As the three established divisions of Norcros SA, TAL, Johnson Tiles and Tile Africa recently played important roles in an extensive tiling project at North-West University’s Potchefstroom campus in North West Province. The project entailed refurbishing the five-block Sports Village, a guest house facility providing accommodation for the public, athletes and sports teams preparing for significant upcoming sporting events, and the multi-storey student hostel Kom en Gaan.
QUALITY
TAL, a member of the Green Council of South Africa, is committed to manufacturing its high-quality tile adhesives, grout, waterproofing materials and construction products in an environmentally responsible manner. All products are manufactured in South Africa to suit local climatic conditions and are tested in accordance with the most stringent of standards in TAL’s SANAS accredited laboratory.
Johnson Tiles South Africa is the leading manufacturer of quality glazed ceramic wall and floor tiles that meet international standards. Tile Africa, a leading national chain, supplied all the TAL tiling products and Johnson Tiles as specified for this project.
The Tile Africa Commerical team’s specifiers advise on which solutions will achieve the client’s desired aesthetic or functional requirement. They have over three decades’ experience, an eye for décor and design, strong technical understanding, as well as a trusted network of suppliers that allow for quicker sourcing of products at competitive prices.
Chris Ferris of CFT Tilers and Louis Nel of Boukon Construction are the contractors for Sports Village and Kom en Gaan respectively, and both use Tile Africa predominantly for all their tiling supplies.
INSTALLATION CHALLENGES
The five blocks of Sports Village each contain eight residential units comprising a bedroom, bathroom and kitchenette. Tiling in each block, however, could only be installed during sporting off-seasons when there were fewer bookings. Besides these delays, time limitations were imposed on the tiling revamp in each block in order to reduce the loss of rental income. This impacted TAL who had to meticulously plan stock orders to ensure tiling installations in each block could be timeously completed. Due to this erratic work schedule, the project took approximately two years to complete.
Since the appropriately named Kom en Gaan Hostel was used as temporary accommodation for students while their permanent hostels were under renovation, tiling could only be installed during the three-month student holidays. Stripping and removal of old flooring in the hostel proved challenging while carrying new materials to the upper floors was extremely labour intensive as the elevators were unavailable for use during the three-month project.
PRODUCTS FOR THE SPORTS VILLAGE 
TAL products for this 6 200 m2 project included TAL Professional Tile Adhesive (2 750 bags), TAL Wall and Floor Grout – Dove Grey (200 x 20 kg bags) and TAL Bond (50 x 20-litre drums). TAL Professional is a grey, general-purpose, standard-setting cement-based powder adhesive for fixing ceramic tiles to walls and floors. Designed for ease of use, the adhesive allows up to three hours of pot life after mixing and is set after 24 hours. TAL Wall and Floor Grout is a cementitious grout, offering resistance to moisture ingress and fungal growth. TAL Bond, a modified latex-based additive, enhances the bond strength, flexibility and water resistance of adhesives and grouts when used as a total water replacement in the mixture.
The above products were used for the bedding and grouting of 1st Grade Johnson Tiles (NR-364 Nirvana Brown 500 x 500 mm) onto walls and floors in each of the forty units. The contractor for this project was CF Tilers, a TAL-approved applicator.
PRODUCTS FOR KOM EN GAAN HOSTEL
Since priming was required for this project, a slurry priming coat was used comprising TAL Keymix (100 x 20 kg bags), a cementitious, powder primer and TAL Keycoat (50 x 20 litre drums), a modified latex primer, in a 2:1 mix (by volume). The mixture offers exceptional adhesion to existing tiles as well as dense, impervious and smooth surfaces such as power floated or steel floated concrete and screeds. The same products used for the Sports Village, namely TAL Professional (1 500 bags), TAL Bond (30 x 20 litre drums) and TAL Wall and Floor Grout – Dove Grey (120 x 20 kg bags) were used for bedding and grouting 1st Grade Johnson Tiles (TC-574 Terrace Beige 500 x 500 mm) on the walls, floors and veranda of the hostel. The contractor for this project was Boukon, another TAL approved applicator.
Although extremely time-challenging, both projects resulted in highly successful tiling installations which will stand the test of time, eliminating further refurbishments for many years.
