QUESTION

Travertine Tile Cracking and Crystallizing - We had a water pipe break in our slab which I believe caused our travertine tile to crack and which now appears to be crystallizing. Is that possible?

This water under tile incident occurred 10 months ago, however the cracking/crystallization condition has recently manifested itself. What are your thoughts? Thank you.

ANSWER

ANSWER - Chances are that when the water pipe break occurred your travertine tile had voids under it so water was allowed to collect in those voids. This could have caused and perpetuated the development of efflorescence to collect in these voids. Efflorescence is a salt that dissolves in the water as it passes through concrete and then the salt solidifies and crystallizes when the water evaporates living the residual material. The cracking of the travertine could be non-related where the tile with voids happen to be subjected to a point load that results in cracking. Or maybe it is related to the water pipe break occurrence in that the stone expanded from being subjected to the moisture, and if there wasn't proper expansion joints to relieve the stress, the tile could have been subjected to enough stress to cause the cracking.

To determine what has caused the cracking would require performing an intrusive inspection to look for evidence as to what the cause of the cracking may be. The efflorescence condition would be verified as well. It may or may not be practical for you to pay for a forensic investigation to determine the cause of the problem. At this point, you want to make sure that the tile concrete substrate is dry and there is no other source of moisture. For more information forensic investigations go to our website at www.CTaSC.com. Good luck.