Should You Back Butter Floor Tiles

Back buttering tile can be effective.

Should you back butter floor tiles.

When you back butter the tile you re keying it in. Back buttering is giving the tiles a ribbed bed of adhesive back skimming is giving the back of the tile an un ribbed skim of adhesive these methods are to be used with normal spreading of your adhesive ie on your wall floor. I am also using a tool called the back butter buddy. If you want a more scientific analysis of whether you not you should back butter check out the video below.

Depends what size trowel you use most people use 6mm i prefer 8mm or if tiles are really bad 10mm on walls. Back buttering also insures near complete 95 surface adhesion between tile and substrate. The same applies to porcelain or ceramic or any other type of tile as well just on a more microscopic level. The thinset is well adhered and then when the wet thinset touches the wet thinset on the floor that s a much easier bond to make than thinset to dry tile with depressions in it.

During back buttering it is not uncommon for thinset to push through the mesh which may partially fill the grout joints and rise above the surface of the tile once the sheet is applied to the wall. I constantly have to tell people that you really don t need to. This is a stronger move than merely pressing the tile to the floor. There are very few instances when you ll need to backbutter a mosaic tile.

How to back butter tile correctly. However there is more to this process which we will see in the following paragraphs. Although not necessary for tile coverage back buttering can be effective by increasing the bond of the mortar to the back of the tile which is an excellent benefit. Normally if you feel the need to backbutter mosaics it is easier to simply use a larger trowel on your substrate.

Sometimes i get asked how to backbutter mosaic tiles. What you should do when fixing is every now and then is fix a tile then remove it and see what coverage you have on the back of the tile this s a good indication that you could be using the wrong trowel if you havent good a good coveage on the tiles.