Ceramic Tile install in Trailer

Houston Remodeler wrote:
The tile forum with the best information is the John Bridge Tile Forum. Good folks there. And John owns an RV himself.

I was going to post the same until I got farther down on the posts. Best tile forum out there, bar none.

In a house, min. subfloor thickness is typically 1" to 1 1/8" but depends on joist spacing. "Ceramic" floor tile in a trailer is very risky. A small contained area where you have an appropriate subfloor may work in a trailer. Tiles will shrink and expand with temp. extremes and there will be vibration and movement that will cause the grout to fail and some may even come out. Water will get through to the sub-floor due to hairline cracks in the grout that you can't see. You could use epoxy grout but that stuff is so strong, the tiles will break instead of the grout failing. You could possibly use sanded caulk but will still have issues.

If you add a layer of plywood to stiffen the subfloor and then also consider the thickness of the tile and mortar, you will have a build-up height that will really interfere with cabinet doors, entry door threshold, toilet, etc. Even just the tile + mortar thickness alone will probably cause issues (about 3/8" height). There is Schluter Ditra tile underlayment, but not suitable in a trailer. If you have a slide, how would you deal with the increase in floor height.

Sounds like a lovely idea on the surface, but it's not practical in a TT or FW. If it ended being a failure and you needed to pull it all out, man what a job that would be... If it were do-able, you'd read about folks doing successful installs but everything out there basically says not a good idea. Vinyl laminate planks have been successfully installed by many RV owners