QUESTION

What does it mean when the ceramic tile or stone tile sounds hollow? How do you fix it? Can you inject epoxy under tiles? - I have new construction home the tile has been down app. 6 months. We are finding hollow sounding tiles all over the house, so far they have taken grout out of app. 5 tiles and injected something under tile. We now have more 9 tiles sounding hollow some right next to the ones they have fixed. also some cracking grout. Is this something that should be monitored or repaired, and if repaired how?Existing tile can not be matched for replacement.

ANSWER

ANSWER - Your tile should not sound hollow.  When some tiles sound hollow and others do not that suggests that some or all of your ceramic or stone tiles are not adequately bonded to its substrate below it.

If they are attempting to inject something under the tiles, then that suggests there are voids under the tiles where the tile is not bonded to its substrate.  I have inspected floors where others attempt this approach to try to bond floor tiles with an epoxy to flow under the tiles, but it never works.  The epoxy can't flow well enough to fill all the voids, so the tile still has too many voids and is not adequately bonded.

The fact that tiles adjacent to the previous tiles removed are not hollow suggest that even the tiles that sound solid probably are not well bonded too and with some degree of stress will also become debonded at some point.  If grout joints are starting to crack then that suggests that the tiles adjacent to those grout joints are loose to some degree.

Generally speaking when there is a problem it is never due to only one deficiency, but rather is due to compounding deficiencies.  An intrusive inspection needs to be performed to fully understand the problems and if they can be remediated or if it is necessary to replace the entire floor.

If you can't resolve your problem then you will have to investigate this yourself or hire a company like ours to investigate it for you.  We do have inspectors in Florida if you need our services.  For more information on our investigation services go to www.CTaSC.com.  Good luck.