Warm water heating or under the floor heating has been widely used since the last decade. It provides underground heat to your ground and makes it much more bearable to walk. Unlike radiators, UFH has several benefits. For starters, it has a lower max temperature and does not make the floor too hot. With UFH, you are just using renewable energy. Thus you contribute to making the environment greener. But it is ridden with a major problem of cracking the tiles just within a few weeks of installation. In this article, we will examine why that happens and how it can be solved.
Surface
The most common cause of your tiles cracking is the floor itself. A rigid or uneven floor can crack your tiles when the water flows below the surface. There have been cases where tiles were put on the screed and cracks appear just within a week of turning the system on. Although the cracks are small they are enough to crack the tile completely with time. This is more of a problem with the granite tiles. Normally these issues appear due to a poorly designed screed or a badly implemented UFH system.
The key to a perfectly working UFH system is to create a perfect floor. The floor should be flat. It should not be textured and must be smooth. This makes it stable enough to hold the tiles properly when laid on the screed. If the floor has any kind of issues, it can turn into even bigger issues when you turn the UFH on. When things get worse, it finally ends up breaking the tiles.
Screed
Another problem is the screed tile inconsistency. Screed and tiles expand with temperature but at a different rate. This happens especially when they are installed anew. This causes tension between the screed and the tiles resulting in cracking. Tap here for high-quality kitchen tiles in London.
The UFH system
One major issue is the weakening of the grout or the adhesive itself. This happens when the UFH is turned on too soon. When tiles are installed newly, the adhesive needs to be cured for some time. If you turn the UFH too soon, it will make the adhesive dry. This won’t allow more time for the adhesive to cure and can result in cracking the tiles.
Solution
Cracking issues can be easily resolved. First, keep the maximum temperature to 35. Do not attempt to turn on the UFH system immediately after installing new tiles. Give the adhesive at least 7 days to cure and then turn on the UFH. Even then do not turn the system on at full temperature. First, keep the temperatures low. Each day slowly increase the temperature to make sure that your tiles don’t break. This ensures that you have a perfectly tiled floor with just the right temperature without having to worry about any kind of cracking.
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