What are these Shadow Needle Shapes on my Porcelain tile?
2 thoughts on “What are these Shadow Needle Shapes on my Porcelain tile?”
Angie Bates says:
We had a custom marble shower constructed. We had two enclosure walls constructed that are 7′ tall come out 2′ then curve down to 4′ tall then curve into the shower at the threshold.
They used bullnose trim tile on the outside curve where the wall and shower floor meet. On both walls the tile has pulled away from the wall leaving the grout behind along the sided of the tile. The tile buldged out and cracked in the middle of the tile. The crack is continuing through adjacent tiles.
We also noticed you can scratch the grout out through out the shower.
This shower has never been used because it was never finished. Could this be caused by the construction of the wall or tile installation?
Is it normal to have pieces of tile smaller than a pea installed?
First of all, it is never normal or acceptable to have a failed tile installation.
If the tile has pulled away from the wall then there is some structural issues in terms of the framing of the wall not being properly constructed. Generally speaking when there is a failure like this it isn’t due to one single factor, but rather due to multiple compounding deficiencies.
The wall might have been in designed and/or constructed incorrectly. The installer may have contributed to the problem by not making sure the substrate was properly prepared and/or the installer was some blame for poor workmanship. The grout should not be soft, which could be due to the grout itself, or in how the grout was mixed and installed.
All of the problems you see are symptoms of underlying problems and deficiencies. If you only treat the symptoms that doesn’t correct the underlying problem, which means it could reoccur.
Based on your description, this is too complex of a problem for you or your installer to determine how to repair it or replace it so it doesn’t reoccur. You need to hire a company like CTaSC who has forensic investigators near most major cities in USA and who are tile experts. You can get more information on the CTaSC Services by clicking on the following link: https://ctasc.com/ctasc-services/forensic-failure-investigations/.
We had a custom marble shower constructed. We had two enclosure walls constructed that are 7′ tall come out 2′ then curve down to 4′ tall then curve into the shower at the threshold.
They used bullnose trim tile on the outside curve where the wall and shower floor meet. On both walls the tile has pulled away from the wall leaving the grout behind along the sided of the tile. The tile buldged out and cracked in the middle of the tile. The crack is continuing through adjacent tiles.
We also noticed you can scratch the grout out through out the shower.
This shower has never been used because it was never finished. Could this be caused by the construction of the wall or tile installation?
Is it normal to have pieces of tile smaller than a pea installed?
First of all, it is never normal or acceptable to have a failed tile installation.
If the tile has pulled away from the wall then there is some structural issues in terms of the framing of the wall not being properly constructed. Generally speaking when there is a failure like this it isn’t due to one single factor, but rather due to multiple compounding deficiencies.
The wall might have been in designed and/or constructed incorrectly. The installer may have contributed to the problem by not making sure the substrate was properly prepared and/or the installer was some blame for poor workmanship. The grout should not be soft, which could be due to the grout itself, or in how the grout was mixed and installed.
All of the problems you see are symptoms of underlying problems and deficiencies. If you only treat the symptoms that doesn’t correct the underlying problem, which means it could reoccur.
Based on your description, this is too complex of a problem for you or your installer to determine how to repair it or replace it so it doesn’t reoccur. You need to hire a company like CTaSC who has forensic investigators near most major cities in USA and who are tile experts. You can get more information on the CTaSC Services by clicking on the following link: https://ctasc.com/ctasc-services/forensic-failure-investigations/.