Steps To Laying Ceramic Tile On Heated Plywood

Have you always wanted to know about preparing and laying ceramic tile onto a heated floor? How does one go about this installation?

Some common questions asked are is there be a better underlayment? Do you need special glue/mastic? Do you need special grouts that are able to withstand expansion and shrinkage? Or does one even need "special" tiles?

Again, the above questions are fair and quite reasonable given that laying ceramic tile over an existing flooring is not something which is commonly done every time.

However, again you'll need to first understand that tiles are not meant to be glued directly onto plywood. A proper underlayment is needed to sufficiently set tile over wood such as hardibacker boards or durock boards. If it is radiant heat that is set in concrete, then you don't really need another underlayment.

Once you have thinset the underlayment boards to plywood with a multiflex thin set or laticrete you can then start laying ceramic tile.

There is no "special" tile needed for this install, so you can just pick whatever tiles that you prefer except for mastic. These are for certain applications/installs on walls. Just make sure the tile has a wear rating of 4 or 5 as these are commercial ratings for ceramic tiles.

As a suggestion, you can also use premixed tile bond when laying ceramic tiles to plywood floor and it works quite well. Ceramic tiles can be laid on anything flat as long as you have a good layer of adhesive and push the tiles in properly so that there are no gaps under them. You can just make larger gaps between tiles to compensate for expansion, 5mm would be sufficient.

No "special" grout is also needed for laying ceramic tile, just as long as it's fortified grout. You can also use a grout enhancer to mix with the grout instead of using water as this gives you an added advantage of truer color and prevents molding.

If you want to find out more, go to this website here: Laying Ceramic Tile