Walked on a newly tiled floor too soon!
Discussion
Howdy,
A tiler did a wetroom floor for us yesterday and said that it'd be walkable onable in "a couple of hours". I left the floor "a couple of hours" and then installed a shaver socket etc. Later on I look at the floor tiles and see grout has cracked / squished around a dozen or more tiles (7-8cm wide hexagons) and a few tiles, ones that feel raised compared to others, are totally lose and wobbly, outside of the mesh sheet they're stuck to.
So we left it alone as soon as we noticed, but... argh!
What's the best plan of action here? It's certainly not (visibly) all the floor by any means, maybe... 5% or the grouting? Is it a thing to remove the cracked drought by (with a dremel for example?) and reapply it and move on happily? Any other thoughts appreciated!
A tiler did a wetroom floor for us yesterday and said that it'd be walkable onable in "a couple of hours". I left the floor "a couple of hours" and then installed a shaver socket etc. Later on I look at the floor tiles and see grout has cracked / squished around a dozen or more tiles (7-8cm wide hexagons) and a few tiles, ones that feel raised compared to others, are totally lose and wobbly, outside of the mesh sheet they're stuck to.
So we left it alone as soon as we noticed, but... argh!
What's the best plan of action here? It's certainly not (visibly) all the floor by any means, maybe... 5% or the grouting? Is it a thing to remove the cracked drought by (with a dremel for example?) and reapply it and move on happily? Any other thoughts appreciated!
Well I don't necessarily think it's my mistake, he said it'd be fine, it presumably wasn't...
Biggest reason for concern for me is that this is a wetroom, not just a regular bathroom, gotta be perfect right?! Does it sound fixable though?
Biggest reason for concern for me is that this is a wetroom, not just a regular bathroom, gotta be perfect right?! Does it sound fixable though?
Edited by TheRocketSurgeon on Wednesday 20th June 09:09
stanwan said:
I've been tiling our ensuite wetroom myself over the last few weeks and have just commenced grouting. I fixed the tiles with a thick bed of rapid set adhesive and the tiles were pretty much set solid and immovable after 30 minutes. 3 hours in this weather is more than enough time for it to go off. What adhesive did he use and what did it recommend as the minimum time to grout. A slow set should be left for an entire day before grouting.
Your tiler would have been walking over the floor to grout it anyway, plus he's probably washed it down serveral times to get rid of the grout haze - it shouldn't be moving or cracking.
Go and tap all the tiles to see if they are bedded down correctly. Do you have underfloor heating?
There are certainly a few tiles that are lose in themselves, and they had gone down, i'd say, 2 hours before the grouting was started. The adhesive was either Rapid Set Setaflex, or Setaflex Standard, grout is Ultratile Flexjoint Premium. Appears to be more of the Standard adhesive used over the whole room judging by the rubbish he's left, so I could guess the Rapid was used on the small floor area? That would explain the shorter timescales he gave me?Your tiler would have been walking over the floor to grout it anyway, plus he's probably washed it down serveral times to get rid of the grout haze - it shouldn't be moving or cracking.
Go and tap all the tiles to see if they are bedded down correctly. Do you have underfloor heating?
Looking at some of the loose tiles, I've dug out some small spots around them and found the grout was very thin, air pockets under only 1mm in places, if that. I'd guess that would contribute to easier movement of the tiles than would be reasonable.
No underfloor heating here.
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