B & Q bargain floor tiles !!!!

[john regency]

Anyone else had trouble with the mineral floor tiles from B & Q. Different sizes, very brittle, You can score it once and crack it with one finger on the arm. We have a couple of floors for one customer that have several cracks running across the floors. Used ply, bal single part and grout. No cracks in the grout, just fine ckaks running through the tiles. B & Q manager doesn't want to know, just says we should have used thicker ply. Is it possible to have the tiles tested to see if they are suitable for floors, or is it just not worth the hassle???

[grumpygrouter]

How thick WAS the ply?

[john regency]

10mm ply screwed about every 6" and bedded on bal flex adhesive. Pretty standard, never had a problem before.
PS. one bathroom was in the original part of the house, the other was in a later extension

[grumpygrouter]

your ply was not really thick enough for a single part flex adhesive. Min addy spec from BAL for anything less than 15mm ply is Fastflex. This could be the root cause of your problem.

[kilty55]

was the ply from b and q? all b and q stockists have stopped supplying 9mm ply in edinburgh area as there was issues and complaints about it,was told this last week when i tried to buy some. i use 9mm ply sometimes ,i know i shdnt really but on solid floors i dont see any issues

[brian c]

i like the avatar Kilty..pmsl


cheap and nasty tiles..imo...only good for the bin!

[whitebeam]

Someone else used to have that aviator, Leatherface I think

[Tiberius]

Hi John
What sort of tiles were they? I was phoned by a lady this week with 600x600 porcelain tiles that are literally breaking under her feet. It wouldn't be that big a deal but for the fact that there is 60m2 of them. The main source of the problem isn't just the tiles but the preparation of the floor and the way they are fixed, however, it would be nice to know if it is the same tiles.

Thanks

Tib

[john regency]

Hi Tib

They are 300 x 300 mineral ceramic.

So far we have no problems with our tiler. everyone loves his work and he takes a lot of pride in what he does. It sounds like we need to review how we prepare the floor before tiling, but we deffinately wont be using any more B & Q bargains again !!!

Thanks to everyone for your comments

John

[doug boardley]

B & Q

[inspiredandy]

Hi John,

There is a newish product on the market called plastic ply which is self adhesive and you lay it brick bond onto the substrate and then tile over. It is only a couple of mm thick so you dont have a huge increase in floor height. Apparantly been used on the upper floor in Selfridges.

[mosaic man]

keep away from b n q tiles they r cheap crap,iv laid a few from the almondvale shop and had nothing but problems,cheap rubbish,iv complained but they said u get what you pay for.
tell your customers to go to a tile shop