How to repair hollow tiles?

[JT007]

There are 3 tiles in living area have some hollow sounds, a section of a tile is slightly loose now when stepping on. I am the second owner of the property, and I can see the previous owner has tried to fix the tile before. May I know what is the best approach to fix this? Ideally I do not wish to lift the entire tiles which I think may cause more damage. Thank you.

[Jewelleryrescue]

Hi @JT007 

I have  seen  videos of people scraping out the  gruot all around the tiles or use a  angle grinder with extreme care to degrout.

Then they used a caulking gun with  tile glue and squeeze in as  much  glue as possible allround  into the grout grooves under the tile. Some tiles  oozed glue out the other side.  Need less to say they  where fixed but I havnt done this process  myself in  theory it will work

Normal  tile  clean up and i might use the  tile  glue as grout if the same color as the rest.  Or  add  fresh  grout as  needed.

Hope this helps. Let us know how you  go.

[JacobZ]

Hi @JT007,

A warm welcome to the Bunnings Workshop community and thank you for your question.

@Jewelleryrescue's advice is the only way I can see that you could repair this without removing the tile.

Keep in mind, that this is not the preferred method of repair, which would involve removing the tile, reapplying tile adhesive with even coverage and then installing a new tile.

If you'd like to try Jewelleryrescue's method, you'll have to start by removing the grout with a Grout Saw.

While the product isn't designed for this specific purpose, you could try pumping this Dunlop Tile-All Plus Premixed Tile Adhesive beneath the tile to fill the hollow. Depending on how much of a hollow spot there is, you may need to pump quite a bit in there to fill it up.

Once the adhesive has dried, regrout the gaps between the tiles. Check out How To Grout Wall Tiles for some guidance on grouting.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

Jacob