Need Loose, Cracked Tile Repair?
GroutPro can help….
Have you ever walked across a tiled floor to hear them sounding ‘hollow’? Hollow meaning that certain areas of the tiles sound and feel loose underfoot. These are areas in which the bottom of the tile is not in contact with the underlying substrate.
Unfortunately this is a regular occurrence in older properties where the tiles may have been laid with the original slab and the substrate or adhesive has deteriorated over time. The hollow sound may be a result of ‘spot-bonding’ during the installation. ‘Spot bonding’ is when the installer applies a spot of bonding (adhesive) to just the corners and centre of the floor tile and presses it into place. This leaves voids under the tile and ultimately the entire area of flooring. When this method is used you will hear the hollow sound where there is no adhesive i.e. the void. Over time this causes cracking of the tiles and grouting which runs between these tiles.
Once the grout has cracked it falls through to leave holes between the tiles. This is the type of situation recently faced by our Goonellabah team. A large area of the floor was hollow and cracks had started to appear. The homeowner needed our help to repair 123 loose tiles. About the same time last year the Goonellabah GroutPro team had repaired 4 similar apartments within the complex and the owner had retained many tiles which were used on these jobs.
We were not as lucky with this latest job and were only able to find four spare tiles which another apartment owner kindly donated to us. Each tile had to be carefully removed to ensure the tile did not crack. The team managed to lift all 122 tiles without a scratch with just one tile cracking as it was removed. Each tile was then cleaned to remove the old adhesive and re-laid into place. The homeowner had also decided to change the colour of the entire floor grouting so the repair of hollow tiles was just part of the full job.
After 36 hours of painstaking work with 50m2 of grout replacement and colour sealing the outcome was fantastic. The floor area was now level, the colour matched well to the home decor and the overall look was like new again. The Homeowner was very excited by the outcome and couldn’t wait to take some pictures to share with family.
If you’re having similar tiling issues in your home, don’t wait any longer get your local GroutPro team in to give you an assessment of the job and an obligation free quote.
