Tiles cracking, is it the adhesive or something else? - TilersForums.com

[Andy Allen]

Most people in Britain aren't British now......lol

 

[Tile Shop]

Red backed. Made by Regaliz in Spain. If that helps

 

[Dan]

At the end of the day the solution to the problem is the same. I guess only one needs to come off to see the real issue. And I assume if they're breaking up it wouldn't take much to at least get at the adhesive to see if some wall comes off with it or adhesive crumbles or whatever. So perhaps customer can have a go?

They're going to have to come off eventually anyway. Sharp ceramics in a shower with lots of fleshy parts isn't a good mix at all. The sooner it's sorted out the better.

 

[Tile seller]

I can really only see cracking tiles in the corners.
My bet is on substrate movement. Due to there being no silicon to separate the areas all the movement has been transferred straight into the wall joint. When showering people stand right next to the wall which I think has caused floor movement in that area.

 

[MW Smith Ceramics]

Looking at the extent of the cracking on the tiles I would say this is a fault in the tiles!.....what's the wall covering that's been used?.....and why rapid set adhesive using such a small tile on walls you would be mixing up a bit at a time all day, what a palava!

 

[bcd-87]

Hi @Paul C.

It looks to me like the wrong adhesive may have been used on a bad batch of ceramics...

It's happed to me both ways on sesperate jobs never at the same time though..

Speak to @Dan thete may be s trophy for that

Good luck

 

[Tile Shop]

The Tile factories team suggested it was possible that the adhesive was too thick. This in turn has caused shrinkage. Fault with the tile? Very slim chance. We had 1250 sq.mtrs from that batch delivered and this is the only issue we had with them.

Coupled with what you guys have said about not using any form of corner expansion, you'll also notice on 2 of the pictuers, the cracks follow in an almost straight line from one tile to the next, implying that there is something going on underneath and the tiles are following.

As for the wall in the shower.... still at a loss on that one, and can only assume that what has affected the corners has also affected the remainder of the wall.

Having spoken to the customer, the same adhesive has been used in the dry areas of the room too. Onto plaster but only a couple of cracks were noticed early on. This hasn't got any worse. But the large areas with the cracks is where the homelux wall matting was used and have continued to crack further since they were fitted and the shower has been used.

I have since spoken to the factory again as I'm not going to go running back to the customer and say "its been fitted wrong". It want the factory to actually run their own tests to draw a conclusion rather than just assume whats happened. Of course in their eyes its not a fault with the tile. That'd just be silly

 

[Tile Shop]

Out of interest, have any of you used the internal corner expansion joint that schluter and genesis do? do they look better than a bead of silicone or are they just and extra cost that isn't really required?

 

[Old Mod]

Out of interest, have any of you used the internal corner expansion joint that schluter and genesis do? do they look better than a bead of silicone or are they just and extra cost that isn't really required?

Look better? ......subjective
Work better?.......if Schluter make it, it's better! Haha