Smaller porcelain garage floor tiles or bigger ones?

[langy]

Did mine in B&Q tiles 14 years ago, all over adhesive coverage and squish tile into it , grout as you go, never had a problem and my workshop is a busy place, simple to clean
A couple of small chips done by dropping engine block

 

[indy4x]

I have had porcelain tills in my garage for a few years, they have stood up to axle stands, trolley jack, engine crane, dropping tools and various car parts being dropped on them all with no chips our damage. Its either my Frontera or more usually the Discovery that's being worked on so over 2 tonnes of motor on them

One thing they don't like is welding splatter, its ok from bench height but if you are welding close top the floor they do mark.

I bought mine from a local independent tile supplier and they were end of line stuff. My only regret is I should have gone for tiles with a square edge. Will be doing the new garage extension using porcelain tills and this will house my lathe and mill

 

[rcx132]

Reassuring ツ

Those who has tiles, did you have them installed by a specialist or general builder or DIY?

And with the welding splatter, do they just get marked superficially or is it actual damage? I'll just have to use a welding mat.

 

[langy]

Reassuring ツ

Those who has tiles, did you have them installed by a specialist or general builder or DIY?

And with the welding splatter, do they just get marked superficially or is it actual damage? I'll just have to use a welding mat.

I did my own after a bit of advice from a tiler friend, it was real easy to do, mig spatter burns into them bit like on glass but all my welding is TIG so not a problem, I would just pop a welding blanket on the floor if I was to mig

 

[indy4x]

Yep, welding splatter can permanently mark them, have used a fire blanket in the past but now have a welding blanket

Tiles were a DIY fit, did have some help from a work mate who is a dab hand at tiling

 

[Exuptoy]

Properly sealing a concrete floor still costs money, I think it was a few hundred for my floor, same as the tiles (though the tiles still have additional install costs and adhesive cost). Without sealer it dusts. A few people on here have complained about epoxy paint just peeling off like a rubber sheet. Tiles just feel like a forever solution that isn't much more expensive that epoxy or sealing.

My BIL has just painted the new floor in his garage with polyurethane paint and the finish looked perfect until he tried to wash it with water and found the colour pigment had not sealed properly. He took it all up with a razor blade and read up on it and apparently you have to make sure the lattice on the top of the cement has been lifted as this is like an impermeably barrier to anything. You have to remove the fines from the surface of the concrete either by pressure washing, acid etching, scrubbing with a wire brush, foot traffic or continuous exposure to the elements. Once he stripped the floor he said he could see the fines attached to the back of the paint which came up in sheets and where it was looking different he scrubbed it with a wire brush. The second time it was painted it was perfect and cured without issue.

 

[Wedg1e]

OK, here's a tale...
About 17 years back we designed and built new radiation warning systems for the brand-new x-ray facility that Saudi Aramco had built in Dhahran.
The main building was a portal frame, insulated and air-conned, that contained two concrete bays. The floor of the whole facility was terracotta tiles. Now given that you could drive an artic in there (and ignoring why anyone thought terracotta tiles were appropriate in such an installation) you might have expected them to be large tiles but no: they were something like 4" square (maybe 6", and that's being generous). Anyway, once laid the tiles needed grouting. You and I would probably get in there with the grout, wiping off the excess as we go, but this is Saudi and manpower (of the imported variety) is cheap so someone came up with the idea of having a team of labourers on hands and knees masking - with masking tape - every single tile. OK, so that's jaw-droppingly time-consuming anyway but it gets worse: instead of masking every tile all over they only masked around the edges, so where do you suppose all the stray grout went? Yes, all over the unmasked middle of each tile.
So, grouting complete, now a team of labourers had to go around on hands and knees and whip all the masking tape off... which, needless to say, left most of the adhesive behind, so now a team of labourers had to go around on hands and knees with solvent, removing all the adhesive - oh, and the stray grout as well. So exactly what did they save...?

There were more Farouk-ups on that project, when I have a spare minute...

