinkgrin: