BAL Adhesives - are they worth it?

[cr0ft]

Hi all,

Up to recently I've used BAL tubbed adhesive for small format tiles and Topps Trade cement-based adhesives for large format. I find when starting tiling from the middle of the wall the Topps Trade adhesive lets the tiles slip too much, no matter how hard they are twisted and pressed onto the wall. Is BAL adhesive better for holding tiles? Is it any better in general to justify paying 4x more? Advice appreciated!

 

[Alan.P]

Why are you starting from the middle of the wall ? you can hang tiles comfortably if you use something with 'body' but why, are you using spacers ?

 

[Spud]

Bal is one of the best brands in the UK market and you will struggle to find a pro tiler to say anything negative about their adhesive other than the price is higher than the budget brands, Topps is a predominantly retail outlet and Bal adhesives can be purchased at more competitive rates else where ,I dont use too much Bal my self these days but I have used it loads in the past and like most of there products

 

[cr0ft]

I just find it much more accurate for setting out full-height tiling around bathrooms. It halves any error from the top to the bottom of the wall in terms of tiles not quite square, tiny errors in level line etc. Up until recently Topps cement adhesive will grip a large format tile with no slip on the wall, allowing you to do this. I don't know if something has changed in their recipe recently but it doesn't work so well now.

Been doing it for ages after having watched how quickly another tiler did a bathroom using the method. Put the middle row on above the bath and basin/cistern height, all the way round the bathroom = perfect lineup. By the time you come back to the first wall one person can work above the middle row and another below. Finally do the top and bottom cutting but to fixed tiles = a nice accurate gap between wall and floor tiles all round the room.

It did seem a bit mad to me before I tried it but it's much faster than starting from the bottom of the wall imo.

 

[Alan.P]

I've never heard anything dafter, imho of course, if it works for you, fine. As for recipe, I've been told that they do alter the mix for summer / winter batches, that was on another brand, wouldn't like to say if it applied to all.

But your still crazy lol

 

[glasgow_tiler]

nicobond ultragrip is good for hanging the tiles aslong as its just a seration onto gypy lol mapei the red lid 1 used to be pretty good aswell

 

[cr0ft]

LOL thanks. Take this one though. If you start from the floor and have to go to full height round a whole bathroom. You start tiling from the wall to the left of the bath say. You put in the first row then tile the whole wall. Then you do the right hand wall. Unless you are 100% accurate with your level line height and angle on both walls your grout lines aren't going to meet up perfectly on the bath wall. My method might sound madder than a mad thing but I know that my grout lines are going to meet up perfectly round the entire room!

Interesting point about the summer/winter batches though!

 

[macten]

That's a mad way of doing things!
Start from the bottom and save yourself a load of pain.

 

[cr0ft]

Lol I used too. Moved to the starting in the middle and I'm much faster with less stress getting grout lines to meet up! Try it once on a bathroom and I bet you will be a convert too

 

[Alan.P]

Unless you are 100% accurate with your level line height and angle on both walls your grout lines aren't going to meet up perfectly on the bath wall. My method might sound madder than a mad thing but I know that my grout lines are going to meet up perfectly round the entire room!

But if you put a datum / level around the whole room as I would then you know your going to be right, so what do you do, back skim the tile to get the first row in, what's the other guy doing while your doing that ? and what if your out by the time you get around the room, where / what do you adjust ?

 

[cr0ft]

I just fire a datum round the room at mid-height with a laser level and back skim the first row. After about 10 mins the first row is in on the first wall and then he starts tiling up from that while I work on the first row on the next walls. I know I'm not going to be out because the datum line is uninterrupted around the whole bathroom as it's above the bath, basin, WC etc. Only the door gets in the way but there isn't much you can do about that! If I start tiling from the bottom if the datum line on the left or right wall to the bath is out slightly then the grout lines don't meet perfectly.

Anyway, I get the general consensus is I'm madder than a hatter but it works for me!

 

[Andy Allen]

i used to use bal all the time ,but switched to weber, much better prices for excellent adhesive.

nowt wrong with bal, just expensive and theres as-good products out there a lot cheaper..

 

[Ian]

BAL and Topps will eventually realise that they could get a lot more trade sales of their products if they stopped being so greedy. We must be due a poll soon to see what adhesives have been used most by our members this year.

 

[bugs183]

I was bought up on Bal and now i find it way too expensive, and not any better than other brands.
The only decent tubbed adhesive they make is White Star, the rest is simply rubbish, with Blue being the least cack, but still rubbish.
Biscem/Bostick Showerproof is a much better readymix for dry area use, but pretty much swapped to cement based, where i use Dunlop (made by Norcross), or Mapei.
As for the tiling in the middle method, it sounds like you will have a mistake on your hand if your not careful. Letting tiles dry under their own weight is madness, no adhesive will hold as well as using batons, plus if you have a laser line there is no reason at all for your corners not to meet up.
If you want to see exactly how your tiles are setting out floor to ceiling, use a gauge stick, then tile the thinest wall in on the job (normally near a door frame). That way if is isn't quite how you want, it's only a little job to fix.

 

[The D]

It is interesting to find out I was doing it wrong for 20 years as up until the tile formats got so big and I swapped from tabbed adhesive to powdered adhesive I set out and fixed all my tiling from the middle of the wall, then worked down to the floor and then worked from the middle up. The adhesive we used allowed us to hang the tiles so this was the most efficient way of tiling. Most powdered adhesives do not have enough body to hang the large format tiles so now I work a different way. But it is most defiantly not a silly way of doing things.