Could you take the broken parts out crush them and mix with epoxy for color then fill the hole?Originally Posted by BJXDS
Could you take the broken parts out crush them and mix with epoxy for color then fill the hole?
Last edited by UNK; 05-14-2023 at 09:42 PM.
I'll wager you a PF dollar™ 😎
The lunatics are running the asylum
The floor is about 6’x5’ and there are several individual stones that are doing the same thing.
This is out of my lane, but I have some questions.
Is this natural stone or artificial?
What is this doing to your sub floor and is there a warranty?
Looks like a fault in the rock and/or bad material.
#RESIST
What is being used to clean the shower? I am not a chemist but would the acid based cleaners have an affect on the rocks?
-Seconds Count. Misses Don't-
Sorry, nothing helpful, just that sounds like an awesome shower.
A lot of the stone in the tile that comes in sheets like that is engineered stone. Now if you have something like this on the exterior of your home (like the engineered veneer stone) then weather, temperatures, chemical exposure and other factors can cause it to chip and "delaminate". A little bit on the exterior is not expected, but not uncommon, and not usually a warranty issue unless it's excessive.
I would say you're seeing the same thing in your shower. I would suggest an epoxy grout (not cement grout) to go over everything, fill the voids, and somewhat act as a "glue" to hopefully hold everything together a little better. This doesn't really address the underlying issue of why it's happening; but it's hard to pinpoint a cause. If it's just a couple spots it's not worth tearing out your whole shower to redo it, since this is really more of an annoyance and not likely a structural or water issue assuming it was installed and waterproofed properly to begin with.
I'm not a geologist but did spend 32 years in construction materials testing and inspection, so I'm not 100% out of my lane. I'm guessing your shower doesn't get cold enough for cyclical freezing and thawing to be an issue, so probably not that. Some rock has reactive inclusions, chert being the first one that comes to mind. It's ferrous and rusts causing popouts, but this obviously isn't that. In my area (the Piedmont region) most of our rock is granitic gneiss and there's a fairly widespread issue with ASR, alkali silica reaction, where the cement reacts with the stone aggregate causing it to expand and spall the concrete from within. That looks more akin to what's going on with your stone. I would guess a chemical reaction between something in water, cleaning products, and whatever composes the inclusion, but I'm not a chemist so I couldn't hazard a guess as to what specifically would be going on. Doesn't @Clusterfrack do things of a chemical nature? Maybe he would know.
The other possibility could be improper underlayment and some flexure in floor framing. With tile you either see cracking through the stone tile or in grout joints, usually the tile. I've never seen popouts like that, though, so I doubt it's a flexure thing.
The problem is testing to determine what's going on is generally more expensive than replacing the tile. Petrographic analysis requires destructive testing to remove a sample and will probably cost something like $1500. I'd guess a sealer would help mitigate it. I know there are surface hardeners like Xypex and Krystol T1 made for concrete, don't know if they could or should be used on natural stone
@DMCutter, looks like you know more about this particular issue than I do.
Water is more reactive than a lot of people realize. As well, it can cause stress fractures by capillary action, and also during drying.
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