Problems with porcelain polished tiles - tiles lifting and cracking

[bluefunnelline]

Good afternoon,

About 10 years ago, we had a new kitchen installed. My daughter had at this time purchased a new house and she had porcelain polished tiles installed in her kitchen on a cement floor.

My wife wanted these tiles, and a coalition of other family members agreed. I was not too keen because my research indicated that these were not suitable to be installed on a suspended wooden floor, which was the norm for houses buiilt in the 1970 .

I did some nnore research and some experts suggested that these tiles could be installed on a suspended wooden floor, if the floor material was marine ply.

I had an a professional carpenter replace the 3/4 inch chipboard floor with a 3/4 inch marine ply floor.
A professional tiler then laid the polished porcelain tiles. The finished prodect looked magnificient.

However, as time passed, the whole project turned out to be an absolute disaster Within a shot time several tiles in front of the worktops cracked.

The tiler was totally unrelaible. I bought seven replacement tiles. He was to come back and replace the cracked tiles. He never arrived - he apparently had a drig/drink problrm. He was accompanied by an apprentice who laid a lot of the tiles and appeared to be relatively inexperienced.

Today, quite a number of the tiles are cracked. Several of the tiles are no longer glued to the wooden floor. Day by day, more tiles are coming loose.I am not suggesting that the porblem is all due to the tiler.

I am looking ffor advice on how to cope with the problem. One suggestion is that I should lift all the tiles and lay a wooden floor. Would this be feasible?
Another expert suggests that the marine ply floor was not being hele down with an adequate number of screws. Would it be feasible to lift all the tiles, insert further screws on the marine ply floor and retile.

Any advice would be most welcome. Has anybofy any suggestions about an alternative solution?

Finally, I am at present having trouble with my eyes. This is the reason that I am using a large font.

Hope this does not annoy or irritate any other member.

Regards,

Jimmy

 

[phatboy]

I expect the floor did not have many or any noggins.

When we tiled an upstairs room, the tiler advised noggins between the joists every 400mm, then 18mm ply (Marine ply is pointless, it should never get wet in a kitchen anyway), then 4mm hardiback board that was glued down everywhere, and screw and washer fixed. It felt very solid.

He then tiled onto that, and all was well.

 

[mrrusty]

You have two factors working against you. 1) suspended floors are just not 100% rigid, so putting an inflexible floor covering on is always going to be challenging. 2) the expansion and contraction of plywood with heat and humidity is greater than ceramic, so again you are trying to force an incompatibility. The latter can be mitigated to an extent with decoupling membrane, but IMHO unless the area is quite small - 4-5 sq m in a bathroom perhaps, ceramic on timber suspended floors in a high traffic area is a recipe for problems. Lots of alternatives out there. I'd take it up and start again.

 

[foxhole]

Might have used incorrect tile cement, wood floor needs a flexible wood tile cement. Inexperienced tiler may not have buttered the tiles before laying resulting in trapped air which also means anything dropped on them is more likely to crack and walking on them could loosen more easily.If you tap them and they sound like a xylophone then this indicated poor fixing.