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Expert Answers
Is Epoxy Injecting Tiles a Reasonable Repair to a Loose and Hollow Tile Floor?
QUESTION
Is Epoxy Injecting Tiles a Reasonable Repair to a Loose and Hollow Tile Floor? - The tile installer came and looked at the issue of my hollow tiles and cracked and loose grout yesterday. My contractor said he will come and look at it tomorrow. The contractor said they are planning to inject an epoxy under the tiles (over 60 of the tiles seem to have hollow sounds and about 30 of those have the grout starting to come out) to fill the hollows on Monday. My contractor said this is the solution to this problem. Here is hoping he is right.Response to Answer below:
I know you haven't seen the job but we have gone through all the tiles and have found over 60 tiles with issues. About half of those have issues with the grout being cracked and loose (mostly in the high traffic areas). If the epoxy is a cosmetic fix then what do you do to fix it properly. Do we have them lift the affected tiles and re mortar underneath? I do want this fixed properly. I just want to know what I should be asking for from my contractor.
ANSWER
1st ANSWER - Trying to fix the problem by injecting epoxy to fill voids in hollow sounding areas of the tile and to stabilize loose tiles is treating the symptom rather than fixing the problems. I have seen this attempted many times, and it never fills all of the voids and never fixes the problem. It normally buys them more time hoping the problem goes away.2nd Answer to Second Responce Above: there is no way to know for sure the extent of the damage with an intrusive inspection, but if you have cracked grout that likely means that tiles are loose. It may or may not have anything to do with the tile bond to the substrate beneath it. It might be because the substrate under the tile is defective in some way. So injecting epoxy wouldn't help in that case.
There is a good chance that the tiles that are not hollow or loose now might become hollow and loose in the future because they might have the same underlying problem as the loose tiles.
The only way to know is to perform a forensic inspection by removing various tile under various conditions to see what the cause of the problem is, so the problem can be remediated rather than trying to remediate the symptom of the problem.
26 thoughts on “Is Epoxy Injecting Tiles a Reasonable Repair to a Loose and Hollow Tile Floor?”
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Hi Donato,
I have a suite that was just renovated & I hired a contractor that installed heated flooring & tiles. I dropped something on the floor and it sounded hollow. Then I decovered lots of tiles were hollow and I noticed some tiles were loose. Is there a way of determining how much of the 900 sq feet needs to be replaced? I tried to find more of the tiles but there is no more available. If 30 % of the tiles are bad, would you recommend I retile another tile on top of the old one or do I need to take out all my infloor heating and tiles & start all over again? The heated floors & tiles were just installed less than 2 weeks ago. Please advise, thank you for your help. Ann
Hollow sounding tile is not a defect. It might be a symptom of a defect, which may be your case since you have loose tiles. The only way to determine what needs replaced is to perform an intrusive inspection by a forensic expert like CTaSC. You might have a condition that can be repaired or it might be a systemic problem and all tiles will need repaired.
You don’t want to re-tile over tiles that are defective because then the new installation will be defective. You have properly repair the floor. You need to know why the first installation failed, so it doesn’t happen again.
We had a company come and inject an epoxy under 54 hollow tiles in our kitchen. after a week many were still hollow and the color seal is already coming out. The worst part is that we have carpet that butts up against the tile and it got under the carpet which is now as hard as a rock. Is there a solution to getting the carpet soft again.They are refusing to help so far. We paid them in full.
Injecting epoxy under hollow sounding floor tiles will never fill all of the voids or most of the voids under the tile, so it won’t eliminate the hollow sounding of the floor.
If you are lucky, the epoxy injection might stabilize the tiles to some degree if they are loose or not bonded well. That is only if they properly clean the underlying substrate and tile backs and inject the epoxy correctly. I haven’t seen this successfully done yet on floors.
Regarding the carpet that was affected by the epoxy, that portion of the carpet would need to be replaced. Hopefully they can match it and patch it.
