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How to repair tiles on shower floor?

I was so happy with the outcome of advice that I received here recently rom Bunnings staffer, Eric, that I am going to try my luck again. 🙂 Again, this relates to ongoing maintenance and repairs on my forty year old home.

Our shower enclosure floor comprises small ceramic tiles on a copper ( I think) shower tray and grouted. Between the tiles and the shower tray itself, there is some sort of material (maybe a cement based material) that has been formed to provide a slope for water to flow into the centrally placed floor waste. Over the years a lot of the tiles - about 1/3 of the floor area in the shower enclosure - have come loose. About seven years ago, I repaired the same problem by pulling out the affected tiles and cleaning them off and re-cementing them into place and them re-grouting them. That worked well for a fair while but eventually the problem re-emerged.

So I want to do the job again. Any advice, please, of techniques and materials required?

The tiles that have come loose are on the side of the shower floor where the wall mounted shower head is. So, I guess that they get a lot more regular dampness on that side

Many thanks in anticipation of any advice on this topic.

There is no water leakage from the the shower tray as observed in the garage under the house. So at least that is sound.

However, I reckon that after years of soapy water falling on the tiles, they will need a good scrub in the underside with wire brushes and also I suspect that the floor under the tiles will also need a good wire brushing. Maybe I need to scrape back a lot of the old sloping material to ensure that the surface is not still contaminated with soap residue, thus making it very tricky to re-glue the old tiles.

I suppose what I hope for is that there is some sort of glue that will be effective in gluing down tiles that have endured years of soap scum .

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KatieC

Hi @Claudeduck,

I am so pleased to read @EricL was able to help you! He is pretty awesome and will be online later this afternoon to assist with tackling your shower floor. Let me tag in some great Workshop members who have knowledge on bathrooms that may be able to lend you their advice @Ari, @MikeTNZ, and @redbournreno. Do you have a photo you can share with us of your shower base and the tiles?

Katie

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KatieC

Hi @Claudeduck,

Katie

EricL

Hello @Claudeduck

In order for us to assess the severity of the soap scum build up, would it be possible for you to post a photo of the damaged area. This will also help us determine how much of the area needs to be re-tiled.

In these re-tiling situations, it's important to clean and prepare the tile base as best as possible. This will provide a good anchoring point for the tile adhesive such as Dunlop 2kg Tile-All Tile Adhesive. This adhesive works in damp wet environments and has excellent holding characteristics.

The key to a long-lasting tile repair is to seal the grout with Betta TileCare 500ml Tile And Grout Sealer With Wheel Applicator or similar. Sealing the grout line will prevent water from penetrating and settling in the grout itself.

We look forward to seeing photos of your tiled shower.

Eric

Claudeduck

Many thanks, Eric! You are indeed a gem! What a great resource this website is!

The good news is that when I started to remove the loose and damaged tiles this morning, I discovered that the damage was not as severe as I thought. As mentioned previously, I had replaced the tiles in that spot about seven years ago and at that time about 1/3 of the floor needed top be cleaned out and re-glued and re-grouted. However, as the photos show, this time, it is only a few tiles. So the bulk of the work that I did seven years ago has held firm.

The offending area is in direct line with the shower head o the wall and so, I suspect that the direct path gets more water passing over it than the rest of the shower floor and gets really soggy underneath the tiles.

Nonetheless, it is pretty soggy where they have come unstuck. So I am about to chisel out the loose, rubbery, old adhesive which has come away from the tiles, mop up excess water with rags and let a small fan heater dry it out as best as possible today before taking a wire brush to get down to as solid a base as I can.

I shall then be going to Bunnings to get the products that you have recommended. I have learned to absolutely trust your recommendations.

Clearly, there are other areas needing a tidy-up such as the grouting around the edges where the wall tiles start and shall do that after fixing theBefore removing the tilesAfter removing the tiles floor tiles.

Claudeduck

Alas, having scraped off the old adhesive with a chisel, I find that there is a crack and voids in the sub-base where the affected tiles were.

Worse, it is so wet under that area that putting a foot on top of the area to the right produces movement of the tiles and produces water coming up through the crack. As I have said previously, there is no leakage under the house so the copper tray underneath is still sound. I currently have a small oscillating floor heater operating in the shower trying to dry it out but clearly, with water underneath, that is going to take a while.

