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Hi,
Just about to buy our 1st house, I want to rip some of the old tiles that are stuck to the slab in the living areas, I'm wondering how difficult this task may prove to be, whether I'm gonna just create rock hard lumps of mortar or whether they will pop off and the bedding can quite easily be cleaned off. Has anyone had much experience with this?
We are either gonna paint the slab or lay a floating floor.
Thanks any advice appreciated
I took up some tiles recently and still have tile cement lumps on the floor. Not sure how to get them off or even if I need to (before laying slate).
I used a $69 Ozito rotary hammer drill with a spade bit which did a pretty good job. This would be their only tool I would ever recommend.
Ozwinner (a brickie) used one of these for ages and as far as I know it still goes.
When you pull up the old tiles there will either be mortar left, or damaged concrete.
Hire a concrete polisher and then coat with clear self leveling epoxy?????
I took up 3 rooms of tiles last year using a Dynalink $69 rotary hammer (I think these have since been rebadged as Ozito in Bunnings). It was a good tool for the job, but took longer than I expected carting all the rubble away :C
Things to watch out for. If the tiling is recent they may not be bedded in mortar. Glue would be difficult to clean off a slab. Even with a mortar bed you can run into unexpected glitches. We found the depth of mortar bed varied a great deal in order to get the desired fall in wet areas. If you just go back to the raw slab you could have unexpected drainage issues, not just in wet areas but also truing up an otherwise uneven slab.
Also we had a small run of steps. The steps had been realigned with the mortar bed. Caused all sorts of problems when I cut back to the underlying concrete formed work.
BTW I've just installed a water tank and needed to cut through a 4in concrete slab to install some footings. (Sloping site, don't ask). I melted the $69 rotary hammer trying to use it as a jack hammer. I didn't have the hide to take it back to Bunnings and ask for a warranty replacement (Hammer was 2 years and 11 months of the 3 year warranty):rotfl:
Thanks People,
useful info all round, Fuzzie, our tiles have been around for the lifetime of the house I reckon, (20 odd yrs) so should therefore be bedded on mortar u would think.
Apparantly, u can grind any lumps n bumps off I need to go see the hire shop, cheers.
Your sometimes best to hire a floor stripper, they will get it done in a day and the floor would be ready to install even a timber floor straight to it.