This year is the 75th anniver- sary of the Terrazzo, Tile, and Marble Association of Canada, more commonly known as the TTMAC. This association is made up of both union and non-union tile contractors and there are cur- rently 291 contractor members, 139 supplier members and 17 pro- fessional members. The TTMAC provides online education, test- ing (ASTM C627, DCOF), on-site inspections, regional conferences, and an annual national conven- tion. This year, the convention is being held in beautiful down- town Toronto, ON. The TTMAC also produces several technical publications and for the first time this year it is proud to announce its newest addition, the new Tile Installer Technical Handbook. The Handbook, launched in July, was created to address specifically the challenges and predicaments that tile installers face on job sites almost daily. A large part of the content of this Handbook was reprinted under the permission of the National Tile Contractors Association (NTCA) located in Jackson, Miss., from the NTCA Reference Manual. All content was reviewed, modified, converted, and Canadianized, for the Great White North. This means that all the measurements are in metric, which was no small task, but for those of you who are still not that comfortable or famil- iar with metric, there’s a pretty comprehensive conversion chart in the back. Certain words had to be converted from American to Canadian such as vapor to vapour, color to colour, recognise to rec- ognize, and uh huh to eh!!! All references to details in the TCNA Handbook have been con- verted to the appropriate details from the Canadian 09 30 00 Tile Installation Manual, as well as any relevant Canadian standards such as the Canadian National TTMAC newest publication: the Tile Installer Technical Handbook New publication draws on wisdom in the NTCA Reference Manual Sponsored by TECH TALK –––––––––––––––––––––––––––– By Dale Kempster, Director of the International Technical Network, North America | Schluter Systems 72 TileLetter | August 2018