# Forum Home Renovation Tiling  How to level this bathroom floor?

## takai

Took up most of the floor tiles in the bathroom today, and it seems that the owner/builder who originally tiled it didnt bother to use cement or anything and instead tiled directly to the screed when it was wet. Not only that he chose to use little 10mm square glass mosaic tiles.   
Even with the rotary hammer drill its a slow going and arduous task, made worse by the fact that instead of coming up nicely the tiles tend to explode or shatter and leave half of them stuck to the screed, which means that im essentially destroying the base to get them up. 
Now I enquired with Kennards about using a floor grinder to flatten out the floor and they said that there was no way i could use a grinder with glass left embedded in it as they reckoned the heat would just turn it to slag and it would never come out (and they would charge me for damage to the grinder).
I call a bit of BS on this one, although that being said having more glass dust floating around isnt somethign that i want at all. 
I have also thought about grinding back with a cup wheel on my 230mm grinder, but the cup wheels i was looking at were $200+. 
The last option i was thinking about was simply chipping out the majority of the tiles and simply going over the rest with a self leveling compound. 
Now I havnt used a self leveler for about 10 years now, and even then it was at my grandparents house in Queensland, where we were using it to even out the kitchen (i.e. no floor waste).
Is it feasable to be able to use a self-leveler with a fall towards the floor waste? or am i wasting (pun intended) my time?
Also last time my granddad insisted that the minimum thickness you could go with a self leveler was about 10mm, although im guessing that its come along a bit from there as i see people talking about 2-3mm levels. What thickness should i be looking at for the leveler?

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## jiggy

Even if you could use a concrete grinder to remove the tiles the chances are that you would end up with flat areas not suiting the fall to the waste, the same problem with using self levelling compound . Have you tried hammering up the screed yet? Usually once you have a breakaway it comes up pretty easily. At least if you lay your own screed you can set your own levels.

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## takai

Im not sure there is any screed at all. It all looks like the same compound down about 20mm, with no delineation between layers.

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## jiggy

The screed is usually about 20 0r 30 mm thick. Use a chisel point on your rotary hammer and try breaking away a small area , don't try to take up too much at a time.

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## takai

I cant see anything which you could definitely call a screed vs a slab. I did however get down to some 25 or 32mpa concrete, but its pretty damned rough:  
Is it jsut that in those days (70s) they didnt bother to float the slab after setting? 
This is my first non-timber framed house. All of my previous renos have been on queenslanders or similar on footings.

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## Pulse

Tilers often used to sprinkle cement dust on damp screed and bed the tiles into that, as you can see, its seems like it worked!! 
Cup grinder with dust shroud is option 1
Self levelling compound is option 2
direct stick to existing tiles is option 3 
Cheers
Pulse

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## takai

Yeah, and this was a house tiled by an Italian owner/builder in the 70s. I dare say he did exactly that. Bloody horrible job of it too.
Option 3 wont work for the bathroom, there arnt any tiles left to stick to.
Option 2 might work ok, but ill need to figure out how to do follow the falls he has done.
Option 1 would work fine, but again fall is the issue. 
Also i cant pull out the screed either, seems almost like the screed was laid ontop of damp concrete, and its merged, or they built the fall into the slab when it was poured, as there are stones within 5mm of the surface. Pretty sure the tiler owner/builder also laid most of the slab too (from talking to the neighbours), so he could have done that.

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## Oldsaltoz

From your comments it sounds like the levels that were set are not correct in the first place, so your only option would be to run a level over the problem areas and remove what material you have to eliminate the problem, then use a levelling compound to get closer to the required falls. 
Cement screed is not viable at less than 25 mm and even at that it can be a problem, leveling compound is good down to 3 or 5 mm thick. 
Good luck.  :Smilie:

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## Pulse

To remove material you can use your angle grinder to cut a series of parallel cuts to the required depth then chip out with the jackhamer, levelling compound then levels it out to accept your membrane. 
Cheers
Pulse

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## takai

> From your comments it sounds like the levels that were set are not correct in the first place, so your only option would be to run a level over the problem areas and remove what material you have to eliminate the problem, then use a levelling compound to get closer to the required falls. 
> Cement screed is not viable at less than 25 mm and even at that it can be a problem, leveling compound is good down to 3 or 5 mm thick. 
> Good luck.

