tiles in the coop?

[sueche]

I saw that a lot of ya'll use vinyl. I have left over ceramic tiles and was wondering if I can use them?

hhmmm......

 

[jason_boivin]

sure would be pretty. But I think the tiles and grout would absorb the moisture and you wont be able to get the smell out.

 

[Chicken.Lytle]

You could seal the tile to waterproof it I guess, but wouldn't tile be awful slippery?

I was thinking of using tileboard for the floor and putting a 1 foot rank of tile around the edge. If I can screw down the tile (need to test a masonry bit) then I will consider installing a tile floor upside down (for traction). Yes this is crazy, but I have a lot of human-unusable tile laying around.

 

[WoodlandWoman]

I wouldn't worry about tile being slippery. Once you have litter over the top, they'll be walking on the litter, not the tile. You would definitely want to use a good sealer! It would probably be similar to having a cement floor in a coop. Just a little more work to install.

 

[patandchickens]

Upside down?? You'd better put a real good sealant on it (tile and grout both). Also I would not hold my breath to be able to screw tile down securely, considering how brittle it is under compression.

Honestly, tile (even installed the proper way) just seems like a terrible idea to me for a coop -- it is inescapably going to pose major cleaning problems because it is not smooth. (I mean, individual tiles are smooth of course, but the grout lines between them are going to get crud glued into them somethin' awful).

I do not see that tile would be any slipperier than vinyl flooring, ie. yes it is slippery with insufficient bedding but with enough bedding in there it is no problem at all.

JMHO, good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[sueche]

Thanks for your input. I think it is too big of a job for me.

do you glue down vinyl?

 

[elmo]

There are many different kinds of tile. Not all tile needs to be sealed to be impervious to water. Ceramic tile like the kind used in bathrooms and kitchens is one obvious example. And I would imagine that installing tile as a coop floor would be done the same way you install tile elsewhere: you'd spread a bed of mortar, set the tiles, and then follow up with grout. You would need to seal the grout unless it was that special kind that doesn't need sealing.

We have a tile floor in our indoor birdroom, and it works great. It was there when we bought the house 25 years ago, though. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have put it in especially for the birds.

Personally, I would think that installing a tile floor in a chicken coop would be more work than it's worth. There are so many other, easier options that work perfectly well. I just painted the plywood floors in our coops.

Now, if you had some left over tiles that you were just itching to use, and they were suitable for use as wall tiles, how about tiling a "backsplash" behind the roost?

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
But is the *back* side of those tiles glazed too? Maybe some of them; not the ones I've seen though. Unglazed surfaces are permeable.

Pat

 

[RiddleMe]

Just an idea, never tried this, but if you really want to use the tile, what about using bathroom caulking/sealant instead of grout (the type you use in a shower around the plumbing fixtures). It would fill the gaps between tiles, should stick since it sticks to shower tiles, and wouldn't be nearly as water permeable as grout. If you placed your tiles right next to each other, rather than whatever the standard distance is, it shouldn't be too big of a gap to fill for the sealant.

 

[Kaneke]

I've had a lot of problems with mold and mildew in my bathroom sealants -- both in the (cold, moist) Northwest and in (warm humid) Hawaii --

not sure which Raleigh the OP is in, but I suspect it might be humid there too

a good acrylic type sealant over the tile and grout would work -- as others have said, it might be more work to install tiles than you want

I'm going to use inexpensive vinyl with sand on top --- I had to take all the pine bedding out of my brooder because the chicks kept eating it, even though they KNOW where the food is (and they scarf it down and grow faster than weeds)

not enough weedy grass here to make bedding in my brooder bin, so the chicks are currently scampering over Douglas fir branchlets that came down in the last windstorm; the chicks LOVE them and the poo sifts right through the needles; it also gives them a springy cushion to jump up to (and down from) their perch boards