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NobleSeal Adhesive

NobleSeal Adhesive

My work is closed on a Tuesday so I use this as an opportunity to make a quick run back down to Wildwood to apply the NobleSeal to the floor. The patching/leveling compound must be fully cured by now so I should be able to knock out just putting down the membrane.

I start by sanding down the patching compound to knock down any trowel marks or other imperfections. I use a random orbital sander and a belt sander to do this work. After sanding I wipe everything down with a tack cloth and a damp towel. After that, I’m ready to start putting down the NobleSeal membrane. I have their recommended adhesive and it looks like I just need to trowel it on and then use a roller on the membrane. They recommend a 100lb roller, but that is not something easily obtainable so I bought a smaller floor roller along with a marble rolling pin.

Testing the placement of the mat before using adhesive.

Testing the placement of the mat before using adhesive.

I trowel on the adhesive in about blocks of about 25% of the floor area. Since the membrane is one sheet it’s a little unweildy to work with. The adhesive is sticky as expected and for each section I let it sit for a bit to tack up.

First section down.

First section down.

Eventually the entire mat is down and I start rolling it out. At first it seems OK using the hand rollers and bearing down on them with my bodyweight. I grab some sheets of tile to put them on the membrane to see how they lay and after shining a work light on the membrane, it shows lots of lumpiness with the membrane.

Lumpy mat with some tile laying on it showing the lumps.

Lumpy mat with some tile laying on it showing the lumps.

I do more passes with the roller until I’m too tired and I work out some of the lumps but it seems impossible to get a cleanly flat surface. The lumps are definitely adhesive because as I press on them you can feel them squish a little. I’m hoping that as long as they aren’t air bubbles, I can smooth things out with thinset.


This is about as good as I can make the mat.

This is about as good as I can make the mat.

Trenton Sink

Trenton Sink

Patching Compound