QUESTION

What are the Standards for Acceptable Tile Lippage?

Hi - I have recently had 1000 sq ft of tile installed and am concerned about the lippage. It is a glazed porcelain tile. I'm not sure how to proceed if the installer does not agree with my assertion that the install is not up to ansi standards.

ANSWER

ANSWER - There is a lot of confusion about what is acceptable tile lippage and what isn’t. I will be preparing an article on this topic soon. There are quantitative industry standards for what is acceptable lippage for ceramic tile. You have a wood look glazed porcelain tile that is 6x24 inches. The daltile data sheet does say that you can have as small of a grout joint as 3/16” wide. That suggest that it should not be smaller than that. The data sheet doesn’t indicate whether it is a rectified tile, meaning the tile is more precise in its sizing tolerances, so I assume it is a calibrated tile with more allowable warpage. The standards state that a tile with a grout joint that is less than ¼” wide can have 1/32” of lippage in addition of what the actual warpage is of the tile being installed. This is assuming that the warpage of the tile is within the standard’s acceptable range for that type of tile. The standards also says that if your have an off-set tile pattern (staggered from each other) that the staggered tile can’t be off-set more than 1/3 of the length of the tile if one of the tile edges is greater than 15”. It also says that this type of tile pattern needs to have at least a 3/16” wide grout joint, and that the grout joint width needs to be increased from 3/16” by the amount of warpage that the tile has along the long side of that tile. So your tile probably should have at least a ¼” wide grout joint. The allowable lippage should be at least 1/16”. From a standard of care point of view, I would say that the lippage should not be greater than 1/16” at the most for this type of installation. The contributing factors to what causes tile lippage are how much warpage the tile has, the width of the grout, how flat the tile substrate is prepared, and the quality of the tile installers’ work. We do inspections and write reports about these types of issues, but it may or may not be practical for you to use our services. Assuming you are within a couple of hours of one of our inspectors it could cost $3,000 or more to perform the inspection and prepare a professional report. With our report and testimony, assuming it is favorable for you, you can use that in litigation to persuade the judgment to be in your favor. Visit our website for more information on inspection services at www.CTaSC.com.