Best substrate for Travertine tiles?? Advice and information on tiling and fixing tiles to a variety of surfaces

[jjkelly79]

Hi all

Could someone please give me the definitive answer as to what is the best substrate to tile large 600x410 travertine tiles onto?

I've had that many different answers and I would appreciate an unbiased view. It will be in a wetroom which I have used a preformed level shower tray and have bought the Lastogum PCI system to tank the walls and plywood floor.

The walls are currently stripped back to the brick.

Various people have recommended different ways of preparing the walls for tiling:

The builder recommended I use a sand/cement mix with a waterproof additive over the bare brick.
The plasterer recommended I dot and dab moisture resistant plasterboard and then tank that (I have already purchased the PB).
One tile shop suggested batten it with WBP Ply
Another tile shop recommended the cement style tile backer boards
and yet another still recommended some board from the PCI range.

So as you can see I'm a bit confused as to which is the best option!

Obviously the travertine are very heavy tiles so I want to choose the right backing so they dont come falling off. The lastogum can apparently hold up to 32k/m2 which I would hope is less than what the tiles will be?

Thanks very much for your help!

[TheDoctor4]

Hi

Have you had a look at the DIY projects section of this site: https://www.diydoctor.org.uk/projects.htm especially the project on Damp Walls and Tanking: https://www.diydoctor.org.uk/projects/tanking.htm This may be of some help to you. If not try contacting Property Repair Systems as they have great knowledge in this field.

Regards

[jjkelly79]

Hi Thanks for your reply but I was asking more about what the best backing is for the tiles i.e. would MR plasterboard be sufficient?

[chris_on_tour2002]

to be honest i think that all the suggestions are valid - though wbp ply would be my least preferred.

M-R plasterboard, provided its been properly installed, will be fine. your plasterer recommended this because he's a plasterer.

your builder would recommend sand/cement because he's a builder.

the guys in the shop would recommend fancy shmancy stuff because they're salesmen!

but all would work equally well (except the ply in my opinion).

aquapanel (to throw another one into the mix) is also a good method - its cement based plasterboard.