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Friend whose house is single story on concrete slab has white 12" tiles in front/rear hall, kitchen/breakfast area and her 3 bathrooms...tiles in one area of the kitchen--at the end of the kitchen bar and in other area started popping up yesterday...
She was there with her two grandkids and they heard the noise--couple of times--didn't know what it was at first then saw the tiles were loose--couple of them popped w/o cracking but some others did crack--
Could lift them up off floor...
Her son in law who has built commercial and residential came over and walked around the outside checking the foundation line and looked in the house but they didn't see any obvious cracks outside or inside.
He has someone coming tomorrow with moisture meter to check the slab for moisture but the concrete under the loose tiles seemed dry when they looked/felt there...
This is in DFW TX metroplex--there have been some small earthquakes in the general area in past years but she said there were none reported in the news recently...the soil is a clay and houses can have foundation issues....her house is about 15-16 yrs old...they had it built by local builder w/good reputation--not large tract developer like Drees...she also has a gunite pool original to house construction and she had it checked last year and there were no leaks...her son in law checked the water meter and didn't see any reason to think there was slab leak but having that guy come to check for moisture tomorrow...
Any ideas/suggestions for why this might be happening?
She will have to replace lot of tile because it flows and is visible from several areas at same time--
Will be expensive--
I know she is dreading the expense--
We had/have a similar issue in our house (even on one tile countertop). Our house is 18 years old with overall very solid construction. The 'hollow' tiles appeared after about 7-8 years on the countertop, with tiles actually lifting off, and a few years later on the floor. We had a few cracked tiles replaced recently (fortunately still have extras), one bathroom completely retiled and the countertop was replaced with granite at the time.
The contractor we used to replace the countertop 10 years ago, and also recently did the floors, gave me two possible causes. When he replaced the countertop, he said he thought that the installer probably covered the entire counter with thinset and then set the tiles. Our tiles came off at one end of the counter and the thinset may have already started drying before the tiles were set. As a result, they did not adhere properly. Recently, he said that the same thing may have happened on the floor because the loose tiles were mostly along the wall edge and at the cabinet edge and much less so in the middle of the floors. We're in the high desert, so things dry here pretty quickly. When he sets tiles, he mortars only 1-2 tiles at a time. This problem would have been exacerbated if the installer was using a quick set mortar, which completely dries within a few hours.
We also have radiant heat in the floor. He said that if the builder turned the heat on before the thinset completely dried (3-4 weeks), that may have also caused the tiles to not adhere properly.
We still have a few hollow tiles, but we are using our stash of extras judiciously because we don't have many left and the tile is no longer manufactured. I'll test our contractor's installation theories, as he also replaced about 1,600 sq ft of carpeting with tile.
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