Limestone floor cracking.

[pollybampton]

A couple of questions now.
1. Is a tiler expected to know if there is a chance of deflection?
Is the person who first visited our house and gave us a cost expected to give advice about possible problems like deflection?
He just keeps saying he didn't do the ply wood, so the "sub floor" is not his responsibility.

Here's a copy of his quote.
Re: Quote for new stone flooring: kitchen & utility (incl. cupboard)
Further to my recent site visit, please find set out below our supply & fit quotation.
Quote includes:
Supply 50 sq.m Fiorito Travertine honed & filled, 610x457x10mm
Flexible adhesive, flexible grey grout & sealer. (colour of grout T.B.C)
Delivery from mill to site.

Costing:
Total £6,445.75

The stone will be fitted to the leg of the new units, the plinths and end panels should be cut to suit, by others, the stone/adhesive. The tiles will be sealed prior grouting and a second coat after.

All sub –floors to be prepared by others, however, we would liaise with Kitchen works to confirm. A hatch will be made in the utility room, a detail to be confirmed.

All prices are including the standard rate of VAT.
We would need approx. 2-3 week from placement of order.
Please ensure that your existing sub-floor is sound, dry, flat and even prior to our works commencing. If the subfloor is not flat we will try to improve this, but will not be responsible for an un-even new floor.
Payment terms: 100% of the materials cost plus 50% of the labour cost at placement of order (£), the balance at completion of works. Please note that we accept most major credit and debit cards.
There may be some additional costs if you wish us to remove existing floor coverings / if work is required to improve the sub-floor prior to fitting your new stone floor
Please confirm the exact width, finishing & grading required at the time or ordering
All stone vary naturally in texture & colour. No sample is representative of the whole range of colour, texture and grade. Stone is sold by description, not by sample. On rare occasions, a minor variation in stone thickness might occur.
We request that the floors are inspected at the completion of our works and accepted and then paid for. Any legitimate snagging works will be immediately undertaken, and at any event, the floors must be passed as acceptable and paid for before any other trades commence work.
Any damage to the floors by other trades after our works are complete will be subject to additional remedial costs.

Thank you for this enquiry, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to call me at the showroom.

 

[doug boardley]

I think he's covered himself, he states more than once that the sub floor is not his responsibility, and imo, the ply is the sub floor. You could argue that he should have checked it, but initially he put the onus on the pre-tiling fixers.

 

[pollybampton]

So is it the ply wood that is deflecting or the floor underneath?
And my original questions
1. Is a tiler expected to know if there is a chance of deflection?
Is the person who first visited our house and gave us a cost expected to give advice about possible problems like deflection?

 

[mikethetile]

the tilers should still have checked the floor prior to laying as they should be aware that the job will fail if any deflection is present

this is a diificult one not helped by the kitchen fitters going out of business

you really do need to seek legal advise on this as its not at all straightforward, as Doug rightly says the tiling shop expected the subfloor to prepped right before their arrival and was part of the conditions when you accepted their quote but on the other hand they agreed to liase with the kitchen fitters and they accepted the floor as fit to tile

your house insurers might have legal cover , if so a chat with them may get you forward on this matter

 

[hillhead]

It is possible that movement could have been felt under foot! yes the tilers should have known and even recommended ditra matting or similar decoupling.
Who ever prepared the floor ie kitchen men? are responsible IMO

 

[mikethetile]

yes the tilers should have been aware that there was deflection and advised that it wasnt suitable for tiliing putting the onus back on the kitchen fitters to prep the floor properly

a lot of the deflection in the floor is caused by movement in the joists and the joists need to be braced with noggins to take out any bounce. prepping a floor for tiling needs to be done by someone with knowledge of whats required for tiling. asking a chippy with no tiling experiance or knowledge to overboard a floor is asking for trouble as they will follow instructions and simply overboard the floor. this is why tilers take responsibility for prepping the subfloor

 

[pollybampton]

The floor seems very firm and solid. If you jump on it at one end there is a very slight vibration.
Is deflection inherent in the floor boards and joists, or can it be introduced by the plywood?
The kitchen company recommended me to go across the road to the flooring company. Flooring company were happy for Kitchen company to do the floor. They knew the kitchen company to be reputable. They had previously fitted a kitchen for us ( same tradesmen) in a previous house. We're talking a £40k kitchen in the last house. This one was only £20k because we were keeping the original worktops and no appliances were supplied this time. They are qualified joiners, not fly by nights.
Has the person who sold us the floor and visited the site no obligation to tell us of possible issues with stone floors?

