marbling over a floor or, don't take it for granite lol

[cody]

Finally got far enough into the bus to dig out a few boxes of marble floor tile that I had gotten a good deal on last year, Bontragers had a bunch of boxes of marble and granite floor tile that needed a home and being the caring individual I try to be I decided to adopt them even tho they wanted a buck a box for them.  The first thing I had to do was go and buy a diamond saw to cut it, so off we went and bought one, Menards had a good deal going on them.  Yesterday seemed to be the ideal day for the project so the first pic is lining the tiles up on a sheet of plywood and trying to determine grain and patterns along with colors to try to get the tile to make some kind of sence on the floor, I figured it I layed out the pattern I wanted I could transfer it to the floor as I went and it worked great, the second pic is this morning, after the tile had had a chance to set over night, the adhesive isn't quite dry yet so I won't be able to grout the seams yet but I'm haveing fun and it's not as hard as I thought it would be, the hole for the toilet stub was easy because I was able to locate it on a seam so all I had to do was feed the tile into the saw and notch the hole out, one half on one tile and one half on the next time.  As I get further along with my bathroom project I'll update this.

[JackConrad]

Cody,
    Lookin' GOOOOOD!!!!     Jack

[Blacksheep]

Cody looks good but I'm a little confused. What is the first picture? Is that outside? Is that already set in thin set?

Ace

[JackConrad]

Cody looks good but I'm a little confused. What is the first picture? Is that outside? Is that already set in thin set?
Ace

Ace,
   I think you are seeing the wood grain in the sheet of plywood that the tile are laying on?  Jack

[Dreamscape]

Looks good cody! What took you so long?

~Paul~

[cody]

Ace, before I started, I laid out the tile on a sheet of plywood to look for grain and color patterns that I liked, the marble is only sitting on the plywood so I could arrange it the way I wanted to lay it out.  Paul, I'm not very fast at any of my projects lol, what I've been doing is pretty much working my way into the bedroom of the bus so I can rip it apart and blast a hole in the floor so I can fix a bad exhaust gasket. My choices were to just move the items or to install them, I just didn't know where to move them too, I've got jamies house filled with my junk.

[Blacksheep]

I thought that's what I was looking at but it appeared as though there was thin set on the plywood!  Then I saw what appeared to be grass, and I thought, well maybe he is installing the tile on a pre cut and fit board and will carry it in the bus. Then I thought, man, what a heavy weight item that will be! Then I thought, I shouldn't think, so that's why I asked! 

Ace

[JackConrad]

Then I thought, I shouldn't think, so that's why I asked! 
Ace

I know what you mean, thinkin' gets me in trouble too!  LOL  Jack

[Busted Knuckle]

Then I thought, I shouldn't think, so that's why I asked! 
Ace

I know what you mean, thinkin' gets me in trouble too!  LOL  Jack

I know too, when I try to think Nothin' happens!   BK 

Oh yeah look'n good Cody!

Shoot b4 ya know it there will be an engine access panel in the bedroom! LOL!

[cody]

When I try to think it hurts, by the time the smoke clears from the clutch slipping I forget what I was trying to think about.

[tovinman]

Just a quick point here - first, the plywood floor on coaches is not the Rock of Gibralter....it flexes, moves, vibrates, and expands/contracts. Granite tiles won't, and will eventually crack if you glue them in place with something intended for
household floors.

First, the plywood floor has to be screwed down really, really well. Tiles should be glued in with an adhesive that has some
flexibility (even walking on your floor will shift it, and that is also why tiles on your floor at home might crack if the floor is
not solidly anchored.

There is a plastic subfloor material (try talking "floating floor" at Home Depot) that the tiles do bond to but it does not move
with the floor (hence the term floating floor). It provides the rigidity the tiles need to avoid being flexed by your weight on the
floor, or the normal shifting that occurs in a coach, but it is not specifically intended for this application. In household use the floor
and structure under the floor has to be strengthened to eliminate the flexing. This is done in a house by doubling up floor joists,
ading another layer of plywood which is glued in place and then screwed firmly into the floor joists with a billion screws (by the way,
if your floor at home creaks when you walk on it it's flexing, and it's likely nailed in place, not screwed)

We had this problem with a 1998 MCI 102EL3 that came from Custom Coach with the owners' choice of granite floor. Very shiny, very smooth, but very troublesome because the tiles kept cracking. I finally called in a pro - Mike Holmes of TV fame, and he puzzled over
this for awhile before suggesting a) thicker tiles and b) a floating subfloor, and maybe c) another plywood floor glued and screwed in a million places. He wasn't convinced that a tile installation on a bus was even possible, floating subfloor or no floating subfloor.

