Do I need to tank under luxury vinyl flooring in my bathroom

Pestell · May 19, 2022

Hello,

I’m looking to install a new bathroom for the first time and want to make sure I do everything by the book. One area that I’m not getting a lot of clarity on is whether you need to tank the floor area of my bathroom.

I’m having tiles on the walls and luxury vinyl on the floor. I intend to tile onto Wendi/elements backer boards around the bath/shower area. installing the boards down to the floor and butting the bath up to those boards before tiling.

But for the floor I’m not sure what is needed for floating luxury vinyl. I have floorboards currently in the bathroom under vinyl roll. I intend to put a layer of Marine ply on topped with underlay and then the vinyl clicked and floating on top.

Is this sufficient? What about the edges? Do I simply silicone the edges of the room to seal? Or should I tank below the underlay?

I look forward to your responses.
David

king of pipes · May 20, 2022

No I wouldn't say you need to tank the floor for luxury vinyl your plans seem ok , tanking is normally used on tiled walls and floors and wetroom installations where water discharges directly onto the floor and drains away via a linear drain or similar set up , LVT is only splash proof so please check the manufacturers instructions before installation into a bathroom some are suitable others are not, bathrooms often have high humidity and over a period of time this can cause problems for LVT. Kop

Bournetotry · May 21, 2022

king of pipes said:
No I wouldn't say you need to tank the floor for luxury vinyl your plans seem ok , tanking is normally used on tiled walls and floors and wetroom installations where water discharges directly onto the floor and drains away via a linear drain or similar set up , LVT is only splash proof so please check the manufacturers instructions before installation into a bathroom some are suitable others are not, bathrooms often have high humidity and over a period of time this can cause problems for LVT. Kop

Thanks for your reply. The vinyl is suitable for bathrooms and is Waterproof. So I guess the only area that I would need to be mindful of is the floor to wall connection. As we don’t want to have a skirting board, what would be the best method to seal the edges?