Hi, I am new on here. I had a building project finish 5-6 months ago. Part of the project was a 90m2 porcelain patio installed on a hardcore/MOT compacted base with mortar bed. The porcelain tiles were 20 cm thick (60x60cm) external grade. I discovered that the porcelain tiles were NOT pasted with the specified slurry bond agent before laying down on the mortar bed - as listed in the fitting instructions. The landscaper did not do any prep to the tiles before placing on the mortar. After only 5 months I noted that one of the tiles on the stepped area of the patio was loose, and when looking further saw that the adjacent tiles could easily be lifted with mild finger pressure. I haven’t tried further tiles in the other areas as I am scared to, but I would suspect they could easily come loose at some stage. What should I do? It would be messy to replace the whole 100m2 patio but then I guess its going to come up/“pop” at some stage in other places. The rectification is presumably to chip out the old mortar bed and replace and then properly slurry bond the tiles on a new mortar bed? Grateful for some advice. I still owe the builder circa £3.5k in retention and will not pay this until we have resolved further. Is it worth taking a risk on the other areas of the patio which appears solid right now?
I will try to save down some photos of the failed tiles/patio to a smaller size and post up here shortly.
Many thanks.
