Tiling A Floor Over Plywood

Regular seasonal humidity shifts are significant enough to make the average 10 x 10 wood subfloor floor expand or contract as much as 1 2.

Tiling a floor over plywood.

Plywood and osb expand and contract with humidity and temperature much more than ceramic tile. A couple options considered are. You cannot install tile directly onto plywood because it is not dimensionally stable. Install concrete board over the plywood.

Hope you didn t like your beautiful new tile floor. Tips for laying tile on plywood subfloor for flooring use intervening sheets of plywood. Chipboard cushioned vinyl flooring particle boards of any type oriented strand board osb interior grade plywood tongue and groove planking and hardwood floors are unsuitable substrates for direct installation of ceramic tile. Lay down a vapour barrier overtop the concrete pad then fasten 3 4 inch plywood using a ramset to the concrete pad.

Install 1 4 inch cork by thin setting it to the concrete pad then installing the heating system by fastening it to. To install ceramic tile over wood the wood surface must be structurally sound enough to support the weight of the tile. As the plywood or osb expands the ceramic won t. Tile can be installed over a plywood substrate and it is actually a fantastic way to make sure you don t have deflection in your floor.

Ceramic tile doesn t expand contract nearly as much. With a trowel scoop out and spread enough mortar on. Follow the directions on the packaging to properly mix the thin set mortar. Use a large bucket and.

Under british standards bs 5385 part 1 plywood has now been excluded as a suitable substrate material for the direct fixing of wall tiles therefore when tiling on to walls a tile backer board is required. Increasing the floor height can create problems in a room with cabinets or a toilet and it may cause headaches at transitions to other rooms with different flooring. If you put tile directly on top of plywood it will chip and break. Use a polymer modified thin set a type of mortar to attach the backer board to the subfloor.

To install the concrete board apply tile adhesive to the back then press it down against the plywood. Thinset is the wet base that you first trowel on the plywood to make the tile. If you add a layer of plywood or cementboard however you could raise the floor by as much as 3 4 inch not including the extra height added by the tiles themselves. However tiling onto plywood floors is still acceptable under british standards.

Use thinset with a higher latex content.