Tiling project - advice sought

Update....
*Grouting completed

*Schlitz.... that's not a bad idea. In our case, the main problem was getting the render to stick. I don't know why.

*SS. see photo a few posts back for the green tiles. They are circa 50s, I think. I found recently that if you want a 150mm square porcelain tile, you can have it in any color you like, as long as it's white. So I didn't match them, leading to the photo you can see.

*Graham: there is already a vertical hand hold. It is actually the vertical part of a redundant hand shower fitting. Mater reckons she prefers that to a horizontal one, so we are running with that. I put in plenty of fall, as it is conceivable that, being an open shower, water could fall as far as 1.5m to 'the right' as you look at the photo. So we gave the floor a dished profile left to right, and (of course) sloping right to left into the drain. It is about 25mm (maybe a tad more) below the level of the edges near the drain, which may be overkill, but of course, insufficient fall is a right PITA once it's baked into the concrete!

Graham, one last question if I may be so bold: the sodium silicate is quite viscous! It is just like it looked in the video, and forms the same 'skin', so I don't really doubt is correct. But, can you just confirm that I just coat the grout with the sodium silicate as-is, leave it for 6 hours ( as I think you indicated) then clean off the excess? Thanks

All up, I cannot express how relieved am I that the project has reached this point!
Aside from the sodium silicate matter, the tidy up tasks on a later visit will be to put in a fixed/flexible shower head combo, and I am going to paint the floor and lower green tiles with White Night white tile & laminate paint.

IMG_20220525_160905.jpg
 
If you know of a source of 6 inch (not 150 mm) white tiles please tell me. I need some.
 
I had a brand new shower leak on me a decade back and the dude came to repair it with SS and absolutely guaranteed it would work and to my amazement it did work, I reckon you need to give it a good drink the more the merrier. That's all I can offer in addition to the previous. Perhaps try a spray bottle and a paint brush or lambswool applicator. Or your old Rolling Stones t-shirt perhaps.
 
Good luck! I would think 150mm is all there is. But surely you just leave a small gap?
 
59 Floride (sold) said:
I had a brand new shower leak on me a decade back and the dude came to repair it with SS and absolutely guaranteed it would work and to my amazement it did work, I reckon you need to give it a good drink the more the merrier. That's all I can offer in addition to the previous. Perhaps try a spray bottle and a paint brush or lambswool applicator. Or your old Rolling Stones t-shirt perhaps.
Click to expand...
I will use a paint brush; it seems a bit gooey for a spray bottle? But when you used it on your refactory pot you just coated it and left it for some hours, then presumably washed off the rest?
 
I submerged my clay pots in ss for an hour and it soaked right through and let it dry naturally. I reckon you will get powdery white crystals growing out of the tiles after a coupla days.
 
seasink said:
If you know of a source of 6 inch (not 150 mm) white tiles please tell me. I need some.
Click to expand...

I meant to say, surely you would just buy the 150mm tile, and use that?
6" is 152.4mm. So you would have an extra 2.4mm gap ie a 1.2mm misalignment with the edge of the 6" tile.
One would have to be very fussy about detail to be thereby concerned. I think with that sort of difference, only the person who replaced the tiles would even notice.
 
The gaps are noticeable if you are repairing large patches, so you can't just butt them. I have scrounged (ie, demolished from Villaboard) a number, but need more. It's best not to scrape asbestos fibre boards.
 
This is as far as we are going to go on this occasion.

I want to say a sincere Thank You to everyone (almost..) who contributed, Graham in particular. All of it has been most appreciated and really helped us get the end result with very limited experience.

Ando

IMG_20220526_152339.jpg
 
Wow, that is impressive.
The rendering attempt was definitely the low point of the endeavor!
I haven't looked further into it, but it seems obvious enough that, like being a good DJ, it's all in the mix.

Hopefully some other rendering project will present itself so I can redeem my sense of self worth.
 
I will be doing some wrap up tasks when I visit mater next.
*Paint the floor with white tile paint. It might work, but 'not officially recommended', so will be coating with a clear epoxy containing very fine anti slip particles. As that is my idea, I am going to try it in my own less than attractive bathroom, this weekend.
*BOTH floor wastes ended up with tiny low spots next to the grates! So I will be attempting to fill the void with grout. Planning on applying some cuts with the hand grinder first for some extra tooth.
*Upgraded shower head
*I didn't use the sodium silicate in the end, but it does seem like an unequivocally good idea. I will be giving that a trial run in my own shower recess first.
 
Regarding the sodium silicate....
This is about cement like products made without portland cement.

 
Did she mention cost? It sounds amazing! Didn’t know concrete only lasts 100 years 🤔. Hope she’s bulltishing ; thinking about all the Highrisers buildings in the shitty😳
Polycrete lasts 100 000 years?
 
If concrete only last 100 years, then what about the coliseum? I remember my long departed, retired plumber dad who said it gets harder over 100 years.
 
It's not the concrete that degrades as much as the reinforcement that holds it all together. The Egyptions used concrete but it was da Vincie who invented reinforced concrete. That was the game changer and the principle has been in development ever since. Check out the link below re concrete cancer, that is the limiting factor with concrete. In these days of careful scrutiny and engineer inspections the concrete structures generally last longer than ever, but I would opine that it's land availability and prices that limit the service life of a concrete building.

https://partridge.com.au/concrete-cancer-what-is-it-and-what-does-it-mean/
 
I first saw fky ash concrete in the early 60s. It wan't new. With the demise of coal power generation we'll need a substitute.

As for longevity, there are plenty of people in NSW using every day concrete bridges more than a century old, eg

1894 - Concrete culvert under Parramatta Road at Burwood (the first)

1896 - Arch bridge near Berrima, old Hume Highway.

1896 - the two aquaducts at Annandale

1905 - Richmond Bridge over the Hawkesbury River

1916 - Fuller's Bridge over the Lane Cove River

After that examples are common.

The first NSW bridges were unreinforced, like the Roman examples such as the Pantheon. The twentieth century ones are all reinforced. Concrete is alkaline and protects steel as long as there is adequate cover from the weather.
 
59 Floride (sold) said:
but it was da Vincie who invented reinforced concrete.
Click to expand...
He was quite the ideas man.
I just love that, aside from maths, biology, physics, inventions and everything else that truly unbelievable man did, he also knocked off the most famous and valuable painting in history. Just for a laugh, no doubt.
 
Roman cement was a by-product of vulcanism in central Italy. The volcano provided the heat for the reaction of clay minerals with limestone. You had to only wet the excavated material. You could only obtain it in a small number of locations with suitable geology.

The credits for modern cements go to England - Smeaton invented a lime-clay binder for plaster in the 1600s. Several other English experimenters with ever higher temperature processing eventually brought us structural Portland cement as we know it now. It was at first unreinforced, sometimes laid as masonry looking like Portland stone, hence the name. .

Modern steel reinforcing technique development we owe to the French engineers and their collaborators.
 
I think there was a bit more to Roman concrete than digging it up and wetting it.
Though agreed that the existence of pozzolana volcanic ash was as fortuitous as it was crucial

en.wikipedia.org

Roman concrete - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
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