For Backer Board, Cement Worth Effort

DEAR TIM: I have a ceramic tile job coming up and want to use cement backer board. I have never installed this product before, and wonder if it is really worth it. It seems hard to work with and I am tempted to just use a water-resistant drywall. Is cement backer board really worth the trouble? What tips can you share to make the job go easier and faster? Jackie L., Pleasant Hill, Calif.

DEAR JACKIE: There are all sorts of different tile backer board products out there. Some are cement-based, some are gypsum-based, and others have a mix of ingredients. Cement backer boards can be a little tough to work with during the installation process, but they pay you back in spades for the effort.

I am not against new technology when it comes to building products. There are countless new products that do a much better job than existing ones. Plywood and oriented strand board (OSB) are excellent examples. Before plywood and OSB, carpenters used to deal with smaller pieces of wood that were not as dimensionally stable as plywood and OSB. Plywood and OSB also make good use of wood as a natural resource.

But when it comes to tile and what it should be applied to, I feel that cement might deserve to remain the standard. Cured cement is not damaged by water. You can immerse a piece of cement board in water indefinitely and it will never fall apart.

Centuries-old ceramic-tile installations can be found all over the world that are still in great shape. Almost all of these are installed directly over concrete or some cement-based material. Many older homes still standing in the United States have ceramic tile firmly attached to cement stucco that was applied over wire mesh by true craftsmen.

All that being said, there are indeed other high-performance backer boards for ceramic tile. Last summer I decided to test a newer one in my daughter's bathroom. It has a rough fiberglass face and a waterproof gypsum core. It was easier to cut than cement backer board, but attaching the product to the wood studs presented the same difficulty, as far as I was concerned.

If you want a gorgeous ceramic-tile job, you need to be sure the backer board is in the same plane and the walls are perfectly plumb. In the old days, the tile setters installing the wet cement stucco took the time to get the stucco perfectly plumb and flat, even if the wall studs were crooked, bowed or bent.

With modern cement backer board, you must get the framed walls perfectly plumb and flat. Since the cement backer board is thin and a uniform thickness, it simply conforms to the shape of the stud wall.

More information: AsktheBuilder.com

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