Last week saw DesignEx at the Sydney Exhibition Centre - not the bulldozed one, but the temporary building at Glebe Island.
Within DesignEx was the tile and stone seminar, where there were 3 days of many different speakers. Each were experts in different facets of the tile and stone industry. All of the topics were incredibly interesting, from the scientific structure of bluestone (basalt), to the evolution and latest trends in tiling and installation.
Efflorescence was a hot topic touched on by almost every speaker, but there is also a new problem emerging known as latex leaching, introduced to us by Colin Cass of Techtile Consulting. Latex leaching is believed to be caused by slow drying of tile adhesives due to the combination of large format tiles, polymer blended adhesive and the use of secondary membranes which effectively sandwiches the glue between waterproofing and tile, contributing to slow drying times. This prolonged wetness allows the polymer within the glue to stay in solution and eventually wick out from the grout joints. It looks similar to efflorescence but slightly different.
As the seminar was also about stone, crypto-florescence (commonly known as picture framing) was also a hot topic. This problem can be controlled with pre-sealing of stone, but also by using Efflock in tile beds, glue and grout.
Next year's DesignEx and Tile and Stone Seminar will be held in Melbourne. Keep an eye out early next year in Tile Today magazine or at infotile.com for details. The seminars are well worth attending!!
Look out for Efflock, we'll be appearing in August's issue #84 of Tile Today.
