I live in western NC and have a client with a roofed, tiled deck. The tile is comming loose in some areas and the grout is cracking and flacking out. The deck has five quarter decking down with one quarter durock cement board on top. The tile contractor did not put any glue or morter under the durock. I had to temp, support the deck to build a wall under it. The tile had been installed just two mounths before. The cracks appered soon after I built my wall and the owner is trying to blame me. Is this justified, or has the tile contractor not done his work properly?
Edited 12/11/2007 9:45 am ET by getten to it
Replies
WTB.. poor base structure..
the deck is flexing...
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming
WOW!!! What a Ride!
Forget the primal scream, just ROAR!!!
Ditto what IMERC said.
Seat of the pants engineering: I don't think the 5/4 decking is rigid enough to tile over directly (the cement board does not count on a structural basis).
The 5/4 deck boards function as independent entities when weighted by foot traffic unlike plywood which will spread the weight over a larger area of floor.
I would ask the same question at JohnBridge.com - tile advice aplenty.
Once you have a more definitive answer - you still need to convince the HO that the cracking is not totally your fault - although you may have contributed to it with the temp support which you did do.
I believe the only way to really "prove" if the tile / grout cracking is due to initial installation problems or whether due to your temp support is to wait and see what happens in a few more months of use. If more tiles continue to loosen and more cracks appear - points toward faulty installation. If no further cracking / loosening - you did it when you built the new wall.
I think you are between the proverbial "rock and hard place". If the tile had been in place for a longer period with no cracks - then I would say that you did it with the wall building activities.
Good luck.
Jim
"I had to temp, support the deck to build a wall under it. The tile had been installed just two mounths before. The cracks appered soon after I built my wall and the owner is trying to blame me. Is this justified, or has the tile contractor not done his work properly?"
The fact that you built a temp. wall means you had a load-bearing situation. If you were just building a partition wall, i.e. non-load bearing, then you might have been OK, but there wouldn't have been a need to build a temp. wall for a non-bearing situation, you should have known there might be problems when jacking a floor system like this and warned the HO before going forward with the wall installation, especially if you suspected the tile install was defective or insufficient. Sorry, but sounds to me like you're on the hook for the tile damage.
Geoff
I don't think you're on the hook for anything being it is a suspect installation prior to you arrival in the picture.
Work the angle that the deck structure & 5/4 decking was insufficient for the deck in the 1st place. Get in touch with the tile mfg and talk to them re: this specific install.
You threw bandaid on it and are suppsoed to take the fall for it all? I don't think so.