 

[Sean]

OP, Not all porcelain tiles are created equal you get glazed and unglazed rectified and honed, "Garage" tiles are often showroom tiles rather than an industrial floor covering. cheaper ones are "Gres" which is a thin grey porcelain with a glaze , glaze is just a layer of coloured glass and so is susceptible to chipping scratching and will hold on to grinder and welder spatter like a windscreen. Unglazed will be better (its the same sort of stuff pink tig shrouds are made of) any colour will be through the body of the tile so chips and scratches wont show as much. Honed while looking Shiny opens up the grain of the ceramic and will stain or hold on to grease, which will be tricky when you spill water or have wet boots.

Fitting - isnt rocket science but its 99% prep and materials. it has to be a flexible or Porcelain compliant adhesive and must be cement based ideally mixed with an electric whisk to activate the additives. Grout must be quality flexible stuff too - adhesives and grout have very different properties and so all in one stuff is pointless and usually dear. if the floor is uneven then spend a bit on a self levelling compound as its much much cheaper in the long run than trying to level up a floor with expensive adhesive and youll just end up in a mess with lipped tiles.
trowel dictates adhesive bed a 10mm trowel at 45* gives a 5mm notch which will slump to 3mm bed when the tile is placed. Adhesive has to be mixed to a soft consistency. fast set can go off in about 15 minutes so if your not good at what your doing you could get in to trouble !

finally drilling has to be done with Diamond as youll just melt the tip off a carbide drill in seconds, cutting is easy with a decent tile cutter, good quality diamond blade & a 4,5" grinder for tricky corners

( Its been my day job)

 

[rcx132]

OK, here's a tale...

Sounds like that Mr Bean episode where he masked off all his furniture and ornaments to paint the room

 

[rcx132]

OP, Not all porcelain tiles are created equal you get glazed and unglazed rectified and honed, "Garage" tiles are often showroom tiles rather than an industrial floor covering. cheaper ones are "Gres" which is a thin grey porcelain with a glaze , glaze is just a layer of coloured glass and so is susceptible to chipping scratching and will hold on to grinder and welder spatter like a windscreen. Unglazed will be better (its the same sort of stuff pink tig shrouds are made of) any colour will be through the body of the tile so chips and scratches wont show as much. Honed while looking Shiny opens up the grain of the ceramic and will stain or hold on to grease, which will be tricky when you spill water or have wet boots.

Hey Sean. These ones are sold by two distributors and both say they have supplied to actual workshops. They are the same colour all the way through. If the tiles are cut, in the middle you see a yellow hue.

Fitting - isnt rocket science but its 99% prep and materials. it has to be a flexible or Porcelain compliant adhesive and must be cement based ideally mixed with an electric whisk to activate the additives. Grout must be quality flexible stuff too - adhesives and grout have very different properties and so all in one stuff is pointless and usually dear. if the floor is uneven then spend a bit on a self levelling compound as its much much cheaper in the long run than trying to level up a floor with expensive adhesive and youll just end up in a mess with lipped tiles.
trowel dictates adhesive bed a 10mm trowel at 45* gives a 5mm notch which will slump to 3mm bed when the tile is placed. Adhesive has to be mixed to a soft consistency. fast set can go off in about 15 minutes so if your not good at what your doing you could get in to trouble !

Yestersay we took a floor grinder and ground down the worst of the bumps in the floor. But there are still some troughs, which I thought the adhesive would fill. You're suggesting self levelling compound. Will it handle workshop use?

I spoke to Mapei and they reommended Keraflex maxi or Keraquick for heavy duty commercial use. The instructions say to butter the floor and the back of the tile and that for bigger tiles to water the mix down a bit more to allow voids to be pushed out. But they still say to use a comb, so I assume the small voids left by the comb are ok?

Any idea how much a pro would charge for doing 30 sq.m?

 

[cumbriasteve]

Any idea how much a pro would charge for doing 30 sq.m?

I have seen them quoting 30p to 50p each for the large tiles, labour only but usually a minimum call out price to cover their visit, for the small tiles they probably will charge by the sq/m and will be more expensive overall.

I have seen cheaper advertised on farcebook but they are usually just some handyman who has done it once before and thinks it's easy so will make a few bob out of it.

