Yesterday, a friend asked me on WeChat if the floor tiles need to be sprinkled with water for maintenance after they are laid.
He told me that his home is being renovated. He has seen articles on the Internet more than once saying that after the tiles are laid, they must be sprinkled with water for maintenance, because now the tiles are generally laid using the dry laying method. Sprinkling water can make the cement under the tiles The sand is fully bonded to the tiles to prevent future hollowing. But the master who decorated his home said there was no need to do this and it was purely useless work. He suspected that the decorator was being lazy and irresponsible, but he had no evidence, so he was very confused.
To be honest, although the author is also a bricklayer (from the marketing department of a certain ceramic tile brand), I really don’t know much about this issue.
But having said that, the author instinctively felt that there was an inaccurate concept in what my friend said - the maintenance should not be tiles, right? Ceramic tiles do not require watering for maintenance, and it is impossible to maintain tiles even if watering is applied.
Ask if you don’t understand. The author consulted two business friends (business managers of two different ceramic tile brands).
Unexpectedly, their views are completely opposite. One of them said that the floor tiles must be sprinkled with water after they are laid, which is the same as a friend's opinion on the Internet; the other person agreed with the decorator hired by his friend's house and said that there is no need to sprinkle water after the floor tiles are laid.
Asking means not asking. Regarding this question, the author became as entangled as my friends, so I went online to look for answers.
Go to Douyin first.
A decorator first expressed his opinion in the video: Owners who lay the floor tiles and perform watering maintenance are paying IQ tax. Then, he said that floor tiles are generally all-ceramic, and the water absorption rate on the back is very low, and the water absorption rate is even lower if the front is glazed. If water gets into the gaps, of course there will be some effect, but it is minimal, because Even if this gap is a beautiful gap, it is only 2-3mm, and very little water enters. Therefore, he saw no need to do this work at all.
After listening to what this decorator said, the author thinks it makes sense. However, in the comments section of this video, many people completely disagreed with his views.
Someone said: Let me tell you, the purpose of sprinkling water is not for your so-called maintenance. Instead, sprinkle water according to the temperature, which is conducive to the solidification of cement. No need to sprinkle water in winter, no need to sprinkle water in summerSprinkling water is to avoid rapid evaporation of the water in the sand ash.
Some people also said: You are pretending to be here even if you don’t understand. Sprinkling water is to cool down. The solidification of cement will generate heat. If the sand and ash are too dry, it will easily hollow out. After sprinkling water, the hollowing rate will be reduced. I really agree with that sentence. There's a dead rat in there, pretending to be...
Some people put it even worse: I don’t even know how to talk about decoration. As cement solidifies, it releases heat, and water is sprinkled to cool it down.
……
For this reason, this decorator "fighted back": First, the cement cannot touch the water you sprinkled. Some people also said it would cool down. So, let me ask you, did you splash water on the wall tiles?
Soon, he was criticized like this again: Are the wall tiles in your house made of sand ash? When beer is placed in the refrigerator, why does the wine in the bottle cool down? Are the mortar thicknesses of floor tiles and wall tiles the same?
……
As an aside, the comment section has always been full of talented people - after reading the comments, the author feels that the opinions in the comments are more tenable.
In another Douyin video, a ceramic tile dealer said that floor tiles must be sprinkled with water and maintained after they are laid, but many people in the comment area also disagreed with him.
After watching more than a dozen videos in a row, the author found that the more I watched, the more confused I became, because everyone had two opinions: one is that after laying the floor tiles, water must be sprinkled for maintenance, and the other is that it is not necessary. No one can give a final answer, which can only make people more confused.
Everything comes back to the problem mentioned by my friend.
You can only change the place and search on Baidu. The hard work paid off. After searching for a long time, the author finally found an article in Xiaohongshu that seemed very reasonable.
As to whether the ceramic tiles need to be sprinkled and cured after being laid, this article first said this:
Sprinkling water maintenance, we need to know what is being maintained. Is it tiles that are being maintained? Floor tiles are generally all-ceramic. Not to mention the small amount of water spilled on the ground, even if the tiles are soaked in water, they will not absorb water. It is definitely meaningless to maintain the tiles.
——This is the same as what the author said at the beginning, "It shouldn't be the ceramic tiles that are being maintained, right? Ceramic tiles do not need to be maintained by sprinkling water, and it is impossible to conserve tiles by sprinkling water." It is the same as what a hero thinks.
This article continues:
Sprinkling water protects the cement sand under the tiles so that they can fully bond with the tiles. Nowadays, the laying method of ceramic tiles is the dry laying method. That is to say, there is just a layer of wet cement under the ceramic tiles, and the base layer below is made of dry ash of cement sand. This method is very popular now because it can avoid hollowing of the ceramic tiles. The previous method of laying ceramic tiles was the wet laying method, which made the cement and sand very wet, and then laid the ceramic tiles directly on this surface. The result was that the ceramic tiles were easy to hollow out and were difficult to avoid.
If the purpose of sprinkling water on the surface is to allow water to enter through the gaps in the tiles to make the cement sand dry slower, I feel that this effect is too minimal. According to the gap for beautiful seams, the gap on the ground is 2 -3 mm, and the floor tiles are all flat. The sprinkled water will not flow into the gaps. That is, the water that can go in will go in when it is sprinkled. The water that cannot go in will still not go in unless manual intervention is done. . So it is not true to say that it plays this role.
What follows looks like useful information:
When laying floor tiles, experienced tiler masters will sprinkle some water on the original ground in advance to make the ground moist. On this basis, they will then put dry ash to lay the tiles. The purpose is to make the cement, sand and tiles Adequate adhesion. I think this will do a lot more good than just sprinkling water on the surface.
Last point, sprinkling water on the surface here will increase the humidity in the house, so that the sand and dust under the tiles can bond with the tiles in a relatively high humidity environment. This statement seems to make some sense, but it also plays a very small role.
To summarize: I think it is not necessary to sprinkle water on the surface of the tiles. After the tiles are installed, you can close the windows and let them dry in the shade for 2-3 days. Don't let anyone in for a few days. If the weather temperature is relatively low, it may take longer. After these few days, normal ventilation and construction will be enough.
After reading so many views, the author feels that this article has the most pertinent views and also provides conclusions and methods. But whether it is really reliable or not, I cannot judge.
The last thing I want to say is that this article is not very original and has noWhat is your opinion, so it is not considered a contribution, but the author heard that the WeChat public account of China Ceramics Network has many fans, and most of them are ceramic tile dealers, decorators and consumers, so I would like to use this platform to get an answer.
(Author: Brother Buzhuan)