A big part of the problem, as I have just found is that the shower tap needs repair and water is dripping out of the shower head directly on to the affected area. This is not a shower that I use regularly since I usually use another in the house so I was not aware of the dripping water. I had reseated the taps not so long ago and replaced all the washers and "o" rings but clearly my re-seating job was not up to scratch and I shall have to re-do it as part of this project. Currently I have the handheld shower head dripping the water into a bucket, pending a proper repair.

The ultimate answer, of course is to replace the whole shower with one that has an acrylic base. this is what we have in the other shower in the house and is my wife's preference as the acrylic ones are so much easier to clean than the tiled shower bases. However, the thought of having tradies come in and work on the thing for a few days, or even replacing the whole bathroom, is not the sort of disruption to our lifestyle that either of us really wants. So I am hoping to implement a band-aid solution to the problem that can give us a few more years until we have to do a whole replacement project.

Voids and crack.jpg

EricL

Hello @Claudeduck

Thank you very much for the update on your tiled shower base. I suggest staying with your plan and try to dry out the shower base as best as you can. Once the base is dry, I recommend regrouting the entire tile base. This will give you a fresh surface to seal and should provide you with an extra few years of service.

The tile adhesive I recommended will work even if there is a bit of dampness in the shower base. However, it's important to give it enough time to cure before you grout the tiles.

If you have any other questions we can help with, please let us know.

Eric

Claudeduck

Well, the job is done. (I think/hope!)

After running a fan heater on the area for many, many hours over a couple of days, it seemed to dry off enough that no actual water could be seen when the tiles were pushed down under foot. The top surface of the underbase was dry but the crack was still showing dampness. I guessed that it might take a week or more to fully dry out so I took the punt that it had dried out enough for me to make a start on the job.

I scraped off the old tile adhesive and used a grout removal blade with a multi-tool to scratch out the old grout between tiles in the area. To get into the corners and other tight spots, I also used some chisels and a hand carbide grout saw. Both the grout removal blade and the hand carbide grout saw are to be found in Bunnings.

Of course, all of that vibrating and scraping loosened a few more tiles so the job had grown a bit in size but it was still not too bad.

I then opened up the crack a bit with a chisel, using just hand pressure, to apply some wet area filler…. https://www.bunnings.com.au/sika-400ml-blue-grey-107-wet-area-filler_p0090775

I only needed a smallish quantity so I have most of the tube still unused. I wonder what else I can fill around the house. 🙂

Obviously I kept a small vacuum cleaner working frequently to pick up the debris and dust along the way.

After a couple of applications of the filler, I then cleaned off the underside and edges of the tiles with a wire brush on an angle grinder, which worked out very well. I also took the three broken tiles and glued them back together using superglue. That also worked well enough and I subsequently laid those tiles along the edge of the shower floor where feet don’t stand on them.

Next job was to lay the tiles. I have laid wall and floor tiles before and usually did a pretty good job but that was a few years ago when I was a younger, fitter, more agile dude. So this time, I took a lot longer and, on seeing my workmanship this time, a tiling trades teacher might conclude that I was in that half of the class that made the top half possible. 🙂 But, what the heck, the repaired floor is still a lot better than it was before.

Before glueing the tiles I masked adjacent tiles with masking tape. Then I mixed up the Dunlop Tile-All Adhesive, as recommended by Eric, applied it to the job, spread it with a notched spreader and immediately found that I had put on the first tile upside down. Damn! Cleaned it off and proceeded to lay all the tiles.

In their original state, the tiles came attached to some string mesh which sets their spacing with factory accuracy but this had long dissolved and so I had to lay each small tile individually. I initially tried to set levels and alignment with other tools such as using a steel rule as a straight edge but this proved to be unproductive since I kept getting the very sticky adhesive on the steel ruler, plus, as the original spacing did not seem to match any standard tile spacers available in Bunnings, I took the easy way out and just tried to align the tiles by use of the naked eye only. The result is far, far from perfect but, what the heck! As I have said the end result is better than what had been the case, previously.

