Tiling Winder Stairs

Hey everyone,

I have been reading all these posts on tiling stairs and can't find my exact situation anywhere so here goes.

We want to tile a winder staircase (wedged shaped treads vary from 7" deep at shortest end to 22" deep at longest end and whole tread is 52" wide). Because the shortest run is less than 11", code states that we must have overhanging stair nosing of between 3/4" and 1 1/4" on the entire tread. I've read the suggestions of purchasing hardwood stair nosing and tiling up to it, but I'm not too keen on that option for the way it would look.

The treads now are heavily supported (my over the top husband built them to last 100 years ) with 3/4" exterior grade plywood and the stair design called for 3/4" of material addded to the plywood to make the correct riser heights from finished floor at the bottom of the stairs to the ff at the top. That said, we of course will lay hardibacker before tile.

My questions are these:

1. Besides having a rough textured tile to prevent slipping, what else should I be looking for? (Size, thickness, breaking strength, class 4 durability, color body porcelain, etc.)

2. This nosing befuddles me. I just don't know how to support a tile nosing that sticks out like that. I fear with my herd of elephants family that the edges will break off in no time. I thought of cutting the hardibacker one inch deeper so at least the tile is sitting on that.

Any help you could send our way would be appreciated.

Thanks

If quarry tile interests you, you can get stair nosing tiles that would have a self-supporting overhanging nose type thingy.

You know, we actually went to a place that sells "New York Blue Stone" in 18" x 18" pieces that are about 3/4" thick! I have considered pool coping as well that has that natural overhang, but I haven't researched it much further. I thought I would have more options with tile plus the stairs lead into the kitchen which will also be tiled hopefully the same color and surface texture. I'll look into quarry tiles some more. Thanks for your advice.

Look into Schluter Rondec CT, or just the Rondec. Makes a nice nosing.