Outside terrace - Concrete floor instead of tiles?! - Tile Advice

[Debbie]

Hello, I live in southern Spain in a top floor penthouse apartment (direct sun most of day) with a large outside terrace (600 square ft). The terrace is currently tiled but as the property is now 18 years old, some of the tiles are loose and cracked. My initial idea was to just remove the old tiles and replace with new tiles. I had 3 quotes for this work (two builders suggested tiling on top to save money and the third said it was necessary to remove the old tiles and replace with new ones). As you can imagine, it isn't cheap to do this work on such a large area so I decided to take some time to think about it. As we are currently on full lockdown in Spain, I have spent more time on the terrace than usual and yesterday it occurred to me that perhaps there were other options to consider apart from tiles, for example, working with the original concrete below the tiles and perhaps put a finish over the top of it. I really dislike the current tiles so I don't want to try to keep them/repatch, etc. I am very inexperienced in this area so would really appreciate any advice on this. Thank you.

 

[Perfect Tiling]

Hi Debbie....looking at the sky in your photos...it seems a good place to be on lockdown!!!
I'm not sure if being on a terrace the tiles are part of the waterproofing of the roof as they seem to slope into drains. If you just left the finish as concrete it may allow water to soak into it. If there are loose tiles then they need to come up...you can't just tile over them....and if some are loose they may all come up easily enough. If you don't like the tiles anyway......then your best bet is to retile with what you do like. You don't need to keep with the same size or style...how about a natural stone type tile similar to what you'd use on a patio.

 

[Zeko124]

In this case, I agree with the tiler who said to remove all of it. Keeping the bare concrete is possible, but it will be a hard task to keep the surface even while removing tiles, it also depends to the original quality of the concrete below. You have several options, such as concrete paint, epoxy, etc. It is important to coat it to prevent the water from soaking in. If it was mine, I would use a white coating in any case, due to the high temperatures raising during summer. Personally I would use Koster 21 coating, you can leave it like it is in white colour, and you can simply re-tile it whenever you like later.