“Tenting” is a terrible term to a tile professional. When a bathroom floor has been installed incorrectly, tiles can press against one another and pop off the floor, creating a tent form. It’s not just tile which does so — almost every substance in a house expands and contracts with time, for example, plywood subfloor, which can create popped tiles or cracked grout joints.
These professional pointers for preparation and installation techniques can help keep your bathroom flooring from tenting.
Tarkus Tile, Inc..
Avoid large-format tile. Grout joints distributing and allow for motion.
If you’ve got a huge bathroom — such as this gorgeous space — with loads of natural sunlight, a lighter and smaller tile is unquestionably a safer choice. Darker tile absorbs warmth and expands and contracts over lighter tile.
The Turett Collaborative
All of your home’s building materials expand and contract; both the tile, the hardwood flooring and the countertops all proceed over time. Any good pro need to know how to account for these size changes and protect against expansion from wreaking havoc in a house.
Tip: make certain your tongue and groove subfloor doesn’t get full of debris, dust or glue mortar (thinset). This subfloor needs the capability to move, and the joints should not be too tight.
Kaufmann Masonry LLC
This photo shows some fantastic tile function. The gorgeous tile is well lined up, but I especially love how there is no mortar or thinset in which the tile meets the walls. Using mortar can lead to issues that are tenting, as it prevents the tile flooring from expanding and moving. This clean finish is exactly what you would like to see on your bathroom. Make sure your tile contractor understands that you don’t need your setup done with thinset on the edges that meet the wall.
Should you drive over bridges often — just like I do every day — you’ll see that bridges have expansion strips. Throughout summer time the bridge remains silent, since summer’s warmth has expanded the bridge’s concrete and also the expansion strips are pushed tight. But in winter, driving over precisely the exact same bridge seems quite different; the expansion strips are wider, and they click-clack as your tires struck them.
Designing tile floors to expand and contract follows a number of these same principles. Uncoupling membranes underneath floor tile can improve your floor’s flexibility. This photo shows a professional installing a Strata Mat uncoupling mechanism to accounts for floor motion that is minor.
Economy Interiors
Hearing a hollow sound when you’re walking across newly tiled floors could be the first signs of tile bond failure. This sound results from bad thinset coverage.
Inside this photo the flooring tile goes underneath the bathtub skirt. This is a good design which allows for movement on the floor tile.
Tip: Gently tapping tiles together with all the wooden handle of a rubber mallet will be able to help you find the hollow sound in which poor thinset coverage has happened.
All steam showers possess a modified thinset to account for quick thermal expansion. The effective heat and steam in steam showers require a thinset that can accommodate immediate expansion and contraction.
See more about creating a steam shower
Werner Construction Ltd..
Glass expands over several other building materials. Large panels such as these let in lots of sunshine and heat up the bathroom, increasing thermal expansion.
For an installation in this way, I would ensure that the corners of the shower stall had two layers of a waterproofing membrane. Products such as NobleSeal TS possess a thicker membrane that can take some compression in the corners.
Cercan Tile
With extremely large baths, expansion strips inlayed into the tile meeting are a must. In my view, any room larger than 15 feet in one direction should be using some sort of expansion strip and speciality thinsets and grouts to improve expansion and combat exhaustion.
More: 10 Best Tips for Getting Bathroom Tile Right