Hi Donato,
A builder just did renovations for the bathrooms in my townhouse, he used epoxy filer for filling the tile for both bathrooms’ floor and wall, but someone told me the epoxy filer may cause cracking tile sometime in the future. is that happened from your previous experience?
Thanks
Kind regards
Edmund Zhuo
You used the phrase “epoxy filler” . If you mean that the tile installer used an epoxy adhesive to bond the tiles down, then that is ok. Epoxy has about 4 times more bond strength than a cementitious adhesive, and it does have some flexibility. So ask long as the tile was installed correctly it should not be a problem.
If you meant that the tile installer used a filler to patch the substrate before installing the tile that is not typical, but it should not be a problem as long as you use an epoxy to adhere to the epoxy surface.
I have removed several 12×12 ceramic tiles in a bathroom that were placed over a heated base. I don’t want to chip out all the old thinset and would like to use an adhesive such as construction grade Gorilla Glue or Sika Bond. Will either of these hold up over the years (the floor is 7 years old)?
Those products are not designed for installing ceramic tile, so there is no way to know for sure how well they will bond or last.
It is best to grind the thin-set down with a cup grinder and then use thin-set to bond it to the remaining thin-set mortar. An ASTM C920 sealant like 100% silicone is used to bond tile in some cases. There are epoxy adhesives for tile too.
Thanks for sharing this blog
Thank you for the information. We paid a contractor to lay a black glossy porcelain tile throughout the living room, stairs and walkway. A few months later. We notice the grout is cracking and falling out, the tiles are moving, creaking and shaking. Some of the tiles on the stairs have fallen off. The contractor refused to come back to take a look at the issues so we contacted a flooring specialist and he said there was no tile underlay used for the job. Do you think the tiles can be relayed in high traffic areas with underlay in the future? What can be done?
I’m assuming when you say no underlay was used that you mean they didn’t install a self-leveling underlayment or a plywood underlayment or some sort of uncoupling underlayment.
If that is the case then maybe the tiles were installed directly to the plywood or OSB subfloor and maybe there is too much deflection in the floor that has caused tiles to come loose?
Generally speaking when there is a failure it is never do to one deficiency, but rather due to multiple compounding deficiencies.
If the tiles come up easily maybe you can reuse them depending on how much adhesive is on the backs of the tile.
There is one way to inspect hollow tiles with a destructive test and that is with a infared camera. If there are voids caused by lack of setting mortar you should be able to see this with the infra red camera. First you will need to take a hair dryer and heat up the tile before using the camera. Any voided areas not touching the back of the tile will show up in the infa red camera. Of course this would need to be performed by a qualified stone and tile forensics expert
Fred we have been using infrared cameras for many years both for interior moisture investigations as well as for exterior veneers to try to non-destructively verify if the tile or stone has excessive voids.
It doesn’t work all of the time, and when it does it is only good for a relatively short period. Since the Infrared camera is measuring relative temperature the conditions have to be perfect. Normally it has to be early in the morning with the sun out so the surface of the stone is warming, but the backside of the stone hasn’t warmed up. In those conditions it can work great as you can see the spot bonding of a tile installation. Although once the differential temperature goes away it doesn’t show up. Heating an interior floor or wall with a hairdryer probably isn’t very practical if you are doing a large area, but under the right conditions it could work on an individual tile.
I have drummy tiles. Tiles have been down for 23 years and over last six years I’ve noticed that hollow sound in a few tiles just inside next to a wall and lots of the terracotta tiles outside. The other stories I’ve read here seem like problems with fairly new work done. Do you think the tile injection would work in my case?
I assume drummy tiles means that they should hollow.
If the tiles have not shown any type of failure then you probably shouldn’t try to do anything. Hollow sounds are not considered a defect per se, but often they can be a symptom of a defect. But to be a symptom of a defect you need resultant damages.
