B&Q cracked mineral floor tiles Advice and information on tiling and fixing tiles to a variety of surfaces

[alison1971]

Hello,
has anybody had any problems with B&Q cream/sand colour 12in mineral floor tiles, they were on special offer and cost around £5 per box, per m2?

After having two expensive new bathrooms fit and under-floor heating, I had the above tiles fitted on the walls and floor. The bathroom fitter/tiler is an excellent tradesma and applied all the necessary adhesives. Since the completion of the bathrooms, both bathroom floors have had floor tiles cracking, the tradesman has said that he feels these tiles from B&Q were too brittle to be used on any floor other than a solid floor, and as a high proportion of bathrooms are upstairs, and there is no mention on the box, I feel that the B&Q tiles were unsuitable for the job they were purchased to do.

Has anybody else had any problems with a similar situation? Would brittle tiles on an upstairs floor, even though fitted with correct adhesives, could they crack for any other reason than brittleness?

Any advice or messages welcome
thanks

[rosebery]

It's not just an adhesives issue. If he had concerns about either the quality of the tiles or the suitability of the substrate then he should have said so BEFORE he did the job. If he did and you instructed him to go ahead irrespective then you have no comeback to him.

In particular he should have told you that any upstairs timber floor will move and it is necessary to minimise that movement as part of the tiling process. The boards should either have been overboarded with minimum 12.5mm (preferably 18mm) quality ply screwed down at 4" centres or the old boards completely removed and replaced with 25m ply plus additional noggins and support at the sheet edges. Its vital to eliminate movement - any tiler worth his salt should know this.

Additionally (belt and braces I guess) I also fit a decoupling membrane such as Ditra which is not totally infallible. These things all add to the cost, of course, but the job should be done properly or not at all.

The tiles have inevitably cracked along a join/gap in the substrate.

I suspect you principal beef should be with the tiler rather than B&Q.

Sorry if thats not what you wanted to hear.

Cheers