Failure!

[STEvieXE]

Hey guys, as usual I've got a problem and I'm looking for help! My mum has lived in her house for 12 years and the entrance hall and kitchen floors were tiled by the previous owner. To be honest it wasn't the best tiling job and some tiles sounded a little hollow but had no damage etc.

About two weeks ago 2 rows of tiles accross the kitchen started to swell up. Like rise up! This quickly turned to grout cracking and the tiles lifted more. There are no spare tiles, and it has cut tiles as skirting. I wanted to try and lift the tiles if possible to perhaps relay them to save a bigger job. I have lifted the most of them tonight. Broke a bit of one but mum is happy enough for me to reuse it but under the fixed table.

When I lifted them some of the tiled look like them have never been making contact with the mainly solid bed. The adhesive looks 2 different Colours below the tiles. Some is hard and some is crackly n flakey. I'm not too sure what has happened esp so quickly and after so long of having no problems. I'm esp concerned with the fact its 2 rows in a straight line across the room and the rest of the floor is as before. The screed/adhesive seems dry etc i was worried of maybe a water leak etc can I test for this anyway?

I'll fire up some pics

Thanks for reading and sorry for the essay!

 

[STEvieXE]

I think the boiler guy said it should be at 1.5/2 on the scale. Usually have to put about 1 into it. Think this is bar scale?

 

[Dumbo]

I would think you could disconnect ufh from central heating at ufh manifold and do a pressure test on ufh . Another option could be come the summer when u are not using ufh shut the valves at the ufh manifold and if pressure doesn't drop on heating system that should give you a pretty good indication .

 

[STEvieXE]

We don't have under floor heating, just convential radiators

 

[Dumbo]

We don't have under floor heating, just convential radiators

I got that all wrong then

 

[STEvieXE]

Boiler engineer is coming to have a look tomorrow to investigate the pressure drop to hopefully find a problem or rule it out!

 

[STEvieXE]

I got that all wrong then

Thanks for input/advice anyhow

 

[STEvieXE]

Boiler man came and looked today, replaced the prv it was leaking some water onto the vessel and replaced another part ( unsure if this was leaking!, I wasn't there so I'm hearing second hand info from my mum!)

Boiler guy reckons this has been the cause of the pressure drop but to monitor it. What it has been using over the 4/6 weeks he thinks would maybe be a cup of water so very little.

He doesn't think there is a leak in the floor as pressure drop is so small, no visible sign of water on floor/ up walls, heating is working perfectly.

His opinion is the floor has lifted because of the poor tiling job which is of course is definitely correct! Just still seems strange how it lasted so long then tented so badly in a straight line over a period of approx 2 weeks.

So! Monitor now and hopefully this will put an end to topping up the boiler every 4/6 weeks

 

[SJPurdy]

His opinion is the floor has lifted because of the poor tiling job which is of course is definitely correct! Just still seems strange how it lasted so long then tented so badly in a straight line over a period of approx 2 weeks.

Just reviewed the pics. It looks to me that the different coloured adhesives are from different periods i.e. floor originally tiled with the lighter (white) adhesive and then retiled with darker adhesive (maybe even over a grey SLC). That should not be a problem however looking at the pics of the partly taken up tiles there seems to me to be very little joint spacing between the tiles (the grout is clinging into the radiuses on the edge of the tiles and the thin joint in between. This could part of the reason for the failure - the tiles have very little compressible grout between then to absorb some of the stresses due to eg. thermal movement . They have held out for the 12 years and then maybe some additional stress occurred which caused the tiles to tent. When the tiles are relayed make sure there is minimum 3mm gap for grout between them.

 

[Dan]

Don't mind me while I bump up some older but good threads. If you can contribute to the thread, go ahead. But if it's nothing for you then don't reply and it'll soon drop off the What's New page etc.
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