Prepping a bathroom floor for tiling

[virtualredDIY]

I am looking to get my bathroom floor tiled as the previous owner of the house had carpet down.

I am planning on getting someone in to do the actual tiling as I would like a decent finish but I would like to prep as much as possible to give him a clean canvas to work with and potentially save on time and money.

Can anyway advise on preparing the floor ? The walls are already tiled

[wine~o]

I am looking to get my bathroom floor tiled as the previous owner of the house had carpet down.

I am planning on getting someone in to do the actual tiling as I would like a decent finish but I would like to prep as much as possible to give him a clean canvas to work with and potentially save on time and money.

Can anyway advise on preparing the floor ? The walls are already tiled

Might be a good idea if you told us what the existing flooring is...

[royaloakcarpentry]

Any soft floor covering in a bathroom rings alarm bells for me.

I would lay a good bet that your floor needs a lot of work to make it suitable for tiling.

[virtualredDIY]

Yeah probably a good idea

Well it currently has carpet down. On lifting some of it back last night it looks like its had some kind of thin mdf or plywood laid underneath it but it did not appear to be that well fixed down if at all.

This is an upstairs bathroom.
Would a couple of photos of the floor help ?

What would a lot of work Comprise of ? and how much of this would I be able to undertake ?

[virtualredDIY]

Hi

Apologies for the delay in getting the photos, please see attached

Your help is much appreciated

Cheers

[haveagohero]

Floorboards
It is not advisable to tile straight onto floorboards as most wooden floors have too much flex in them and this causes the tiles to crack or debond from the substrate. If possible lift the original wooden floor, insert noggins at intervals, place adhesive such as pink grip onto the top of the joists and lay 25mm plywood onto this making sure that any joins in the plywood sheets are supported by the joists and the nogins underneath the screw these down making sure the screw heads are flush with the ply surface. next lay 6mm backerboards into a 6mm adhesive bed and screw down every 150mm in a grid pattern. Tape the joints in the backerboards with matching tape and seal these with rapid set adhesive.

Do it right or do it twice

[royaloakcarpentry]

Looks like P5 flooring. You can tile directly onto this using BAL Fastflex adhesive and it costs nearly 100% more than rapid set. BAL grout will also need an additive.

The clue was 'you can'. This only applies if the floor is stable enough (has minimal deflection) Otherwise you have to revert to Haveago's plan, above. You can tile directly over WPBP, no need to put backer boards down.

Never been to a failed installation on ply or P5 flooring that was properly done.

MDF can also be tiled onto (walls only) and BAL also do an adhesive for this.

[virtualredDIY]

Thanks both for your input.

Since I posted the pictures I have lifted the subfloor as it seemed pretty awful TBH and I am basically down to the existing floorboards. It does not look like it will be that straightforward to lift the existing floor,

What's the best way to get a measure on the deflection of the floor? Would this be a spirit level across boards / the floor

I was hoping to secure the existing boards down as best I can to joists and then use some kind of backer board like No More Ply 6mm to go directly on to the floorboards with adhesive and counter sunk screws.

Any thoughts on this approach ?

Would a few more pictures of the floor boards help?

Thanks

[andy216]

I've heard that fill a glass of water to the very top almost overflowing, place in the middle of the floor and if any is spill out there is to much flex. Then appropriate strengthening will be required.