Your beautiful tile can stop looking elegant if it cracks or lifts. With the money you invest on your tile floors, you really would want to know whether it has been installed properly or not!
Therefore, if you notice a crack appear in your impressive-looking tile, it can indeed be heart-shattering.
Tile-cracking is an actual problem for many homeowners. And it surely can be a headache for many as well.
Therefore, in this article, I’ll tell you all the ins and outs of what causes these cracks and the possible solutions for this.
So, read till the end to know all the details.
What Causes Tile Floor Cracks?
Tile fractures or cracks can occur simply because of heavy objects falling onto your floors, but often, cracked tile results from poor installation or due to lack of care.
It doesn’t matter whether you live in a new home or remodeling; if you don’t look after your tiles, it can occur for various reasons.
Here, in this section, I’ll be telling you all the reasons why your tiles get cracked in the first place.
The most common reasons are:
Improper Subfloor Preparation
You simply can’t expect anything to stand firm without a proper foundation, and the subfloors of your home are the base for your tile. Without good subfloor construction, your tiles might crack. These happenings can occur because the subfloors are either left uneven or even dirt and large debris are still covering its surface as the tile is laid.
Concrete Settlement
Concrete is permeable to water. So it absorbs the water and starts to expand and also contract depending on the temperature changes. Although tile might be rigid, this continuous expansion and contraction make the tiles weak. Hence, they tend to crack.
Control Joint Installation
As concrete is prone to cracking, it’s poured with premade cracks called control joints. These joints help to keep any potential cracks or fractures from spreading across the whole foundation. The mechanism is such that once a crack hits the control joint, it will immediately be stopped. This also helps the homeowners to see any kind of cracked marks on their tiles.
Improper-Sized Expansion Joints
Have you ever thought about why your tiles have spacing filled with grout?
-The answer is these expansion joints are mainly left to allow for them to shift and move. As tile is very rigid, it indeed needs enough space to move as the underlying concrete shifts.
If these expansion joints are pretty small and these tiles are placed closely together, then the tiles won’t have enough room to move and can easily crack or fracture as the subfloor shifts.
Extensive Mold Growth
Mold indeed has many detrimental effects on a home, and one of those vicious effects might be your cracked tiles.
Moisture can easily seep its way into your grout, which can promote mold to grow. If that mold continues sprouting, it can surely make its way under your tiles, causing them to lift and crack.
Preventing Your Tile Cracks
You can already see that the majority of your tile cracks occur due to imperfect installation.
This is the reason what makes you hire a skilled tile professional to increase the lifespan of your elegant-looking tiles.
Tile experts know all the nuts and bolts to prepare the perfect space for your tiles and install them accordingly to prevent fracture and cracks.
Pre-Installation Prevention
The best way to prevent your tile floors from fractures and cracks is appropriately preparing your surface before the installation procedure.
To begin with, you can always call a professional to even out the subfloor. This can be done in various ways, but one of the most common ways to use a leveler or install plywood.
After the floor has been leveled and all the procedures are completed, you need to thoroughly clean your floors using a vacuum cleaner to suck up all the dirt and debris from its surface.
But you shouldn’t stop there; go for mopping and scrubbing as well. Make sure you remember that any type of remains like debris or dirt can cause the formation of cracks on your tiles.
Never apply tile directly to cement or plywood, no matter how clean it might seem. You should always ensure that there has already been an anti-fracture membrane between your tiles and the subfloor.
The anti-fracture membranes are specially designed to absorb any cracking energy and spread it across a larger floor area. This mechanism keeps all the pressure off in a single tile. Hence, preventing any kind of cracking.
Post-Installation Prevention
Once your tile has adequately installed the entire tiling procedure by professional, proper care, maintenance, and cleaning can indeed expand its life.
Keeping it away from developing cracks and other issues are going to be your target. A professional tile and grout cleaning can surely help with this.
Ensure you have a professional to remove mold, cracks and restore your broken tiles or grout. All these will surely make your floor stay strong and last longer.
You should even clean your tile and grouts regularly to avoid mold growth and prevent it’s from spreading and lifting your tiles. You can consider sealing your grout to protect the pores as well.
I hope this article will help you know all the ins and outs of how you can prevent your tiles from cracking.