Crumbling Travertine Tiles

[bewildered bub]

Hi, I'm new to this, but really keen to know if anyone has purchased honed and filled travertine tiles from Tile Clearing House/Topps Tiles, as they are, I am tole, the same company??! What I need to know is, has anyone experienced tile breakage/crumbling of these tiles? Only my fitter, a lovely man called 'Shauney' has experienced awful problems with breakages whilst not only cutting these tiles but hadling them? I have moaned to the staff of Tile Clearing House (which is where I bought them from) but they maintained they have never heard the like and were almost trying to pile the blame on poor Shauney, whilst taking even more money from me to replace the breakages! Could it be that Tile Clearing House sell sub-standard travertine (it is, however, cheaper than Topps Tiles) ? Someone out there must know? Bewildered Bub.

 

[Perry]

Could have been banged about in transit have had that before only started to fall apart we took them out of the packaging

 

[Ian]

Hey up Bub, what do the tiles look like? Is the rear full of holes and does the front look like it's got a lot of filler in it? If it's poor quality these would be two of the signs.

 

[Rich]

As above, I have had stone that has been beaten to death before I have turned up to fix it, could hardy find enough tiles to finish the job. What is your tiler cutting them with? Some pics of the stone and the back of them might help.

 

[bewildered bub]

Hi Bri (that rhymes!)
I'm sure you're right, the backs of these tiles are peppered with holes and the fronts are fairly heavily filled.

 

[bewildered bub]

Hi Rich,
As I just told Bri, the backs of some of these tiles look like honeycomb, and the fronts are heavily filled. My tiler has been using a wet motorised cutting machine, but has had breakages by just handling them, when they dont just break, they crumble into loads of pieces! I The tile shop gave me three free replacements last week, but they continue to crumble and now they say they have never heard of this happening. I 've got a pile of broken tiles outside my front door. I wonder if the quality of the tiles from Topps Tiles are better, at aboiut £1.5o/£2 more? Thanks Rich. Bub.

 

[Ian]

I have fitted a fair old amount of travertine from Topps and have never had any crumble on me, a few breakages but never crumbling. Topps travertine is, in my opinion, mid range, there is some much better quality but at a higher price.

 

[DHTiling]

I have seen and fixed travertine from both stores.. to tell the truth.. you get what you pay for most times but those stores charge a lot for what you get and the grade is deffo low grade.. commercial grade IMO..

 

[Andy Allen]

is your fixer back skimming the tiles to fill the holes in?.......ive used them, as dave says there not the best quality.

 

[The Legend; Phil Hobson RIP]

As above, not the best but once they have been back skimmed and solid bed fixed, they should be OK. Problem is getting them out of the crate and cutting them without them falling apart.

I have just had the same problem with B&Q marble, mark a tile, put it on the Dewalt, switch on machine, touch the blade on the tile and wallop tile explodes, all the veins crack. I finished up grading every tile to make sure the ones with lots of veins were used as field tiles, and the more solid ones used for cuts.

As said "you get what you pay for", good luck with it.