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A cracked tile is a symptom, not the fault

Tiles crack, sound hollow, lift or chip because something underneath them changed — the bond, the bed, or the way the floor moves. Swapping the tile without answering that repeats the failure, so a repair starts by reading the cause.

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ON THIS PAGE

01   Reading the cause before the cure

02   Repairing a sound floor without retiling it

03   Matching tiles when the batch is gone

04   How a repair runs, step by step

05   Questions we are asked on site

Repairs to floors, walls, wet areas and exteriors across Murrumbeena, Carnegie, Hughesdale, Oakleigh, Chadstone, Malvern East, Bentleigh East, Ormond and McKinnon.

CAUSE BEFORE CURE

Three questions asked before anything comes out

Cracked, drummy, lifting and chipped tiles look similar from standing height and behave very differently underneath. Each pattern of damage points at a different layer, and the repair is only as good as the layer it addresses.

THE TILE ITSELF

A chip from an impact, or a crack that begins and ends inside one tile, is usually just that tile. It is cut out at the joint, the bed is cleaned back to something sound, and a replacement is set flush with the plane of its neighbours.

THE ADHESIVE BOND

A hollow, drummy note means the tile has let go of the bed — patchy adhesive coverage, dust or laitance on the substrate, or a surface tiled before it was ready. Drummy tiles are lifted in whole sections and reset with full contact.

MOVEMENT BELOW

A crack running in a straight line across several tiles is structural. A flexing timber floor, a shrinking slab or a perimeter with no movement joint will crack whatever is fixed over it, twice.

Repairing a sound floor without retiling it

Most floors and walls that lose a few tiles are otherwise fine. Grout is cut out around the affected area first so the neighbouring tiles keep their edges, the damaged tiles are removed, and the bed beneath is cleaned, levelled and primed before anything is reset. Where several tiles in a row are drummy, it is faster and more durable to lift the whole run than to chase one tile at a time.

Matching is the part homeowners worry about. If spares were left in the garage or under the laundry trough, the job is straightforward. If the batch is long gone, options include taking tiles from a concealed area — inside a cupboard, beneath an appliance, behind a vanity — and using the sourced replacements where they cannot be read, or selecting a close current tile and setting it where the eye does not travel. Shade and calibration vary between batches even for the same tile, so the plan is agreed before a single one is lifted.
Sometimes a repair is the wrong answer. If the tiles in a shower are lifting because water is tracking behind them, the layer at fault is the membrane, not the tile — that is Leaking Shower Repairs. If the tiles are sound and only the joints have failed, Regrouting restores the surface for far less work. Where an entire floor is drummy or badly out of plane, relaying it as Floor Tiling is the honest recommendation, and oversized formats carry their own tolerances — see Large Format Tiling.
Worker wearing protective gloves uses an angle grinder to cut large stone or tile slabs outdoors, with dust and masonry tools nearby.
REFERENCE PHOTOGRAPH — a replacement tile cut to size before it is bedded into the opening.

HOW A REPAIR RUNS

Four stages, and the cause settles all of them

01

Look and listen

Tapping across the area to map what is drummy, checking joints, perimeters and wall-to-floor junctions, and reading which direction the cracks run.

02

Agree the scope

Which tiles come out, what will be used to replace them, and what happens if the cause proves to sit deeper than the surface suggests. Quoted in writing before work starts.

03

Remove and prepare

Grout cut out, tiles taken up without damaging their neighbours, old bed removed back to a sound, flat, primed surface, with dust contained and the rest of the room protected.

04

Reset and finish

Replacements bedded with full adhesive contact, levelled into the surrounding plane, grouted in a matched colour and, at junctions and corners, finished with fresh silicone rather than rigid grout.

QUESTIONS ASKED ON SITE

What a hollow tile actually tells you

Longer reading on the same subject: Cracked, Drummy or Lifting Tiles: Reading the Cause.

My tile sounds hollow but hasn't cracked — does it have to come up?

Not always. An isolated drummy tile in a low-traffic spot can be watched. A run of them in a hallway, a shower floor or under a door threshold will crack eventually, because every step flexes a tile that nothing is supporting.

Can you match a tile that hasn't been made for years?

Often, close enough that nobody finds it. Where an exact match no longer exists, tiles are usually borrowed from a hidden area and the substitutes placed out of sight. An honest view on how visible the result will be is given before the repair is booked.

The grout keeps cracking around one tile — is that a tile problem?

Usually it is movement telling on itself. Grout is brittle, so it fails first wherever two surfaces move independently. New grout alone will crack again in the same line — the fix is a flexible joint in the right place, and if the rest of the joints are tired at the same time, Regrouting is the sensible pairing.

Fix the layer, not just the tile

Describe what you are seeing — a hollow note underfoot, a chip beside the shower screen, a crack that runs across the hallway — and a repair scope can be worked out from there. Tile repairs are carried out across Murrumbeena, Carnegie, Hughesdale, Oakleigh, Chadstone, Malvern East, Bentleigh East, Ormond and McKinnon.

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RELATED IN THIS SECTION

05/11   Floor Tiling

06/11   Large Format Tiling

09/11   Regrouting

11/11   Leaking Shower Repairs

Further reading: When new grout fixes it  ·  Tile preparation  ·  All services