My biggest mistake, however, was to use too much tile adhesive such that when the tiles were pushed Into it, I had adhesive oozing up through between the tiles and on to the face surfaces on many of the tiles. That needed to be cleaned off before the adhesive set completely. So I waited a few hours for the adhesive to get a bit firm such that the tiles did not move when I started working on getting rid of the excess on top and in the spaces in between the tiles where grout would go.

I did that with gentle application of screwdriver blades, chisels, a painter’s scraping tool and supermarket scourers. It took a while but it worked out just fine. Then on the following day when I was about to do the grouting, I decided to work over the grooves one more time with the multi-tool with the grout removal blade. Unfortunately, the vibrations caused the dislodging of one more of the original tiles. This time I just took the quick option of cementing that tile back into place with 5 minute epoxy after wire-brushing the under surface and edges plus scraping off the old adhesive and scraping out of the spot where it belonged.

Grouting went fine, albeit my initial mix of the grout was too weak as I added too much water, but all worked out in the end.

Online advice suggested that there was no point applying grout into the space between the wall tiles and the floor tiles as it invariably cracks. It was advised that the better solution is to apply silicone sealant. I bought a tube of silicon sealant in the matching colour to the grout and applied that after applying masking tape to the contiguous surfaces. I was pleased to discover that the grout and the silicone sealant were available in the same colour despite being from two different companies (Davco and Sika). As it turns out, the colour match is pretty good.

Finally, I applied two coats of the grout sealer as suggested by Eric.

So, this band-aid job on a 40 year old tiled shower floor is done. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but better than it was and is usable. Next time that it needs re-doing might be the time for a complete bathroom renewal but it won’t be me who does it. This job, at floor level in a confined space, has really tested this old bloke’s hips and knees, and created aching muscles where I did not know you could ache. 🙂

The elapsed time for this repair was six days in all. That seems a long time but it is because every application of an adhesive or grout or silicone bead or grout sealant or filler requires 24 hours to cure properly before you can do the next step in the process, plus, of course, there was the extra time that had to be expended at the start of the job to dry out the under base on which the tiles were mounted.

Claudeduck

I should also mention that I said in an early post in this chain....

"A big part of the problem, as I have just found is that the shower tap needs repair and water is dripping out of the shower head directly on to the affected area. This is not a shower that I use regularly since I usually use another in the house so I was not aware of the dripping water. I had reseated the taps not so long ago and replaced all the washers and "o" rings but clearly my re-seating job was not up to scratch and I shall have to re-do it as part of this project. Currently I have the handheld shower head dripping the water into a bucket, pending a proper repair."

After the shower floor repair was fully completed and the necessary curing times followed, I fixed the shower taps. Once again, the fittings in a 40 year old home do show their age and over the years, I had reseated those shower taps a few times as water had cut channels through the seats more than once. There is, of course, only so many times that you can reseat a tap before you have to replace it. So today, I installed stainless steel seats in both of the shower taps using the Hydroseal kit for such... https://www.bunnings.com.au/hydroseal-tap-seat-replacement-kit_p4902119

I have used that kit before quite successfully and likewise, the installation of the stainless steel seats went well today. The taps no longer drip. Yippeeeeeeee!!! 🙂

EricL

Hello @Claudeduck

I think congratulations are in order as your re-tiling and re-grouting are just outstanding. Now that the tiles have been relayed, I'm glad that you've decided to seal the grout lines. This one single step will help extend the life of your tiled floor by years.

Quite often water will slowly seep through the grout and eventually make contact with the tile adhesive. This process over time will start to weaken the tile adhesive and make the tiles come loose.

It's great to hear that you've managed to repair your shower taps. Using the HydroSeal Tap Seat Replacement Kit is the next step on the repair ladder should the tap seats be fully worn away. The best part is that now that you've created the threads for the stainless-steel seats, it will be much easier to repair in the future.

Thank you so much for sharing your repair projects with us, I'm sure our members will find the information very useful.

I look forward to seeing your next project.

Eric

Claudeduck

Thanks Eric.

This is the second time that you have offered advice in response to my asking for help on this website and in both cases your advice has been invaluable to me.

Many, many thanks to you (and Bunnings, of course). I am reasonably handy with DIY, albeit the pains and limitations of age maks it hard for me to do certain jobs in confined spaces these days. However, what extra help that you offer is knowledge of the products that will help do the job right and that is a wonderful help to receive.

Many thanks.

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