Tile Floor Sounds HOLLOw Underneath?
Recently I toured a house that I was interested in, it is less than 7 years old, but I noticed that there was quite a bit tile tiles throughtout the house that sounded hollow, since this house is still fairly new, what would you suggest, as there are some carpet areas that need to be replaced, I thought tile, but I am concerned about the tile that sounds hollow, there are only 2 rooms (the kitchen and master bathroom) that are not affected by this problem ~ when I asked the homeowner, she said that the builder says she needs to contact her homeowners policy??? Whats up with that? I have noticed that the tile has cracked i and broke n some places and the grout is starting to crack and break in the major walk areas, and around the carpet areas . Shouldn't a builder have some type of warranty on their homes, she said she called the builder 3 months after they moved in, and the builder sent out the tile contractor who, attempted to drill holes in the grout and shoot caulking under the tile, of course at that time only a few tiles were affected, now we are talking at least 30 - 50 tiles (2100 sf )
any help would be appreciated.
generally for good tile you need to have at least an inch of solid substrate. If the tile and grout are coming up then it wasn't done right and would probably need to be removed and have the structural part of the floor addressed before re -tiling.
[addsig]
Yep, cracking grout and popping tile has nothing to do with the tile and everything to do with the sub-flooring and underlayment underneath.
The flooring under the tile is flexing. Grout and tile is inflexable, so it has no choice but to crack.
The tile was installed incorrectly with regard to eliminating flex.
At best you might find total incompetence where the tile was layed directly on the plywood without a CBU such as hardi board bonded on the plywood first.
At worst you might find that a CBU was laid, but the plywood subflooring was stiff enough even with the CBU, and they should have layed an additional layer of plywood subfloor perpendicular to the original sub-floor and then CBU on top of that.