Sandy subfloor

Hi All,

I live in Mexico. We removed carpet and padding from a top floor and were suprised to find something that looked like sand underneath. There is probably something added to it that packs it quite tight but it's easy to scrape off. The movements over many years over the carpet had actually moved sand in a long ridge that could clearly be felt when walking barefeet.

We would like to have tiles on the floor. We consulted with someone who told us that it's no problem to "just" tile over it, but I don't feel really comfertable with that. What if the sand ("sand") starts shifting over time because of pressure from walking on top of the tiles?

Photos of the sand (or "sand"). Ruler in cm for scale. It scrapes off very easy and the layer is about 2 cm thick. The area is roughly 16m2 so that's a lot of sand (or "sand"). The floor is not level, so something has to be done with it anyway (it has many bumps, ridges, etc.) I guess?





Thanks for reading and thanks for any advice.

 

Nobody any advice? Just remove it?

 

Sorry for the late reply!
Here in the UK I've never heard of this. What is below the "sand" ?
What are your local building regulations?
I am not a tiler but I don't believe you can tile on loose sand.
Would suggest of the top of my head removal of the sand and build the floor up to the required level. What to use would depend on the load bearing capacity of the floor.

 

I'm no tiler either, but trying to adhere to a sandy sub-floor like that is asking for trouble. Unless the local tradesmen you've been speaking to has a technique of deal with it.

They may create some sort of mortar bed mixture like paving, but I'm just grasping at straws there...

 

Just Ardex na over it

 

Id get all the sand up and removed (chuck it back on the beach, might be a little dark with your white sands mind) and have the floor level brought up again. I wouldnt be tiling over that.

.....or pay for a proper floorlayer to come over to you and inspect/do the job for you , dont suppose you are anywhere near Cancun!!!!

 

Why did this post take 13 days to appear? First I saw was yesterday evening.

Sorry to to jjjbokma for thinking we were ignoring their post

 

The first post was 13 days ago, it probably got swamped by other threads. Then the op gave it a bump yesterday which is why it came to the surface..

 

Shovel it up, add some cement, a little water, then put it back.