Hi,

I have a basement / under house area that is the bane of my life. The concrete has been roughly done in 6 different squares over an area 7m x 4m. I want to tidy up the area by tiling the area (it needs to be able to handle a small amount of moisture).

The 6 individual slabs are not lifting and are fairly level but it is obvious that they were poured separately (home job by prior owner) . There hasn't been much movement in the slabs over the last 30 years as the joins have been "puttied" up with cement and there are only hairline cracks in.

Contacted a tiler or two. Opinions were ...

A. Level with self leveler (mapai brand) and tile with flexible adhesive. Will this work as wouldn't the joints in the concrete come up and crack the tiles?? Tiler said he would be able set the tiles out so as to cater for movement between some of the slabs (with silicone) but not all of them.

B. Lay a sand / cement screed and the tile. Is the area to large to do this? This guy said that using a self leveler wouldn't be a good idea.

Prefer option A as it means I don't have to bust up the existing slabs and don't loose head height ... however something tells me that I will end up with the tiles cracking and a big mess in the long term. Don't want to throw good money after bad and not after the perfect solution either, just something reasonable. Please give me some advice here if you can.

Also had some concreters out who said to either rip it up (9K) or top with additional 50mm slab (3K) but want to avoid this if not necessary.

frog_hopper


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