 

[Sean]

youll be looking at around 30 quid a sq M ...basically it costs the same as the tiles to fit them

so here's how to do it
Yes use a serrated trowel spread it using the flat side to wet the surface, then trowel on the ribs horizontally to you and parallell-ish. Lay the tile flat into the ribs about 10 mm further away from the joint width then using a firm pressure slide it back towards its neighbour. The ribs collapse the parallel lines let the air out and your left with a good solid bed there will be small voids as the adhesive takes up any unevenness but if you lever up a tile is should be wet all over its back and should be a struggle to lift. Unless you use a really wet mix you will never achieve 100% bed, small pockets or bubbles about the size of a baked bean are fine. mixture should comb out nice square ribs that slowly slump to a slightly rounded profile. Back buttering is a debatable point but if the tile is rough on the back then the thinnest skim with the flat side of the trowel to fill them is fine , some tiles have an anti scratch powdery stuff on the backs so they don't scratch each other in the cartons, again cover in adhesive and scrape it off with the flat edge so the back of the tile is wetted, the powder does no harm when assimilated into the mix.
If you place a tile and its high push it back and forth a few times and the adhesive will ooze out the joints scrape it out and check again.
Work clean scrape out the joints with a tile spacer and sponge any heavy spew or finger prints as you go, dont worry too much tile adhesive will still wash off once its set. use a straight edge over three or four tiles at a time to check for flatness and to check your courses are all nice and straight.
Rattling out large areas is a 2 man job - get knee pads my knees are f**ked after years of it

Mapei is good gear Kerraquick is the slowest of the "Rapid" adhesives. Should be around £20/ bag get more than you need and return it. Webber is cheap at the moment but the rapid is too fast for someone that's not used to it - its a catalytic reaction the first mix will be slow , but get any of the previous batch contaminating your next , youll reach for the trowel and find its all set solid in the bucket! get normal set as your not going to need to let folk walk on it within a couple of hours. Avoid Topps and the like who will charge upward of £60 a bag of adhesive - the tiles are a loss leader and they kill you on the consumables, CTD are probably the best for adhesives.

self levellers are fine as its under the tile there's no point loading on it, Mapei stuff was the best but they are much of a muchness, 2part is expensive and the latex can settle out on the surface especially when cold - and that's become a weak bond. You wouldn't think of laying floor tiles with school glue would you? If anyone wants to PVA a substrate send them packing.

 

[rcx132]

so here's how to do it

Thanks Sean! Awesome instructions.

The floor is 5.6 wide and sages in the middle by 1-2 cm because it was levelled with a long piece of sagging wood (don't ask). I was worried it would take a lot of self levelling compound (pricey) to get this flat so I was going to lay the tiles to the shape of the floor, i.e. to follow this banana shape.

Could I use self levelling compound just to fill any troughs in the floor? The mounds have been ground down already.

I'm fairly skilled in DIY but never done tiles. My general builder says he's done tiles a few times. I was going to do it with him and once I'm sure he has a good method going then leave him to it.

The workshop is being rebuilt and there is a pool of water sitting on the concrete slab that's left. I assume the concrete it going to get impregnated. Once the garage is up with the roof and doors on, I was thinking of leaving an industrial dehumidifier running for a few weeks. I just bought a used Ebac dehumidifier off fleabay for £150. What do you think?

 

[Sean]

you can "Boost" leveling compound by adding sand and some cement to it Mapei tec services help line is great. Most leveling compound isnt really truly self leveling, more self smoothing. Be wary of any "Suck" in the slab, when you pour on the compound the water is drawn out and the compound no longer flows , just sits there in a big mess- ive seen slabs ruined by cotractors trying to sort some minor irregularities. if its a really sucky slab then an APD or similar (Resin something is the Mapei product ) primer should be applied before the compound to seal the porosity....it looks like PVA but doesnt become soft again if it gets wet. Obviously any standing water has to be gone first but a damp slab may be in your favour.

for big areas like youve got put spot heights down - stacked up bits of tile or whatever so you can see where it needs built up , then flood the area with leveller till the little indicators are covered quick trowel over to help feather the edges and let it work its magic.

Right enough work...can i go back to Beer, mince pies and slow-mo CNC machines on you tube?

 

[rcx132]

Right enough work...can i go back to Beer, mince pies and slow-mo CNC machines on you tube?

Thanks Sean, enjoy your Christmas. I won't ask any more questions until you've eaten all your pies