Damaged victorian mosaic tile help

[rarara]

Hi, I have a tiled communal area, an example here

Untitled

• rarara
• 13 Jul 2012
• 1

which is over a concrete floor. There are a couple of problems with it:

1) loose tiles. I prised one up and can see the concrete has a small crack (the has been some settlement over the years)

2) some tiles with damaged edges

I want to try and fix the problem tiles before they get worse, so my questions are:

a) what sort of adhesive should I use to replace the wobbly ones. I'd imagine it would need to be fairly 'thin' as the tiles have no space between and below

b) are these tiles easy to lift? for the damaged ones I thought about removing some undmaged ones from the less walked on areas and swapping. do they tend to come off intact with a little persuasion?

c) they are 11cm wide, and in a traditional glasgow tenament. where sells replacements??

thanks

 

[Symptoms]

ra - back when I was converting old houses in London to flats and apartments we often had this problem. Do a survey to discover just how many are loose by gently tapping with a metal rod (a 6" nail will do) and listen for hollow and solid reports.

If the problem is widespread then you'll have to lift the lot and re-lay ... take photos of pattern before you lift and a rubbing (a bit like a brass rubbing). Each tile back and edges need to be cleared of old adhesive and this is best done with a cutting action using a Stanley knife, The adhesive will be very, very hard but should come away with a 'potato pealing action' of the knife. Wash the tiles with a mild detergent solution.

Ditto the above with a few loose ones. Then clean and smooth the concrete area below to few loose ones.

Lift the tiles starting with an edge of a loose one with a thinish blade BELOW and work outwards, they should lift easily as after a 100 years all that's really holding them down is the gravity.

Check your local salvage yards for spares or google Victorian tiles as there are suppliers of repro tackle that might match. Most decent tile merchants supply ranges of repro stuff.

Use a decent, cement based adhesive from Bal or similar.