Shower Wall Tile Cracking

Sometimes water has gotten behind your shower causing the shower walls to swell causing cracks in the tiles.

Shower wall tile cracking.

Simply put because of movement. Broken or cracked shower tiles can allow water and mold to get in your shower walls so they should be replaced or repaired immediately. Small hairline cracks in ceramic tile showers do not typically allow water to get through. In far more instances the crack was caused by anomalies under or around the tile.

To fix the crack you have a couple of options. Fill the hole or crack as best you can. A tile expert michael byrne responds. Loss of bond or moving substrate.

In other cases a mastic type of adhesive was used instead of thinset and this can cause the tiles to not adhere the the shower walls and crack. Low quality tiles the type and quality of tiles used for your bathroom wall are. There is a ceramic soap dish in the corner and even it is cracked. You can repair the crack with tile filler and then paint over the filler with a color that matches the rest of the tile.

Cracked bathroom tiles can be caused by either an instability in the surface under the tile or in rare cases the low quality of the tile itself. Tiles generally crack for only two reasons. In many cases the crack is not the result of an inferior tile. Hairline cracks in tile may result from remote obscure reasons such as improperly cured concrete or flexing underlayments and joists.

Use a putty knife to apply it to the crack in the tile. If your tile s crack seems to run along the tile s outer edge closely inspect the crack to determine if it s really on the tile or just through the grout. Once the material has hardened trim the excess with a sharp object such as a razor blade. You can replace the entire tile.

What could be causing the cracking. It doesn t appear that there has been any movement in the floor or the walls. Not properly fixed an improper fixing method is one of the main reasons why shower wall tiles crack. There are many reasons why shower tiles can crack and break.

Occasionally a crack along the joint between grout and tile appears to be a crack in the tile s surface. In this case the substrate might be moving if the studs are spaced farther apart than 16 inches on center allowing that backerboard to flex. Once you removed it make use of a fine grit sandpaper to brush against it and make it smoother.