  Ok, sounds like leveling compound rather than cement screed. Ive heard that you can add a bit of sand to the leveling compound so that you can shape a fall into it, is that right?   

> To remove material you can use your angle grinder to cut a series of parallel cuts to the required depth then chip out with the jackhamer, levelling compound then levels it out to accept your membrane. 
> Cheers
> Pulse

  Yeah, thats what i was figuring.

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## Oldsaltoz

Quote
Ok, sounds like levelling compound rather than cement screed. I've heard  that you can add a bit of sand to the levelling compound so that you can  shape a fall into it, is that right? End Quote. 
I suspect you right on this one but not sure if it applies to all brands, talk to the tile shop people, some self levelling compounds may not be suitable. 
Good luck.  :Smilie:

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## chalkyt

For what it is worth, I have used Ardit (self leveling compound) to tart up a bathroom floor similar to yours before tiling, then waited until it started going off, to create a fall in the shower. It involved a bit of timing but wasn't too hard to do. So far no problems with tiles coming unstuck or anything like that (it has been down about 5 years now). Might be worth an experiment on one area. The Ardit is fairly soft when green so wouldn't be too hard to get off if it all ends up pear shaped. Good luck  :Smilie:

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## takai

Ardit eh. Ill have to give it a go. 
I found the screed, in one corner, but thats about it. I cant chip back to it because it takes up tons of the slab at the same time.Just going to use self leveling compound, and tile over.

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## takai

Scratch my last post. In pulling out the return for the shower today i found where the slab actually is:
[img]http://gallery2.plebeians.net/d/33054-2/1000001288.JPG[img] 
About 2.5" below the floor height. Seems that they have used some 25mpa concrete in some areas to bring the floor height up, and then done screed over the top.  
Pretty sure that the when the drain was done they used a float to level that bit out, but the rest of the floor was just left rough and then screed ontop of the rough 25mpa. Bodgy as hell. 
Bought my 20kg bag of Ardit yesterday  :Smilie:

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## gizmoe

Lanko Bulk Fill Screed or Ardex K005 Bulk Fill Screed might help? We have used the Lanko product from feather edge to 100mm. 
Todd Durrer from Ardex is a really helpfull guy if anyone needs product information. 
He's Canadian but don't hold that against him.  :Wink:  
Brian Powley from Lanko is equally as helpfull. 
The Lanko goes off really quick & I'm told the Ardex does as well.  
We did a bathroom approx 3.5m * 2.5m & by the time it was all bedded the start area was rock hard, maybe 45mins? 
If I had that concrete to pretty up, I would run our grinders over that slab to clean up, but without a dust shroud & awesome dust extraction setup it would be dusty & fine dust as you guys would know is really bad for your health.  
I can't say we have had any problems with damaging the grinders from tile grinding/glass, but the odd steel bits in concrete can pull diamonds off the discs.  
Concrete grinding is a high wear, high cost operation & I'm a little suprised companies still hire out machines. We couldn't get any a few years ago, so we bit the bullet & bought our own stuff. 
We have 4", 5", 9", 10" & 19" grinders with seperators & Nilfisk vacuums to make life easier & they do cost abit, but if you need to do a job properly, then you use the right tools. 
How did it all go? have you sorted it out?

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## takai

Yeah, all sorted out. Ardit went down last night:  
I added some brickies sand to the two batches i made to go around the drains:  
Stiffened it up enough that i could shape it, but still had the surface tension smoothing/leveling properties. 
Plus then i had an edge i could work to for the rest of the bathroom which i did much more liquid.

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## gizmoe

Is it a silly question, but did you prime it with anything before the Leveller went down?  
Generally Ardex like  you to use the A82 2 part primer if going over existing tiles ie non porous surfaces, but then you have to add A25 to the mix or the Ardex Leveller will crazy crack.

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## takai

Primed with the P15 single part primer (Dunlop rebadged, same as hte Ardit). All the glass on teh floor was up by then. The blue bits you can see are the blue colouring in the cement they used.

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