Question about laying ceramic floor tiles

^opm^

Hi,

Im in process of stripping my kitchen ready to have a new one.Decided on having ceramic tiles so today have took old lino up of floor to find floor was then covered in some type of thin vinyl tiles-took these up quite easy with a chisel but they have left a thin coat of black adhesive behind-this adhesive is only very thin (barely feel it when u rub your hands over it) so only about 0.5mm thick and over about 90% of floor - question is will this adhesive be ok to leave behind or will it need to be got up before ceramic tiles can be laid on it? Also floor isnt fully level , so how level does a concrete floor need to be to lay tiles on it, as such how thick can the adhesive be applied to floor to take up any uneveness?
Any help please?
Thank you

andrew-b

I believe you can use BAL SPF (Single part flexible) adhesive straight on top of the black bitumen adhesive. We used it to lay floor tiles straight onto vinyl tiles (for various reasons) as well as areas of the black bitumen where loose tiles were removed.

You can take up some unevenness in the adhesive (maybe 3 or 4 mm which is what we did) but it's easier to tile if you start from a level surface in the first place. I think you'll need a latex based (not-)self-levelling compound to go on top of the black bitumen though.