Tiling

Newly Installed Floor Grout Cracked - Now what? Ditra? Ply?

Anonymous user 09/03/2024 - 2.52 PM

Hello, I have a Bathroom next door to a WC, and I'm having both redone. The tiler laid down Ditra Mat over my old floorboards (which were previously under lino) and then tiled on top. The floor tiles in the WC are fine. The floor tiles in the bathroom are where the cracks are. There is one long crack, and one crack perpendicular to that. The long crack is over the one floorboard that was loose. When I called the tiler, he said: 'oh I didn't check, I assumed you would have known the state of your floor'. So he now has to come back and redo it, but I initially thought he could take up a few tiles to fix the floorboard down but now think he has to take it all up! I'm not sure?! I've heard that the Ditra has to cover the *entire* floor area for it to work, and obviously once we need to be screwing floorboards down, that's not going to work anymore. It's not a big area - 18 x 33x33 tiles over an area that's about 2m x 1m. I've also heard that the Ditra manufacturers now advise laying Ditra over ply, and not without. So now I'm very confused. So which of the following would you choose?: a) Taking up only a few tiles where the cracked grout is, fixing the floorboard down, and hoping for the best? b) Taking tiles and floorboard up, laying marine ply with Ditra and Tile on the top? c) Laying marine ply on top of floor boards with Ditra on top of that? (This will make the floor very high!) d) Taking all tiles up, fixing the floorboard, the repeating what was done before with just Ditra and tile? e) Something else? A builder I trust from an old job came around to give me advice and suggested it all had to come up and also said he didn't like Ditra. He prefers ply. It's a high water area next to a bathtub so I want to be really careful here! The floorboards seem in fairly good condition.