I have a bathroom floor in a condo that I have already had replaced once with new tile and the tile has cracked again. It's been at least 5 years and the crack is relatively stable (not getting bigger), but the crack occurs in straight lines and breaks ceramic tile in half. When I had it redone the first time, I went from 4 inch tiles to 12 inch tiles. The contractor told me that the subfloor was supposed to be plywood but was instead strandboard.
My suspicion is that the condo's two sections (joined at a fire wall) has some sort of expansion joint and that the two sections of building run right through my bathroom. If this theory is right, the bedroom would have the same issue, but it has hardwood flooring and isn't visible.
In any case, I'm now preparing for sale or rent and need to fix the floor (if I sell). I've had two estimates for floor replacement. Home Depot says they will only lay down carpet or a floating floor because of the subfloor quick crete (this wasn't a problem for the first floor repair -- I seem to remember them using chisels to pull up the quickcrete in the kitchen, but wasn't around for the bathroom.
Estimate #2 says he can't lay a floating floor because there are two doors in the small (<48 SF) space. He recommends putting down a vinyl plank by glueing it directly on top of the existing tile.
If I let him glue this down, am I making more problems down the road if it eventually has to be repaired again?
Any suggestions?
It is definitely a subfloor issue. The OSB vs plywood is a non-issue in my experience if done properly. Still there should be a layer between the tile and the OSB/plywood. Most folks use at least 1/4 cement board. I prefer to use an uncoupling layer (the last one I used was ditra)
The uncoupling membrane helps prevent small movements in the subfloor from being transmitted to the tiles an grout. But it will not help if there is too much deflection in the framing.
Vinyl is much more forgiving of sub-floor moment, I would think that is vinyl will not work you are looking at a structural issue. I've never seen it done over tile and, without a bunch of research, would worry that the grout line would telegraph through.
Glued vinyl is a PAIN to get up. The floor in my kitchen looks like this floor joist, 5/8 plywood, 5/8 plywood running the opposite direction, glue vinyl floor, 5mm underlayment glued vinyl floor, 3/4 hardwood. Two layers of flooring decided to leave the only vinyl and floor over it (in fact 7/16 OSB was added to level the rest of the rooms on the floor with the kitchen prior to hardwood rather than dealing with vinyl removal).
If they add a underlayment on top of the tile before adding vinyl you may end up with a small height transition.
