large crack in grout on wall tiles

[scraggy]

Hi all

just paid to have a shower enclosure tiled out using 6mm ceramic wall tiles, bonded using fast set flexible wall & floor tile addy and finished using flexible BAL grout. now found a very large crack in the grout line running from the top tile about 2/3rds the way straight down the wall

the tiler used is now saying that the wall system is to blame not him.....the walls are a metal track gyp line system, the shower cubicle area had been skinned with 12.5mm WBP ply which the tiler primed with SBR prior to tiling. if there was any doubt as the suitability i would have expected the tiler to say something BEFORE starting the work and not blaming it afterwards.....

he has said he will dig the grout out of the crack and regrout, as it maybe simply the walls "settling". all this seems a little BS to me, if there is a crack now then i suspect it is likely the crack will appear again in the future.....

without going to the extreme of ripping all off the wall and wasting hundreds of pounds, is there anything else that can be done????

cheers

scraggy

[philprime]

Ply is not the best meterial to use for a backing for wall tiles it's ok for floors

I would have used aquapanel for the shower

Regrouting may solve the problem how long ago with the shower tiled???

[haveagohero]

How did he fix the tiles? Sounds like it might have been dot and dabbed (blob of adhesive at each corner and one in the middle. The adhesive and grout are fine, ply isn't the best substrate for wall tiling but if it was primed with SBR it should be okay. Did he leave a 3mm expansion gap at internal corners, ceiling and floor and did he then finish these with silicone or grout? if no expansion gaps were left it could be an expansion issue. Where ws the ply kept before being put on the wall and how long was it on the wall before being tiled? was the adhesive completely dry before being tiled? is there any underfloor heating?

Cracks in grout are usually a sign that something is moving, so you now have to find out what is moving. I would say you will be lucky if it is a simple fix. Try raking out the grout and re grouting the cracked area, make sure you do not use the shower while the grout is cracked and do not use the shower for 48hrs after it is re grouted. Check the expansion gaps are present and have been siliconed and not grouted, if they are present but grouted then rake the grout out completely and silicone them.

Any tradesman has a duty of care to his client, if he knows the materials that were supplied were wrong he has not fulfilled his obligation to you in that respect. Just getting on with it because you were told to do so is not good enough and any decent tradesman would have raised his concerns with you and if the substrate was not changed for something more appropriate he should have walked away. But what about the guys that put the ply up? have you raised your concerns with them?

[transitboy]

philprime. Right he should have voiced concerns ,but he did not build the wall. Obviously there is movement for the grout to crack,did he put any additive in the flexi grout?. Which if I am tiling on wood I normally do, also IMO 12mm ply is to thin IMO. Did who ever built the wall,join the ply or is it a complete sheet, if it is join, theN does that line up with the crack in the grout ? Its to late now but the ply should have been prime both sides before fitting

[scraggy]

thanks for the replies.

the ply was fixed to the wall for about a week before the tiling began. I have no idea if the tiler used dot and dab or a continous bed type application, i presume that the continous bed would be the better approach rather than dot and dab. I am not sure where the ply was prior to fitting as the guys installing the dry lined wall system brought it in and fitted it. I did explain that it would be tiled over once installed.
The perimeter of the tiling has been grouted and not back filled with silicon sealant.
Crack appeared the day after grouting.
Addy used was fast drying and was left overnight before grouting, i assume this was a long enough amount of time?
One thing I did notice was the amount of addy the guy used, the shower cubicle walls that were tiled are 1.5x2.5m and 2x2.5m - he used 2 x 20kg bags of addy to put these tiles up.......
the ply on the wall in question was in two pieces, i cannot be sure that the crack lines up with the seam but it seems more than likely.

Transitboy - which additive would you use with the Bal flexible grout??

The issue i have, again, is with the lack of feedback from the trades. If the option of ply was incorrect, after searching on the net seems that ply is often used so tiles can be removed later without damaging the walls, then I would have really expected both the guys installing the wall and the tiler to have raised this. Now i have a situation where the wall installers will blame the tilers and he them. Not sure is see the point of paying for professionals to undertake the task if I have to do all the work for them !!!

[transitboy]

I normally use Weber ,but as yours is Bal you would need Bal GT1.I use it just because I am a belt and braces person

[royaloakcarpentry]

Nothing wrong with stud and track for a wall. Nothing wrong with using ply for the wall, in theory! In practice it needs sealing back and edges before installing it and there is an added bonus that it needs to be quality Far Eastern ply and not the cheap tat that is available which delaminates easily. By the way, using ply will not mean the wall will not suffer damage if the tiles are pulled off at a later date. Pulling tiles that have been set onto cement based adhesive will indeed cause delamination of the board in quite a few areas. Especially when cleaning off the adhesive to apply new tiles. You can get tiles off plasterboard without any damage depending on the adhesive used and standard of workmanship.

Nothing wrong with 6mm ceramics being put up with rapid set adhesive and these could have been tiled 3 hours after completion. So waiting until next day is perfectly sufficient. The amount of adhesive is also correct. You aren't doing that with one bag.

Ultimately the tiler has deemed the surfaces appropriate for tiling. Therefore he shoulders some of the blame even if his work is spot on. Part of his job is to evaluate what he is tiling to and if unhappy about it show his concerns. Personally speaking, in my case, even to the point of refusing to do it.

Luckily the crack is up the grout line and raking out and applying again, may sort it.



I obviously don't know how the overall work was done. metal stud does have a lot of flex in it before being boarded. You board one side and the flex reduces. You board the over side with the joints in line with the previously boarded side and the flex reduces down again. However, boarding a metal stud walls with corresponding board joints on both sides is incorrect and still leaves some flex in the wall. The correct way to board is to have the joints staggered on both sides of the wall and this is the strongest way of doing it. You also want to screw about every 200mm or so. I think British Gypsum standard is 250mm.

It could be that the wall seemed fine to the tiler, taking the above paragraph into account. If he chose the materials for fixing and has done a good job, then I would certainly trust what he has told you.

[m3 fitter]

Agree, the suitability of a substrate is at the tilers discretion, and if doubt, state how to obtain a suitable substrate, difficult to express an opinion, unless stripped to evaluate the problem, when a project goes awry, the blame game starts..
try regrouting to start...

[scraggy]

cheers to all for replies.

clearly the subject is more complex than i realised !!!

The line has been raked and regrouted.......so far no return of the crack (5 days and counting....) so fingers crossed all is well.