More than a may-day call, I have been having great difficulty using C-cure 911 thinset mortar for my mosaic projects in the last two months.  I keep thinking there is something different about the way i am mixing it — but then again, after about 10 years, i don’t want to think i suddenly “forgot” how.

I have used C-cure 911 and C-cure 948 admixture to mosaic tile about four rooms and a hallway in my basement. I went to the great, and knowledgeable folks at Mees tile in Cincinnati, whom I dealy love, and am totally grateful too, after the first floor disaster putting an ordinary thinset over a black mastic formerly used to set some of that very old crispy battleship linoleum squares (which i took up… rather the water in the basement took up). It seemed obvious to me that Cincinnati rains were going to occasionally cause me trouble in this 95 year old house with cracked cement floors and broken drain and downspount tiles….  so i just decided to play the “artsie – mosaic tile” floor thing.  So the first bit of tile was “hollow” and the Mees guys said,  clean the floor, prime it with a coating of C-cure 948, and let it dry, then use C-cure 948 to mix up the C-cure 911. This is what I have done now for 9-10 years and it seems to have worked very well.

That said, in the fall of 2017 I began having great difficulty keeping the C-cure 911 and C-cure 948 from getting crumbly, and the pot time was way reduced and it was not a good mixture for setting tiny pieces of mosaic because it just got hard, crumbly and unusuable too fast.

Mees tile wonderfully exchanged that bag of C-cure 911 (Dated May 11 2017) for another bag, but with the same date, and I got the same results.

I went back to them and was encouraged to set up a small experimient (which I did) and than gave me some stock of mortar (the type of which I do not know, so i am calling it “?” and I had some of my own C-cure 911 and 948)

I measured out the same amount of mortar”?” into two pots, and the same amount of C-cure 911 with the may production date into two pots.  I added four teaspoones of water to one pot of each mortar type, and 4 teaspoons of C-cure 948 to the other two pots.  I stirred them equally and let them slake for 11 minutes, felt them, pushed them, patted them, put them on their own individual saran wrap sheets, and watched and felt and tested them every 11 minutes for an hour, then after two hours.

Results….  all the mortars and mixtures EXCEPT for C-cure 911 PLUS C-cure 948 are still soft after 3 hours…..  the latter (lower right, number 4) is brittle, hard, crumbly and turned out to verify my problems.  LOOKS LIKE TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING in their additives.

See the cracks in the lump in the bottom right…

It is only fair to say that i called C-cure in california and got a pitiful response when I asked the question about a formulation change…..  he replied…  we don’t have any distributers in ohio… which of course was not so…. since i have been buying it here for 10 years.  I also called the sales rep from C-cure — in the midwest and left a message…. with no response.

SO THREE DAYS LATER -I AM VINDICATED… ha ha… yes, after complaining for two months, Mees tile decided that there was something wrong with a particular lot of C-cure 911 when a contractor complained about it. (You know, its tough to be an old lady with grey hair and wrinkles because you have NO CREDIBILITY because of social stereotyping–no one would take me seriously).  I have attached a photo of the lot number…. looks like sometime in May 17… dont know what three letter code represents.  Here it is.

Mees tile set aside a whole pallet of bags marked May/11/17 112. New bag of C-cure thinset 911 I bought today and admixture of 948 works great.

FOLLOWUP….  C-cure in california gave me the phone number of Dependable Bagging, who did answer my call….. maybe some information will be forth coming.