LESLIE: Richard in Florida, you’ve got The Money Pit. How can we help you today?
RICHARD: I have a home in Florida. It’s a slab home built about eight years ago and it’s got about 1,500 square feet of ceramic tile down on the floor.
TOM: OK.
RICHARD: And that tile is broken loose from the slab. The grout hasn’t been broken out but everything seems to be, in a number of areas, floating and I don’t know what to do and I don’t know if I can tear it out and put wood over it or if there’s something going on that I don’t understand.
TOM: Well, depends on how it was put down to begin with but it sounds to me like this is an adhesion issue. And how much of this floor is loose, would you say? Is it five percent, ten percent, one percent? What?
RICHARD: Well, when it started three years ago, started that happening, I’d say it was about one percent. Right now I’d say it’s up to about 20 percent.
TOM: Oh well, at this point you’re going to have to take that tile out, I think. I think you’re going to end up taking it out and starting from scratch and using a good-quality adhesive to put the new tile down. I don’t think this is a problem that should repeat itself if the tile was installed right to begin with but it sounds to me like it wasn’t and that’s why it’s loosening up. I mean you could continue to try to reattach the loose stuff but by the time you get one section done, another section is going to loosen up again.
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