Flooring Tile - Buckling Ceramic Floor Tiles

Good day everyone...

We got a major problem with our floor tiles. Its ceramic about 12x12 inches in size and its buckling up. The problem can be seen in our second and third floor areas. Im a civil engineer and just graduated. I certainly dont know why is this happening. I happen to observed what they did during the construction of our house and I will cite those procedure which i think may cause the problem.

1. They lay another layer of concrete on top of the original pouring slab on the second and third floor. About an inch or more thick.

2. They laid the floor tiles soon after the pouring of concrete (without letting the concrete harden first) and use a cement paste in between floor tiles.

What do you think is the problem? What are the solution to this?

Not all of the tiles in an area are affected, i say about 30-40% percent per area (i mean bedrooms). Is it good to just re-lay the affected tiles and forget about the rest? or we should carefully remove all the tiles and start from there?

Thanks in advance.

What you are describing sounds like tenting. This is usually caused by lack of expansion joints in large floors, or floors that are grouted up to the walls leaving no room for expansion. The tile has no room to expand to it lifts right off the floor. What is the size of the tiled areas, and are they grouted right to the walls? You can take off a piece of base molding to check this out.

Call your builder - this shouldn't be your problem.

the floor area is around 10 sqm per room. I didnt get your question about the tile being grouted up to the wall though, ill just try to answer it, the tiles touches the base of the walls, if thats what you mean sir. And we really didnt have a subcontractor for the tiles layout, a friend of my parents did it for us. So i guess, we cant sue for that. :-). Sir johnny, how do you think we should proceed??? Shall we have all the floor tiles remove and start from scratch??? Thank you...

Being a civil eng. you have an understanding of the need for movement accomodation. Just as a guess, the product poured over the floor was a self leveling cement with no movement accomodation and the tile is installed, also with no movement accomodation. First step, pull a baseboard in the effected area and see if the secondary pour abutts the wall. Second, pull up som of the tented tile and see if the tile has sheared or if the pour has sheared as well. Tap on the cement if it has not tented and craccked too and see if it sounds hollow. Report back. I'm thinking a 40 yard can might be in order here. What's the supporting structure under the tile? You mentioned your second and third floors are a slab. Is this really concrete or is it a lightweight concrete, such as gypcrete poured over a wood structure as is commonly done over hydronic heat tubes or in condos for soundproofing and fire rating?

Is 10 sqm = 10 square meters. So around a 110 square feet I think. Answering Tilebri's questions will give us more to go on.

they actually poured another layer of normal weight concrete, as same as they poured in the columns, beams and the original slab. I think they didnt allot a space for any thermal expansion. the tented tiles didnt crack at all neither did the slab below it. the affected part is not hollow but some honeycombs can be seen but nothing big enough to be alarmed. im not really familiar with some of the questions but ill try answering it, the slab is really a concrete floor, no other materials underneath it.

"pull a baseboard in the effected area and see if the secondary pour abutts the wall" - this sir i dont get. we really dont have some any moldings in the house. i can see clearly the connection from the base of the wall to the flooring and same with the ceiling to the wall.

thank you very much sir for helping...

Honey combs? I think it's picture time. Upload to any of the picture hosting sites or your own web space you might have from you ISP and provide a link. It's not uncommon for the tile not to crack when tenting occurs as the shear bond to the substrate is broken. Since the tiles are no longer bonded, there is nothing to cause them to crack. They just sort of lift right up.

Yeah pictures would be helpful. Im wondering if the honeycombs you speak of are nothing more that the ridges created by the notched trowel when the tiles were set. Those ridges would normally be flattened out when the tile is set. Could be, the bond was never very good to begin with. If you have no baseboards, sounds like the tile go right up against the wall. If this is the case, and the joint where the tile meets the wall is grouted instead of caulked, this could have caused the problem. The joint where the tile meets the wall should have been caulked rather than grouted to allow for expansion. If the tile have no where to move, and they need to move, tenting is the result.

http://www.geocities.com/joel_stahleen/a.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/joel_stahleen/b.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/joel_stahleen/c.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/joel_stahleen/d.jpg

im betting my problem would have to do with the joints not having enough space for expansion... would i resolve this problem sir if i would have to use a real tile cement instead of just using ordinary cement???

The last picture looks like their is no gap between the floor and wall allowing for expansion. This would be my first guess. The tile has no where to go when it expands and so it just shears right off the floor and pops up. The joint where the floor meets the walls should be caulked, not grouted. The caulk will allow for some movement while the grout will allow for no movement at all. The wall also looks like a masonry (block or cement) wall. Is that the case?

it is a masonry wall sir... so, removing all the tiles doing it all over again is the best way to solve the problem?

It also looks like in picture (B I think) that you did tile over tile at least in that area. That dramaticly reduces the shear bond to the substrate and makes the lack of perimeter expansion into a sooner occurance of failure. Similar to, And Johnny will understand example this better, when self leveling cements are poured over a slab, with no perimeter expansion joints, or over plywood without lath, and primer is not used first, oh well never mind, I'm getting too deep into technicalities.

What was picture "A" supposed to be? I got a movie box artwork when I copied it into my browser? :)

Yeah, you have a total redo. :(