 

[doug boardley]

It is possible that movement could have been felt under foot! yes the tilers should have known and even recommended ditra matting or similar decoupling.
Who ever prepared the floor ie kitchen men? are responsible IMO

a decoupler wouldn't have helped with vertical deflection tho Joe, and I'm assuming it's vertical deflection that's caused the problem here and not lateral expansion.

 

[pollybampton]

The joiners have previously done work like this I'm told

 

[hillhead]

a decoupler wouldn't have helped with vertical deflection tho Joe, and I'm assuming it's vertical deflection that's caused the problem here and not lateral expansion.

That's right Doug,as i said earlier the sub floor needs to be exposed and inspected before strengthening which if done right will eliminate any vertical deflection.This all plus the decoupling will all help the finish which is needed IMO

 

[doug boardley]

belt and braces info there Joe

 

[mikethetile]

you really do need to take legal advise

the tiletrs agreed to liase with the kitchen fitters, with proper communication this would have been avoided

if the kitchen fitters are telling the tiling shop that they are experianced at this work then the shop may not have checked the floor before sending tilers over to do the job

the fact remains that filling the tiles isnt going to work as the movement in the floor will break the filler out . this problem isnt going to cure itself

there is movement in the floor and it needs rectifying and retiling

firm legal action is needed to sort this out , both parties have let you down and are refusing to take responsibility

 

[Diamond Pool Finishers]

are they responsible just by recommending the tiler;s??? it sound 50-50 to me!! tiler;s /kitchen fitter;s

 

[White Room]

Personally I would try to get this sorted thru the partys involved with the works prior to anything else but use the legal side as a very last resort IMO

 

[pollybampton]

I do feel like the victim and caught in the middle. All my wife and I have done is spend a fortune, and we have a disaster on our hands. I've told the floor company that we're investigating the ins and outs and do's and don'ts of stone floor covering. He has now agreed to come out to see the job. He has refused so far ( since first asked in January) instead, sending the tilers out to grout. He says the tilers advised me to strengthen the floor. This is RUBBISH, and gives me hope that if he is resorting to lying, I might get somewhere.He's bringing with him the stone rep. After tonights chat, it's fairly obvious that that will be a waste of time. However, it will give me the chance of a face to face with him, on site. Let's see who blinks first. He is still going on about the plywood. I saw the guys fit it. Well, not every last sheet and every last screw, but I was in and out and I saw nothing untowards. At the end of the day, the floor will get ripped up, and we'll see the plywood. We'll probably go back to a hard wood floor. Not because we don't like stone; we love it. However, we didn't realise how cold it would be underfoot, and the cleaning maintenance is a nightmare with 2 young kids. Why did we rip up a mahogany floor that was 3 years old in the first place? The colour didn't match the work tops.
One last thing, the tilers were sub contractors. However, my wife reminded me, that we paid the floor shop for the fitting, not the tilers direct. So there is an additional responsibiity there. My guess is that the tilers are stone cutters and smudgers. They're young and probably not experienced. The things you guys have mentioned have never been brought up in conversation with the tilers. You'd think if they were experienced, they would say right away what the problem is.
Many thanks to all of you for your comments and advice.
Meantime, while I'm waiting to rip the floor up, what's the best way to get it clean, sealed and in a maintenance friendly state?

you really do need to take legal advise

the tiletrs agreed to liase with the kitchen fitters, with proper communication this would have been avoided

if the kitchen fitters are telling the tiling shop that they are experianced at this work then the shop may not have checked the floor before sending tilers over to do the job

the fact remains that filling the tiles isnt going to work as the movement in the floor will break the filler out . this problem isnt going to cure itself

there is movement in the floor and it needs rectifying and retiling

firm legal action is needed to sort this out , both parties have let you down and are refusing to take responsibility

 

[DHTiling]

Yes the K/fitters should have done a solid floor for tiling but IMO it is the tile fixer who needs to make sure the floor is suitable for the tiles to applied.. So the tiler should have advised the way to go before just going ahead and tiling it.

If a comp is to guarantee their fixing then surely they should be 100% confident on the substrate and not just pass the buck to the k/fitters..

 

[mikethetile]

you have my sympathy in this matter and you are the victim

you have done everything right , you employed proffesionals and paid good money expecting a long lasting and proffesional job, its not unreasonable to expect both parties to come forward and correct the works between them

 

[doug boardley]

at the end of the day Polly it looks like you've been the victim of poor advice right through the installation of your floor, we can only advise on the installation and not the legal liabilities of parties involved, but I sincerely hope that you get adequate recompense for your floor.

