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As the wall seemed to be not strong enough, the builder put plywood to cover it, saying the tiles would have fitted better. After a year or so they're all coming off!! Now I'm told we should have put some cement in between.
Do you agreet?? Tiles are coming off the floor as well, and they were placed on plywood either. What would have been a better way to do it???
Thanx for any advice.

I can't believe no one out there can help on this matter.
Here we're talking about a bathroom wall, on the shower side.
The wall has been fully tiled only last summer. While the work was almost done, I was told that as the wall seemed not strong enough to support the tiles, they had to put some plywood in between and then fix the tiles on top of the ply, as this is the usual way around in these cases.
I was not fully convinced only because of the location being often wet from direct water, but the builder was very confident and I didn't know what to suggest otherwise.
Not even one year later, and the tiles are all coming off.
As I have to have it fixed again, I would like not to repeat the same mistake. So if anyone knows any better way to do it (take off the plywood and reinforce the wall, instead, or leave it as it is, but using an adhesive/grout especially made for wet areas) or any other advices, would be the most welcome..

As this is the brick and blockwork forum you might be hard pressed to get an answer as the tiling experts may never look in here. There is a tiling forum near the bottom of the list.

As to the problem, was the tile adhesive applied straight to the plywood or was something used to seal the wood first?

If whoever fitted the tiles used a PVA solution to seal the plywood then you may have found the problem.

Personally I don't have any experience of tiling on wood, but I imagine that tiling directly onto wood might cause the adhesive to dry out too quickly and possibly cause the problem you have now.

I would advise that you use a proper tiling tanking kit to waterproof the substrate before you put the tiles up.

As to whether the existing wall would be strong enough, what's it made of? I have successfully tiled onto plasterboard walls without problems but maybe you are using very heavy tiles?

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