PRESIDENT’S LETTER Chris Walker Mother Nature is very unfor- giving. She will almost certain- ly exploit any error or omis- sion incorporated into an exte- rior installation. Doing it right is always important; for exterior installations, it’s critically impor- tant. Floors or walls: both will be unforgiving if the materials are poorly installed. The June TileLetter might seem to be a strange place to talk about the risks of installations exposed to freeze-thaw. But while it’s 70-80 degrees outside and you are preplanning your exposed instal- lations, it is the perfect time to be aware of how to protect your- self from the unintended result of performing exterior installations without the utmost care and plan- ning. This is the time to verify you have used the correct products from the top of the tile to the bot- tom of the assembly. Poorly- and/ or improperly-executed installa- tions can begin to fail within the first freeze-thaw cycle. Never was the advice of a knowledge- able allied products representative more important than to affirm that the correct products were speci- fied and are ideal for an exterior installation. Then hypersensitivity to the manufacturer’s recommend- ed use and preparation instruc- tions are required. Think about the installations you have noticed that have “gone wrong.” Latex leaching, efflores- cence, tenting, unbonded materi- als…you get the picture. All of those are examples of what hap- pens when you don’t do some- thing right with what you put in and what you leave out. In fact, it might be true that what you LEAVE OUT is the most important piece of the installa- tion. You figured it out already: expansion and contraction joints. It is difficult to fathom just how much relative movement there is in an exterior installation exposed to sunlight. Think of a dark sur- face in the sunlight and how a drop of rain can take the material from 120 degrees to 70 degrees in seconds. Now that is thermal shock! If you want your installa- tion to have a fighting chance, you need to allow it to deal with those extremes. You need to truly understand the necessity of prop- Let it rain, snow, freeze, thaw... 20 TileLetter | June 2019