Cracked Tile

fast pasquale

So im helping my neighbor he cracked a porcelain tile. I used a grinder to cut and X in the tile..well my problem is i cut too deep and we had to remove the durarock too. Now it's just plywood. So im going to screw down a seperate piece of durarock (12 inchx 12 inch) to the plywood sub and then thinset the porcelain to the durarock.. is this acceptable. My concern is that the durarock is now independent fromt the rest of the mortar board..Am i missing any step.. I basically don't want the grout to crack. What do i know i refinish hardwood floors?? Thanks!!

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Chris Frate
Pasquale Floors

Forry

Might be good to have thinset under the durock too, thats a pretty small piece of backer.... I wouldn't give your neighbor any kind of guaranty on this... Any idea why the tile cracked in the first place? Could you tell how well the durock was installed in the first place? How many fasteners did you pull? Just curious I guess...

fast pasquale

Sure... they dropped a pan on the tile. There were only 4 screws on the 12x12 tile. There also was no thinset sandwiching the plywood to the durarock.

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Chris Frate
Pasquale Floors

Forry

Might not have cracked if the durock was mortared down like its supposed to be... the thinset eliminates hollow spots under the backer. Sometimes the screws will actually lift the backer off the subfloor, and it'll "float". Probably best to fix it as good as possible, and hope for the best... modified grout will help some too, but it might crack later.

Mike Finley

Personally, I don't see the big deal here. Slap some thinset on the sub floor, slap a piece of tile underlayment down, screw it down, back butter some thinset on the tile and stick the tile in place. Grout and be done. This is really nothing to be worried about.

If this tile is going to give him problems later it would mean that the entire floor has issues because of the original installation and of course then this tile is the least of the problems.

fast pasquale

That's what i did. And that's what i wanted to hear. Just double checkin'.

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Chris Frate
Pasquale Floors