Tiling a Victorian path - what base/adhesive to use? Advice and information on tiling and fixing tiles to a variety of surfaces

[GavinS]

Hello,

I live in a Victorian house and want to create the traditional black and white checker board pattern outside.


I tiled our last houses internal hallway in the same pattern so I'm comfortable with the actual tiling itself, but not sure how to prepare the surface and what adhesive / cement mix to use to secure outside floor tiles.

The current path is concrete (rough finish). I'm thinking I need to first put a leveling mixture down first to get perfectly flat finish, and then lay the tiles on this? My feeling is "normal" floor tile adhesive is not going to be suitable, is a sharp sand and cement mixture the best to use or what I should use as a base.

All input gratefully received!

Gavin.

[thedoctor]

Depends how big the tiles are Gavin. If they are only 100mm or 150mm square, then its best to use a cement based, powdered adhesive which is suitable for external use and your local tile or flooring shop will be able to help you with this.; If they are any bigger then a sand and cement base would be ok but this would need to be mixed with a T cup full of PVA adhesive for every bucket full of mortar. The backs of the tiles should also be painted with PVA just before laying. The reason for this is that the tiles themselfes are usually not very pourous so any adhesion between the tiles and the base has to be through ordinary adhesion as opposed to the suction adhesion that happens when a porous surface ( eg paving slab or brick) meets a water based mortar.