How to Mix a Small Batch of Thinset Mortar Perfectly Every Time

mixing a small batch of thinset so it's bad enough that a lot of manufacturers they don't even have the water quantity right on the back of the bag to mix that full bag with and when it comes to mixing a small batch a lot of times you're just on your own a lot of times there's no guidance at all but a smaller batch is what most people use so that's why i'm making this video it's about how to mix a small batch of thinset perfectly every time so what i'm going to do here is i'm using here's what i'm using i'm using a one quart container in that one quart the reason i'm using this one is because it has small individual ounces on here so you can see exactly how much you to use so i'm going to use this for the powder and a lot of times it'll take uh two of these and more so what i'm going to do is is just add it to a larger container it doesn't have to be a mixing container like this but i'm going to take the powder and add it in here and get it pre-measured first of all before i add it to the water then i have a pitcher here for the water and this has quart increments on it and whatever powder we add which is going to be different depending on the mortar whatever powder we add it's always going to be the one quart of water so i'm always going to be mixing with one quart of water and so i'm using this for the water that way i don't get this one wet and then the thinset sticks to it so we're always going to add the water first so i've got a bucket to mix the thin set in we're always going to add the water in first then we will add the thinset powder and then i've got this right here this is called a margin trowel and this is what i'm going to mix it with and i'm just going to mix it by hand you can use a little small drill if you want that's fine with a with a mixer bar on the end of it i'm just going to use this okay so here i am i'm measuring out one quart of powder into the measuring container adding a little more in to get it you want to tamp it down make sure it's level around the perimeter so when you check it and then fine tune it the more accurate you are with this the easier it's going to be and the more accurate you're going to get the batch so i add that quart to the larger container here and then i fill it up again most of the mortars are over two quarts so we're going to add two quarts in then i measure out the remaining ounces and i'm going to add that in so hold on a second how do you know how much the remaining ounces are to figure out the right thinset i'm going to use mapei's porcelain tile mortar for this project that's uh you can get it at lowe's and i'm sure other places too it's just one that's on my list here so what i have is on my website diytileguy.com i have a sheet that i've come up with i call it the exact batch cheat sheet and right now i've got a dozen different mortars on there at the time of filming and i'm going to keep adding to it but right now there's a dozen mortars on there with the exact number of ounces of thinset that you add to one quart of water and the reason for doing this is everything sets different i wish it wasn't that way but everyone is different that has their own quantity and this is i didn't do this by math either okay so i i actually added the ounces of water in there until i got the right mixture to it so on my website diy tileguide.com i have the exact batch cheat sheet you look on that sheet for the thinset you're using measure out that exact number of ounces of thinset and get it ready to go and that's what's going to be that's going to be what you add to one quart of water okay so i have here one quart of water that is pre-measured out and you want to add the water first when you mix and then the thinset powder was all pre-measured out too remember it's different for every mortar and we're adding that into the mixture here and then i'm just using this margin trowel and i'm just going to kind of mix the ingredients together here and like i said you can use a small electric mixer with a with a mixing bar on the end if you want i'm just kind of doing this the low-tech way so i'm going to speed this up a little bit but you want to mix for about two to three minutes usually at least some manufacturers want you to go a little bit further and anyway when you're done mixing you just want to let it sit there this is called the slaking process you're going to let it slake and that's five to ten minutes you just let it sit and then when you're done we're just going to come back and remix it so you don't want to add anything to it at this point you're just going to remix it and kind of make sure everything is mixed and hydrated and all that stuff after the chemical process happens and this is kind of what you want the mixture to look like so i hope this is helpful to try and kind of see it here i don't know if this is peanut buttery we're going to close up here a little bit i don't know what this what you would call this but that's about how you want it to look when you are done mixing so if you've mixed your thin set and it doesn't look quite like this you might try one doing one of two things you can either add two to four ounces of powder if your batch looks a little bit thinner than what you see in the video here or you can add one to two ounces of water if yours is too thick now one caution about the water you don't you want to add water early on in the process if you get to the point where your the batch is slaking then it's too late to add the water you're just gonna have to start over okay adding water at that point is gonna ruin the strength of the thin set but you can add two to four ounces of powder or one to two ounces of water to help fine-tune your batch so try it this way let me know what you think head over to my website diytileguy.com you can download the exact batch cheat sheet and that will tell you the exact number of ounces of powder to add to one quart of water so you can mix thin set perfectly every time

Channel: DIYTileGuy

Views: 109,729

Keywords: thinset, thinset mortar, tile thinset, mixing thinset mortar, mixing thinset, small batches of thinset, small amount of thinset, mixing partial bags of thinset, mixing partial bag, tile installation, tile, mortar, mapei, porcelain tile mortar, keraflex, custom building products, prolite, versabond, versabond lft, laticrete, 253 gold, multimax lite, schluter, all-set, all-set schluter, schluter thinset mortar, ultralite mortar pro, ultralite mortar mapei, tiler, tri-lite laticrete, ardex

Id: ir0wy71XTw8

Length: 6min 11sec (371 seconds)

Published: Mon May 16 2022