Hi,
My downstairs neighbours took down a wall that had become loadbearing 5 years ago, splitting my first floor stone kitchen floor from side to side as the beams it was holding up re-settled. An insurance claim followed and repair work completed, with over-loaded beams hung off other beams with face fixed hangers and others having new timbers bolted along-side them, for strength (the beams are a bit of a dogs dinner after the house was converted into 2 flats in the 60s - virtually no beams go wall-to-wall).
I re-laid my stone floor, instructing my builders to use flexible grout. I saw the bags of grout, and the flexible mastic, but 4 years later, my stone floor has split again in exactly the same place (I never saw a single crack in the 15 years before the load-bearing wall came down).
My neighbours' surveyor who recommended the patching up of the beams and told me to use flexible grout upstairs recently looked at my floor and told me that as he couldn't get a thumbnail into the grout, it wasn't flexible. I would have assumed that even flexible grout would cure and harden? Is that right, please? Is flexible grout actually soft? It isn't like latex sealant, right? Is there a way I can tell if the grout is flexible or not? I'm happy to lift tiles. MANY THANKS
My downstairs neighbours took down a wall that had become loadbearing 5 years ago, splitting my first floor stone kitchen floor from side to side as the beams it was holding up re-settled. An insurance claim followed and repair work completed, with over-loaded beams hung off other beams with face fixed hangers and others having new timbers bolted along-side them, for strength (the beams are a bit of a dogs dinner after the house was converted into 2 flats in the 60s - virtually no beams go wall-to-wall).
I re-laid my stone floor, instructing my builders to use flexible grout. I saw the bags of grout, and the flexible mastic, but 4 years later, my stone floor has split again in exactly the same place (I never saw a single crack in the 15 years before the load-bearing wall came down).
My neighbours' surveyor who recommended the patching up of the beams and told me to use flexible grout upstairs recently looked at my floor and told me that as he couldn't get a thumbnail into the grout, it wasn't flexible. I would have assumed that even flexible grout would cure and harden? Is that right, please? Is flexible grout actually soft? It isn't like latex sealant, right? Is there a way I can tell if the grout is flexible or not? I'm happy to lift tiles. MANY THANKS