Client: Domus Tiles
Type of works: supplied Mapetex and Keraquick adhesive

The Winter Gardens complex located in Church Street contains the Blackpool Opera House, which is the second largest opera house in Europe. This has now been restored to its original splendour. Mapei’s Technical team visited the site to offer their advice. Domus Tiles subsequently specified and adopted a complete, fully compatible Mapei product system from the substrate through to the tiling installation.

Mapetex, an anti-fracture membrane, was utilised on the Grade II-listed building because of the damage to the existing concrete floor base. Mapetex, a special non-woven strengthening fabric, was adhered to the concrete floor base with Mapei’s high performance and rapid setting adhesive Keraquick mixed with Latex Plus. This system provided the necessary strength and durability to permit tiling onto the concrete substrate.

The innovative product provides a solution for many traditional problematic areas involving tiled floor finishes, for example, when floor tiles need to be laid over a variety of different substrate types such as concrete, timber, existing tiled finishes. Mapetex is also suitable for use on timber floor substrates such as tongue and groove floorboards and floating chipboard floors. The fibres in Mapetex fabric create a high mechanical strength and a surface that ensures the best interaction with Mapei adhesives, such as Keraquick in the Winter Gardens project.

Mapetex is specially designed to alleviate stresses within the substrate thus preserving the integrity of the tiled finish. It can be used as an anti-fracture layer for tiled floor finishes on uncured sand:cement screeds and bridging cracks within the substrate which may appear post-installation, for example protecting natural stone from substrate generated stresses. Mapetex System dissipates shrinkage stresses within cement based screeds and concrete substrates as they cure (screed must be a minimum of 24 hours old and concrete a minimum of 28 days old).

As an anti-fracture layer, Mapetex allows for the installation of tiles on substrates without the need to follow intermediate, non-structural, movement joints within the existing substrate (particularly when installing tiles diagonally where joints are different to the desired layout).

Mapetex System is designed to accommodate horizontal movement; where vertical movement would result in cracked tiles. The use of Mapetex System also permits larger areas of floor tiling to be installed before intermediate movement joints need to be incorporated thus reducing the number of movement joints. This is particularly useful when the aesthetics of the tile design would be disrupted by the inclusion of movement joints. However, structural movement joints still need to be respected and brought through to the tiled finish.