Sealing Plaster Walls Before Tiling

Don t use paint glue pva wall paper paste only use the primer recommended by the adhesive manufacturer of your chosen tile adhesive.

Sealing plaster walls before tiling.

Use a proper acrylic based tiling primer sucha s bal prime apd or ardex p51. If in doubt prime the walls is a general rule. You want the tile adhesive to have something to grab onto. Thoroughly vacuum the area and give the wall a once over with a damp sponge or cleaning cloth.

Adhesive grout and tile 20kg max weight onto plaster. This way the adhesive will stick properly and last in the long run if you are using a good product. Also keep the walls you are about to tile free of moisture dust and grease. I did question the rep about this and he was adamant that new plaster should be pva d because if not the plaster sucks the moisture from the adhesive too quickly therefore it doesn t set properly.

Seal the walls with a skim coat and let it dry thoroughly. If you choose a heavier tile you will need to overboard with a backaboard. Before you get to it you should level the bathroom the kitchen and or the hallway walls. Otherwise a few complications might occur.

Pva is not suitable for tiling for various reasons and this has been debated many times here in the forum. You didn t say what adhesive you are going to use but one thing that is absolutely definate do not use pva. When applying tile to a plastered surface it is important not to overload the weight of what the plaster will take before failure occurs plaster will support about 20kg m2 or about a 9mm thickness of ceramic tile. He gave me a list of their recommendations and one of them was to always use waterproof pva diluted before tiling on new plaster.