 

[peckers]

Just thinking out aloud but was there any other work done below this floor? is there any rooms below where a wall has been taken down and the floor is not as supported as it used to be? The floor may have had no deflection in it before tiling commenced and there is now alot of weight added and it has now got deflection. was it tiled and then granite worktops applied as this all adds weight to the floor. What im trying to say is that the floor could have been prepped and no deflection detected without all the extra weight applied. the kitchen fitters who prepped the floor may have thought it was ok if they just jumped up and down on it.
Its as if the weight issues had not been taken into account!!!
You really need legal advise on this as the blame is being passed around. I hope the out come is in your favour.
As to remedies is there any way the floor can be accessed from below and supported by a rsj to stop the deflection??? then the damaged tiles could be replaced. As I said just thinking out aloud...

 

[Aston]

you really need to get a structural engineer in. they will work out the load bearing capacities of the floor/joists and confirm whether the weight ratio of the floor is too much..

then you can start to establish who is to blame but legal advice is needed. keep calm at this stage because the people you have used to carry out your work will be on the defensive. denying, passing the buck etc....dont get heated, it aggrevates the situation and you dont get too emotionally involved. be smart and maybe get your camcorder out secretly and see if you can get anything on tape that helps your cause...

1. get a report done
2. see a solicitor

hope this helps

 

[Bolter]

They are qualified joiners, not fly by nights.

I have a very good friend who is a joiner/furniture restorer/kitchen fitter, and is superb at his job. One of the best I would say. BUT, he doesnt understand what I would need for tiling unless explained. If I said "fit me a ply subfloor", he would maybe screw some ply to the floor boards, and on the face of it, looks good. But if there arent screws at 150mm centres, and noggins below for added strength, then the floor would fail. Even a mistake like "I'll use up some of this chipboard" would be a problem.

To be honest, the fault laid with the company who did the sub floor UNTIL the tiling firm laid over it without checking, and now it becomes their fault. If they are willing to 'risk it', then the risk is theirs.

 

[Gazzer]

It could quite possibbly be a case of the floor was solid enough when tiled but since this time something under the floor may have happenend such as a joist cracking or rotten.
I had a job a long time ago now which was perfect for 6 years and then a crack apperared. After a lot of searching the floor came up and it was found that the main water pipe had a small leak which had soaked the joists of over the years. Of course it was all saturated beneath the floor and thats where the damage was done. This job was settled by household insurance and no one was held to blame.

 

[pollybampton]

Hello again, for anyone that's still looking at this thread. A builder friend of mine came and looked at the floor. He doubted there was any deflection. He had been expecting to feel vibration through the floor, but couldn't, even when he jumped on it, and he's no lightweight.
The house is 100 years old. There is the main building, and the kitchen extends out from the main building into what looks like a single storey extension. ( see attachments) I don't think this was an add on extension. Originally it was used as a garage. The floor level was originally a foot or 18 inches below the ground level of the house.We had a look under the floorboards as far as we could.There is access under the main part of the house. The floor is supported by thick timber joists and thick timber floor boards. When I say thick, I mean the builder said that these were much thicker than what you would see today. These in turn are supported on brick walls ( about 4 foot high) that intersect the basement , so that the largest area of unsupported floor area would be no bigger than 3 yards by 3 yards. It's like a maze with small crawl spaces cut in the brick work. It's solid, and there's no movement. When we crawled through to the extension area, there is no access. Just a solid brick wall. It looks as if the subfloor is concrete, with joists and timber floor above. This would make sense if this was originally a garage. So no movement there, or none that can be detected. Which brings us to the plywood. It looks as if the ply is 12mm, and screwed between 200mm and 300m centres, judging by what we can see where pipes are coming in to the kitchen and around the mat well. My builder reckons that 12mm would be OK, as long as the sub floor was sound, although he would always advise against putting stone on any type of wooden floor. This is his experience he's going by.
I have the person from the tile store coming tomorrow morning with the rep from the stone manufacturer. He has finally agreed to come. I'll keep you posted as to how this turns out.

 

[doug boardley]

thanks for the update

 

[HimediA]

Hi Polly

As I'm just about to have Moleanos Limestone laid in our new 7.5m x 5.5m kitchen, and listening to various people talking about different sub-floor requirements I'd be very interested to hear how your situation ended up?

