Paultergeist
Active member
Greetings!
I am moving towards the idea of doing tile on my garage floor. The house is a single-story ranch-ish design (no second story over the garage), and the slab-on-grade garage floor is in fair-to-moderate shape: there are a few cracks here and there, and a couple of places where it looks like the concrete might have been repaired. There is a little bit of flaking and effluorescence around the concrete stem walls (I hope to encapsulate that). There are NO relief joints cut into the concrete slab, which is about 16' x 16' in size. I have no idea how thick the slab is, but everything on this house seems to have been built on the cheap. The house was built in 1951, and I have been in it about 12 years. I don't think that any of those cracks in the slab have changed or progressed in the span of time during my time in the house, but I also haven't really been concerned about them before.
With that background in place, I find myself considering the idea of using a "decoupling membrane" between the tile and the concrete slab. The example that comes to mind is the "Schluter-DITRA" product, but there are other brands as well. The rationale is that the membrane would help to allow a little *give* if the slab shifted a little bit, thus reducing the chances of cracks being telegraphed through the tiles.
The flip-side is that the decoupling membrane stuff is kind of pricey, and will require more labor. I would figure another $500-600 if I do a membrane (that is actually more than I plan to spend on additional tile needed). If using a membrane really is THE way to go, I would rather take the hit now and do the install one time, and do it right. On the other hand, I do not see this sort of product being used very much in my region, and I wonder if using a decoupling membrane is kind of over-kill bordering on un-necessary? If so, I would rather save the buck$.....
For those of you that have tiled your garage floors, did you use any sort of decoupling membrane?
If so, your thoughts?
If not, any problems?
Any helpful ideas are much appreciated.
Paul
I am moving towards the idea of doing tile on my garage floor. The house is a single-story ranch-ish design (no second story over the garage), and the slab-on-grade garage floor is in fair-to-moderate shape: there are a few cracks here and there, and a couple of places where it looks like the concrete might have been repaired. There is a little bit of flaking and effluorescence around the concrete stem walls (I hope to encapsulate that). There are NO relief joints cut into the concrete slab, which is about 16' x 16' in size. I have no idea how thick the slab is, but everything on this house seems to have been built on the cheap. The house was built in 1951, and I have been in it about 12 years. I don't think that any of those cracks in the slab have changed or progressed in the span of time during my time in the house, but I also haven't really been concerned about them before.
With that background in place, I find myself considering the idea of using a "decoupling membrane" between the tile and the concrete slab. The example that comes to mind is the "Schluter-DITRA" product, but there are other brands as well. The rationale is that the membrane would help to allow a little *give* if the slab shifted a little bit, thus reducing the chances of cracks being telegraphed through the tiles.
The flip-side is that the decoupling membrane stuff is kind of pricey, and will require more labor. I would figure another $500-600 if I do a membrane (that is actually more than I plan to spend on additional tile needed). If using a membrane really is THE way to go, I would rather take the hit now and do the install one time, and do it right. On the other hand, I do not see this sort of product being used very much in my region, and I wonder if using a decoupling membrane is kind of over-kill bordering on un-necessary? If so, I would rather save the buck$.....
For those of you that have tiled your garage floors, did you use any sort of decoupling membrane?
If so, your thoughts?
If not, any problems?
Any helpful ideas are much appreciated.
Paul