I think the main problem is the term "PVA" the meaning of this acronymn is POLY VINYL ACETATE alot of people use the term to describe various products from ardion 90 by ardex to unibond or bondcrete as it is called down here. The latter 2 examples are not poly vinyl acetates and are used with various types of cementuous products with certain applications. They still should not be used as primers as they will only coat a particular surface they won't penertrate it as a true floor or wall primer does.
The 2 key problems in using poly vinyl acetate as a primer are:
1. once applied pva can reabsorb moisture be it from your adhesive or in a wet area causing it to let go of the substrate with a resulting
tile failure.
2. Some adhesives may cause a chemical reactions causing the acetate in the "PVA" to form acetic acid. Not a major problem say under ceramic but under any type of stone it could mean trouble.
On this forum techniques and syles will always be changing as new cases of problem tiling occurs. The pros that fequent these pages including myself endeavor to keep up to speed on such topics to form sound opinions which hopefully leads to sound advice and in short I believe we all do that.
I am pleased to here that certain people who use "PVA" have not had any problems and that's fantastic. But sadly there are cases that counter these claims and we have to listen to these as well and give advice based on a worst case senario. For if we recommend a product and it fails we let down our fellow members and lose respect within our industry.
For the moment until further notice I and some of my fellow pros do not recommend the use of "PVA" as a primer because as far as the data and failure rates suggests, it's use would not warrant "BEST PRACTICE" within the tiling industry.
Do yourself and your fellow members a favour and only use the recommended primer for the recommended task.
Cheers Mick