What Should You do for tile popping?
Have you ever experienced your kitchen, living room, office to mention but a few floor tiles popping up?. Most families have experienced this particular defect and it’s not a nice feeling because it creates too much discomfort like too much sound when walked on, different levels of each tile. Most newly built residential, commercial, and offices always experience tile Popping of floor tiles when the premises have not even taken more than three years. This creates a lot of maintenance works which leads to high costs.
If you talk to an experienced tiler, you will realize popping up of floor tiles is common with Porcelain which has defects like grinding marks, unequal sizes, not being easy to clean, etc as compared to Ceramics tiles. The good news is this defect can be corrected without losing many tiles r no tiles at all.
Tile popping is the most common problem in the house. It makes the owners frustrated. The popping is caused by trapped air inside the tile, which in certain weather condition, receive additional force to blow out.
Because of this reason, some deduce that small dimension tiles are more prone to popping and when the next time they building houses, they opt for larger dimension tiles. This solves the problem at some level. It does not explode but still feels hollow. So how to perfectly prevent the tile popping floor? https://gotinoconstruction.com/how-to-estimate-the-cost-of-tiling-a-room/
5 Reasons for tile popping
unclean the subfloor
The first problem is caused by workers when they fail to clean the subfloor before tiling. The experienced and high-quality installers know that the subfloor must be clean before installing the tiles. Usually, they have a helper to do that for them.
To place the tile in the proper way, a clean subfloor is essential. Otherwise, the tiles won’t properly stick to the subfloor, as the adhesive won’t be able to work properly if there’s dirt on the floor.
The subfloor is not level
It is really important to have a good subfloor before you lay down the tiles for any kind of tiling work. It is necessary to level the subfloor. When you use the adhesives to connect the tile to the subfloor, it will create huge problems if the subfloor is not properly even.
On an uneven floor, different tiles will get different amounts of adhesive, and different tiles will have different proximity with the subfloor, meaning while some tiles will have better bonds with the subfloor, some will have really worse bonds. The tiles that have worse bonds are likely to pop up.
The Tiles Absorbing Too Much Water
Most tiles that we use are sealed and most of them don’t use too much water. But there are some materials that are more porous than others and have more micropores, and moisture can get into the tiles with these micropores.
And if the tiles are cracked beforehand, it absorbs even more water. If moisture is absorbed, the tiles get swelled, expanded, and pressure is created. And tiles get popped as a result
Not Using Adhesives
There are some tiles like the vinyl flooring tiles, that can be placed without adhesives. If no adhesive is used, then the tiles can pop up at any time.
Using Poor Adhesive Material
If the tiles get exposed to direct sunlight, the adhesive can dry off very quickly. Also, if low-quality bonding materials or adhesives are used, then they can’t act as strongly to keep the tile attached to the floor.
If The Tiles Are Old
Old tiles can not be as flexible as the new and fresh ones, because they crack more easily than the new ones. If your using old tiles, it can get cracked easily due to long foot traffic, too much use of cleaning agents, fluctuating temperatures, and many more.
Hence with time they can’t sustain the constant shrinking, and they pop as a result.http://sgd-construction.com/blog/
How floor tile popping can be removed
The first method is to identify the affected area. This can be achieved by getting a stick and knocked on each tiles. The ones which makes too much sound means that it has popped up.
Once this process is over, cut the joints of affected tiles which using an electric tile cutter while sprinkling little water on the tile joint of tile being cut. This is done to reduce on the dust as a result of the adhesive/grout on the joints. Remove all the cut tiles and thoroughly clean them.
Mix Adhesive with water and first spread on the floor that will receive floor tiles. After this, start relaying floor tiles bearing in mind the level.
Tiles laid back as they were before but with watery Adhesive.
Give the freshly laid floor tiles to dry till the following day. The next day, clean the tiles thoroughly and apply cement grout. At this time, the pop up sound will be no more.
The above method will save a lot from buying new tiles to replace with the popped up tiles. Secondly, most times ,you don’t get the same color/batch of the tiles because the manufacturers keep improving .
