Repair

An echoing, hollow sound coming from your floor is a sign of loose or improperly installed tiles. Hollow tiles are not a home-threatening problem, but could eventually lift, crack, break and look bad. Hollow tiles are sometimes related to other problems, like loose adhesion to sub flooring or bad grouting.

When your floor tiles lift from their original position and start pushing other tiles against one another, it creates a ‘tent-like’ bump in your floor. This is known as buckled tiles. This is also known as pop up tiles or tile tenting. Buckled tiles may appear in all types of tiles, i.e. ceramic tiles, porcelain tiles, etc. if proper care is not taken. The perfectly flat floor may buckle up in the different season due to temperature variations, improper installation of tiles, etc.

Over time the concrete underneath the tile expands and pressure can cause the tiles to buckle if there is not enough expansion room for the tiles.  If a floor was poorly installed or has a lot of lippage in the tiles, then this could also cause the floor to become hollow and not have the bed of thinset applied properly across the floor.  If the tile floor was installed with incorrect or lack of material, it could cause the floor to become loose over time and start to lift.

A good way to detect if your floor has any hollow tiles or problem areas is to first inspect the grout. Usually hollow tiles move when stepped on and the grout in between the joints starts to crack or chip away. 

By using a wooden stick or pole, one can usually detect if there are any hollow tiles. Simply tap the tiles and listen for a higher pitched sound.

Our team can repair your hollow tiles without lifting up your whole floor or making a huge mess. We drill small holes into the grout and inject a bonding agent underneath the floor, to glue the tiles back down to the subflooring. Lastly, we always make sure not to leave a mess behind. This injection process has saved countless floors from the dust and mess of replacing an entire floor. We can also repair broken tiles, as long as the customer has spare tiles.