Thinset for Ceramic Tile Floors

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Tim Carter shares some tips about using thinset for installing a ceramic tile floor.He explains why using thinset mortar is fantastic for ceramic tile and how to mix it correctly.
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Closed Caption:

yeah
oh man this is heavy
how you doing I'm getting ready to mix
up some thin set because we're going to
finish installing the ceramic tile floor
here and then sets really neat stuff
comes in a big heavy 50-pound bags and
as you can see as I'm pouring it out
you know it looks a lot just like cement
you know just a power and and all in all
it's a little dusty - well
wow look at that so let me tell you a
little bit about what since it is here
I'll show it to you
you'll notice on the bag
when you go to the store a tile store
home center
it will say it will say thinset mortar
and it comes in two colors
this one is gray but you can sometimes
get it in white
if you go to a ceramic tile distributor
and you want to use white sometimes if
you put down a white floor in case some
of that thinset uses up between the
times
so anyway here's what since it is it's
basically just portland cement powder
and very fine silica sand and when you
mix it with water it makes like a
miniature concrete
that's really important when you're
putting down ceramic floor tile
here's why if you were to use some of
those spreadable organic mastics that
look like cake icing and you put your
tile on that what happens is that the
floor tile that mastic never really gets
hard and if you walk on the floor tile
or put something very heavy on the floor
tile that Tyler crack that won't happen
with inset because when the thinset
cures after about a day or two
it's just like concrete something's
that's have these water based or these
powder blues and they're called acrylic
hardeners and modifiers and they'll
actually make it very sticky but just
regular fence it when you mix it right
it's very sticky all you have to do and
here you can see some of the powder here
it's very powdery look at that
you just have to add some water to it I
like to use a mixing knife
that's very stiff you notice I can't
bend this blade if you use a blade
that's kind of bendable this gets pretty
dense and if you press too hard you'll
actually crack the blade and I've done
that before so that's why i switched to
these little stiffer blades so we'll get
this out of the way I've got some nice
clean water here and you don't want to
pour too much in because you've got to
get it to the right consistency
i'm a poor too much water and we're
going to find out here
well that's not bad
what I'm looking for is a consistency
that's a lot like Oh pancake batter is
about the best way to describe it
you know pancake batter is really pretty
thick but it's portable
you can see right now this is a little
too dry that's not going to get it but
we're really really close
at this point you have to add water very
slowly
and i'm actually going to do it with my
hands because i don't want to just pour
it in because i'll add too much so I'm
just going to put a little dash of water
in like you can see that see this
just maybe like two ounces not much and
sometimes it look like it's still to
drive but let me tell you don't make it
too thin
oh yeah it's getting pretty close so you
can still see some dry powder down there
so we need to add more
yeah that's probably going to be a break
earlier i'm going to scoop some out once
i get it right
I'm going to scoop some out onto the
floor and onto this mixing paddle and
you'll see what the consistency should
be if you were going to mix a lot of
this up at once you would want to get
one of those paddles that you put on the
end of a drill
so I bet you that's going to be it right
there
oh this is good stuff but remember the
thinset got to use it for four tiles
it works really well as in the ceramic
tile showers
it's very very good material or that's
looking really good
you want to make sure when you mix it up
that you get all the lumps out of it but
here look at this
that's what it's supposed to look like
that's seeing you can see it's portable
fall off the knife
yeah that's pretty good stuff
that's exactly what it should look like
final tip only mix up as much then set
as you can put down on the floor and
cover with tile in about 15 minutes
you don't want this stuff to sit in the
bucket very long because it will
actually start to crystallize and get
hard and if you add more water to it
it's called three tempering it that's
really kind of a bad thing you don't
want to do that only makes enough that
you can use in 20 minutes
i'm tim carter for ask the builder com
if you want to discover more home
improvement tips go to ask the builder
com
yeah