Cheers
Paul

 

[the diving tile]

😳sorry very late post did not see the five page a head of me

 

[pollybampton]

Hi There,
Now where was I? it was so long ago. Well, the owner of the tile company came out with a tile rep.
Both said it was deflection. (I asked him why he never mentioned the possibility of defection and cracking when he first saw the job. He said the floor appeared fine. )Tile boss stuck to his story that he didn't do the plywood. I countered that I had instructed him to work with the kitchen folk who did the sub floor and he said that he did. I added that the tilers should have said about the deflection, he said they would have but it wasn't apparent. The tile guy then began to question if the floor was fitted properly. I said wouldn't the fitters notice this. He said no. Going round in circles now. I am in a no win situation. Becuase I was foolish enough to allow the kitchen folk to do the sub floor, thinking I was helping out, I'm stuffed. Kitchen folk are bust, Tile man says it's not his fault. Incidentally, the kitchen folk recommended the tile guy!!!
I would have to lift the floor to ascertain if the sub floor was done properly. My wife ain't up for that, and neither am I.
Legally I haven't a leg to stand on. So..
I asked the tile guy if he would do the floor again. He said he would but not for free. We negotiated 2 options. 1st one is that he sends a guy out with an epoxy filler in an attempt to sort the cracks. He will also get a guy out with new cleaning stuff to try and get the floor to look clean again.
If that doesn't work, he will sell us a floor at cost and pay for the fitting. I would prefer this, but it would involve either taking out the whole kitchen and lifting the floor and my wife won't do that. Other option is to fit the floor on top of the existing one, but that screws up the look of the kitchen units re heights etc. Incidentally, we would go back to a wooden floor. Warmer, doesn't crack, easier to clean and maintain.
What have I learned?
Have the one company do everything so that the buck stops in the one place. If the buck gets split, it ain't worth a dime.
Ask if there's a chance that limestone will crack. Will the supplier guarantee against cracking? That's the most important part and something that never occurred to me to ask, and was never raised by the tile guy.
When someone tells you something is easy to keep clean, get a demo first in a similar area and judge for yourself.
I don't think I would ever have a natural stone floor again. This was £6k down the drain, and spoils what should be a spectacular kitchen.
Check your sub floor before any plywood goes on. Reinforce it to prevent movement. The slightest movement will crack it. Get underfloor heating. Nothing will prepare you for how cold a limestone floor is that doesn't have under floor heating.
You have the advantage of knowing about this web site before going ahead with your job. Read thoroughly, ask lots of questions, there's knowledgeable folk here. Good luck.

Hi Polly

As I'm just about to have Moleanos Limestone laid in our new 7.5m x 5.5m kitchen, and listening to various people talking about different sub-floor requirements I'd be very interested to hear how your situation ended up?

Cheers
Paul

 

[pollybampton]

Hello everyone
It's been a while since my last post. We have completed the refurb of the house, and my wife is looking at the kitchen floor and is not happy. For those who don't remember , we have a limestone floor that cracked. It's in a terrible state. Couple of questions. Are we asking for more trouble if we don't rip the floor up and start again? Would porcelain tiles fitted over the top of the limestone, just be as bad? What about wood over the top of the limestone? Am I clutching at straws and should I bite the bullet and start again?
Also, our bathroom upstairs was tiled with one of these electric blanket style forms of underfloor heating. It works well. We fancy it for the kitchen downstairs when we finally decide to renew the floor. Any pros and cons considering what we've been through with the kitchen already? Is it suitable for a wooden floor? Anyone know an amazing tiler in the glasgow area? Thanks in advance. P

 

[White Room]

Try this section of the forum I'm Looking for a Wall and Floor Tiler - Tiles | Floor Tiles | Wall Tiles | Tilers Forum

 

[Shortio]

Hello everyone
It's been a while since my last post. We have completed the refurb of the house, and my wife is looking at the kitchen floor and is not happy. For those who don't remember , we have a limestone floor that cracked. It's in a terrible state. Couple of questions. Are we asking for more trouble if we don't rip the floor up and start again? Would porcelain tiles fitted over the top of the limestone, just be as bad? What about wood over the top of the limestone? Am I clutching at straws and should I bite the bullet and start again?
Also, our bathroom upstairs was tiled with one of these electric blanket style forms of underfloor heating. It works well. We fancy it for the kitchen downstairs when we finally decide to renew the floor. Any pros and cons considering what we've been through with the kitchen already? Is it suitable for a wooden floor? Anyone know an amazing tiler in the glasgow area? Thanks in advance. P

Mr Brampton, I can answer many of your questions regarding existing problems and possibly reinforce your options for new installation. Cheers us.