Without going into what a horrid pile of rubbish the 102EL3 was, we did all three and this reduced the problem to a couple of tiles per year. So the owner now has a nice floor in a coach that is mechanically challenged, and since he's part owner of the Tim Hortons' coffee chain I may never pay for a donut ever again.

Granite is a beautiful material for a floor, but in a coach it's a lotta hassle. There is an artifical material made from the same stuff as asphalt tiles but through a different process that looks like granite but is flexible enough to avoid cracking. I discovered this a little too late for this project

[cody]

The floor is marble lol, yep, all good points and well taken.  The floor we are dealing with is extremely structually strong, the subfloor is 3/4 inch marine plywood that is glued and screwed to the metal framework of the bus, that is followed by 1/8 inch thick layer of lead for soundproofing and then a layer of 3/4 inch 11 ply baltic birch plywood, each layer is glued and screwed to each other, seems to be fairly strong, the plywood is all T&G so it fits well, in the 6 years it's been in, we've seen no adverse affects due to movement of any kind.  Eagles are also known for structural integrity, far more so than MCI's, in the archives here you'll see examples of eagles driven without any skin whatsoever, just the framework and the wind lol, I drove mine home around 300 miles while watching the road pass under my feet lol, my wifes first words when she saw it were, "couldn't you have at least found one with a floor?"

[Blacksheep]

IMHO a lot of what you say is BS! Simply put! Although many above grade sub floors have flex when walked upon, using the correct underlayment AND thinset will deter any hard surface from cracking! A more simpler approach to FIXING your problem would be to use a larger tile! Less grout lines means less movement! Also another remedy is to lay your tile on a 45 degree angle! Laying across the sub floor grain will also deter cracking problems!
Your statement about creaking is the floor moving? Uh in some instances yes, but in more cases it is a nail IN the floor joist moving up and down in its own hole. A screw will stop the nail squeek! Using a zillion screws will only wear out your screw gun and cause dimples that will ultimately need floating!
I'm no expert but I have installed all types of flooring now going on 39 years!
Your TV star gets paid to look pretty and spend 30 minutes in front of a camera. I'm far from pretty but I have been known to do some good work and get paid good for it!
Again, IMHO

Ace

[cody]

I appreciate your coming in on this ace, wood, I understand fairly well, I can make a floor that will support a tank, but granite and marble is a new area for me and a little reassurance now and then goes a long way, after reading Mr Tovinmans post I questioned my insanity for a moment, I just couldn't see how my floor could possibly have much movement, it took me several months of research and talking with old friends in the conversion industry both at marathon and  liberty before I felt confident enough to tackle it lol.

[tovinman]

As I said, the 102EL3 is not the best coach around, and Custom Coach didn't take this into account when they threw down these tiles. Tiles were 12x12.

Tightening up the floor (you really can't put too many more screws in the floor as they have to go into something) and placing it on the plastic substrate, using thicker tiles, and beefing up the floor did resolve the problem, which was what we were aiming for, since the owner of this 1.5Mil coach was getting pretty upset at his floor cracking up.

We also didn't use thinset, we used a flexible silicone based product (the floor is moving, after all, not the tiles) and so there is more
rigidity in the floor and less in the tiles themselves

I'm sure that an Eagle would be a far more stable coach than the 102EL3 will ever be, but the whole point of this is that we solved the
problem for the most part. That's not to say that some other method will work as well. My point was that the issue of movement is a particularly important thing to consider when placing tiles on a coach floor.

That is what the whole point of forums such as this are, an opportunity to trade experiences with others doing similar conversions, and alerting others to a potential issue with a particular decision they've made is part of that as well, not to mention maybe saving them from discovering these issues on their own in a more costly manner. It seems he's done that already and shouldn't have the same problems that we ended up having in a professionally-converted coach. Custom Coach obviously didn't give much thought to the floor, or perhaps didn't really
think, as many of us in the coach industry, that MCI could really build such a poor quality coach, having produced some of the best. We now know better - on both counts.

Of course, I am getting used to being criticized on these boards. It's just that they usually wait a few weeks before they vent on me, this time it was less than an hour.