Specialist manufacturer of tile adhesives, grouts, finishing and ancillary products, Dunlop Adhesives, is helping merchants move products off their shelves and out of the door in time for a busy summer for their customers. Endorsing its Non-Slip Wall Tile Adhesive as a stock must-have, Dunlop is anticipating that homeowners will be looking to improve their [...]
Installing Natural Stone
For busy tradesmen, few things are as challenging as tiling successfully with natural stone. Fortunately, Debi Bailey, Brand Manager at Dunlop Adhesives, has dug deep into her knowledge to offer up a selection of handy tips and advice to offer your customers to ensure that they get the perfect adhesion and the perfect results.
- Tiling with natural stone is a matter of knowledge and balance; the knowledge to identify the variables than can effect the overall adhesion, and the ability to get the right balance between the stone, the background substrate, and the adhesive
- It can be tricky, so it’s a good idea to make sure that your customers fully understand the materials they are working with so that they can select the perfect adhesive and grout for the job, with your guidance, of course
- Some carbonate-based stones, such as marble, travertine and limestone, may be susceptible to drawing in residual moisture from the tile adhesive, which has the potential to cause a few problems
- The best way to prevent such an occurrence is to make sure a rapid-setting, low water demand adhesive is used
- However, before any adhesive is used, it is vital to make sure that the base substrate is the right one for the conditions to which the tiling will be exposed
- If your customer is planning to tile onto walls, once more there is an issue of weight in the sense that the substrate needs to be appropriate to the scale and thickness of the intended tile
- If you can remember to recommend using a rapid-setting, low water-demand adhesive, and to judge each job on it’s relative material merits, then there is no reason why every tradesmen cannot make natural stone tiling a natural speciality