Sometimes tiles tent up (debond) due to the lack of movement joints and other contributing factors and will sound hollow. In those cases you need to replace the tiles and install movement joints.
Sometimes the tiles are installed in a spot bonded method where it leaves voids under the tile that give it a hollow sound. Although this condition might give the tile a propensity to crack or crush if subjected to a concentrated loan over the hollow spot, the tile could be well bonded.
In those cases you can use a flowable material to try to fill the voids under the tile. One product that I have seen work is called Fix-A-Floor. It is a latex flowable liquid. You have to drill holes into the grout on each side of the tile and if there isn’t thinset adhesive blocking the way, the liquid will flow under the tile and harden and fill the void. A big if….and a lot of work….
My kitchen floor was tiled in 2011 with 12 by 12 heavy duty ceramic tiles. The floor is holding up well with one exception. A single tile has started to move slightly when I step on one corner. I checked and just under half of the tile, running on a diagonal, is sounding hollow. The rest of the tiles in the area are solid. The grout is not compromised. There is no visual evidence. It’s hard to get the tile to move or make a noise, but I want to fix the problem before the tile cracks. I’ve read that drilling holes in the grout and then vacuuming out all of the dust from that process before introducing epoxy resin into the holes so it can work underneath the tile and stabilize it might be the way to go. I’d rather not try to lift out the tile. I read the suggestion for trying Fix-A-Floor in the comment above. Is that the best product for solving this problem?
I like the Fix-A-Floor product better because it is a latex based material and easier to work with and more flowable than an epoxy. Plus it is less expensive. This process doesn’t always work. I have seen where it hasn’t worked more often than seeing it work whether it is an epoxy or this latex product.
If when you drill the holes in the grout if the adhesive was applied in a manner where the voids are block by the thinset then the flowable material can never reach the void to fill it up. If you have an infrared camera and you first heat the tile up with hair drying in the morning when the tile is cold, you might be able to discern between where there are voids and where there are not voids as the camera is measure the difference in temperature. The voids should heat up faster than the thinset.
Will “Fix-A-Floor” work on loose wall tile? I have three tiles that move almost imperceptive but the grout around them has a thin crack.
No Fix-A-Floor and other like products are flowable liquids that are suppose to flow under the tile to fill voids. On a vertical wall it would only flow to the bottom of the wall.
You could cut out the grout and then re-grout it by forcing the grout into the grout joints that will hopefully ooze beneath the tile to fill any voids, which might then stabilize the tile.
Can fix a floor be used on tile installed on top of Ditra?
In theory yes, but then you have all of the cavities in the ditra that will get filled if they can reach those voids. The Fix-a-Floor only works if the voids are continuous so they can flow and reach them. If there is thinset in the way it will block it.
I was tempted to use quick fix floor remedy but after Donato’s explanations to all of you seem only way is old fashion way to call tile master and ask to get out hollow tile and put new one!
what is the average cost to have tiles injected with epoxy?
There is no average cost for trying to mitigate a tile deficiency by injecting epoxy or any other material. Every situation is different. There are many variables such as the size of the tile. The percentage of voids under the tile. The number of tiles needing treatment. What you have to do to protect surrounding tiles and furniture from dust and the epoxy itself. How long it will take you to do the work and how much material you have to buy.
To repair hollow tiles, do you recommend using a product like Fix-a-Floor or epoxy resin?
A hollow sounding tile doesn’t necessarily have voids under it that is causing the hollow sound. There are many reasons why the tile might sound hollow.
If the hollow sound is due to voids under the tile then injecting Fix-a-Floor or an epoxy resin may or may not work. Normally the injection is done through the adjacent grout joint. If the void is at the center of the tile the liquid may never reach it because you have the thinset adhesive blocking the path. If the voids are just at the edges and corners of the tile then it would be more effective at filling those voids.
I have seen this repair process work in one case, but have also seen it not work in many other cases. The Fix-a-Floor product is more flowable and easier to work with.