Have you stared at cracked grout lines on your kitchen or bathroom floors for years? Maybe you have tried to repair these grout lines and not just a month later your grout has cracked again! What is going on?
Simply put you have Loose or Hollow Tiles!
Loose tiles occur because the mortar that was used underneath your tile floors has dried up. Or maybe you had a poor installation with improper floor preparation prior to the tile installation. Common mistakes are laying the tile floor over the wood subfloor or linoleum with no proper backerboard and only apply mortar to the actual subfloor and not to the subfloor and tile as well.
The proper way to repair this problem is to remove the grout around these tiles which will then release the loose tiles intact. The loose tiles can then be cleaned along with the subfloor and you can install a thin mesh membrane over the subfloor prior to re-installing the tiles. For maximum tile strength, the best grout to use is an epoxy grout.
But what if your tiles are not completely loose and maybe are hollow only in the corners?
Do not try to remove a tile that is only hollow in the corner. You will break it.
Hollow tiles are repaired by a grout restoration professional using a rebinding adhesive that will solidify the tile corner back to the subfloor without removing the tile. Talk about a money saving solution. You do not have to go through the expense of costly complete tile replacement.
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