Terracotta floor tiles

[Zebra]

I was pondering what to put on the kitchen floor, wavering between a modern, easy to clean tile, and something more natural and periody, when an acquaintance gave me 160 terracotta floor tiles. They are new, not reclaimed. I don't know where he got them from, but they are similar to this: http://www.marble-mosaics.com/mexican-terracotta-tiles-300-mm-x-300-mm-x-20-mm-431-p.asp?gclid=CN2yuZrt1MUCFeLLtAodGyEAOg#fo_c=109&fo_k=61cd986a8171005b7ffb8b500fd44e85&fo_s=gplauk
The kitchen is in the modern extension so doesn't need breathable materials, but joined to the old part of the house with only a half height partition, so I want it to look natural and in keeping with the old house.
Will these be a nightmare to look after? How should I treat them? How does one clean them? Will they look filthy after a few years?
I am doing an experiment with one at the moment, trudging on it with muddy hooves, throwing wine, coffee, mayonnaise at it, and it's standing up quite well.......
I could always use them in the garden if I don't use them in the kitchen.

 

[plasticpigeon]

Lucky you! The surface looks quite rough, most quarries have a smoother finish. I would say that terracotta/quarries/pamments are an ideal floor for a kitchen, they are very strong so don't break if you drop something, don't wear out, aren't very porous so spills are easily cleaned up, and are naturally coloured so look great. I have to admit the quarry tiled floor in our kitchen probably hasn't been mopped for 3 or 4 months, it is probably filthy but as it is a natural floor with natural variation in colour the dirt hardly shows. I would use those tiles if you are happy with their stain resistance, and in my opinion they look best laid brick pattern with no gaps between the tiles. As you don't need a breathable floor you can use pure cement slurry as grout for the very thin gaps if you go that route.

 

[Zebra]

I think they may be a little different from yours, pigeon. These are incredibly porous as they are completely unglazed. I was told by the guy who donated them, that any grout/mortar which gets on the faces will be impossible to remove, so I don't think I'd be able to grout with a slurry.

 

[Flyfisher]

They look very much like the pamments we used for our new kitchen floor. We bought them from here http://www.pamments.co.uk/ and there is a lot of information about their care and cleaning.

Yes, they are quite porous, but can be easily sealed in a variety of ways. I used Liberon Stone Sealer for a natural finish, but there are many others, some of which will deepen their colour and others that won't. They are quite easy to clean, though I confess we're not that good at doing so!

I grouted them with a dryish lime mix and then kept damp for a day or so by gentle spraying. I was reasonably careful about not getting the mix on the face of the tiles but was not entirely successful. However, it was very easy to remove any grout from the tiles using 'spirits of salts', which is basically a more concentrated form of builders 'brick acid'. I don't think I'd risk a 'slurry' approach - at least not without testing first on a spare tile before laying.


This photo shows the floor about a year after laying.



We also used the same tiles for a fireplace and this photo was taken before cleaning up the tiles after grouting.

 

[plasticpigeon]

My tiles are edwardian, unglazed, but their surface is smoother, maybe the tiles I have are more vitrified by being baked at a higher temperature. Having said that, the grout I used did not just wipe off, but came off easily with brick acid like FF says, except i used it quite diluted, spirits of salts is the stuff that smokes when you take the top off and is super strong.

 

[Zebra]

Thanks for the pics FF, those are very similar, although mine are probably imported rather than handmade locally.
Will you have to redo the stone sealer after a few years?
I am rather lucky to receive such things from people - I suppose the benefit of a project being on the go for nearly five years is that such things come up.

 

[Flyfisher]

The Liberon info suggested re-sealing annually, though I haven't done so yet. With this particular sealer, the principle is to do a 'water drop' test. If the water soaks into the tile then it requires another application. The idea being that if water cannot soak in then neither can stains or dirt . . . except that the unglazed surface will inevitably collect some dirt, though it's reasonably easy to clean.

Here's some interesting info about treating and cleaning terracotta tiles: http://www.artofclean.co.uk/terracotta-tilebrickquarry-tile-cleaning/

We chose pamments because they have been used elsewhere in the house, so it's clearly a traditional material. I initially looked for reclaimed tiles but could not find enough for the area we needed to cover, plus they were very expensive! Then I found Norfolk Pamments and realised I could have new pamments, made traditionally from local clay (well, Cambridgshire), and this seemed appropriate for a new build.

The older pamments in other parts of the house haven't been properly cleaned for decades, yet seem to look OK - or perhaps we're just used to them. As is often the way, the first few times we spilt things on the new kitchen floor, we'd rush to scrub things clean but we soon got fed up with that! My feeling is that the floor will look fine after a couple of decades of wear, tear and general abuse. :wink:

Here are the original pamments for comparison:

 

[Flyfisher]

Having said that, the grout I used did not just wipe off, but came off easily with brick acid like FF says, except i used it quite diluted, spirits of salts is the stuff that smokes when you take the top off and is super strong.

Yes, I should have said that I diluted the spirits of salts!

Basically, it's hydrochloric acid (HCl) and brick acid is usually diluted around 10% HCl. The spirits of salts I buy in our local hardware shop is about 35% and I diluted it 50:50 to give a fairly strong solution for cleaning grouting marks from the pamments.

I know we like to poke fun at 'elf n safety, but sensible precautions do, of course, apply. No need to be scared of the stuff, just careful.

 

[Zebra]

Your old pamments look quite shiny, FF, or is that just wear?

 

[Flyfisher]

I guess it must be wear. Those ones are in a hallway so would have had a lot of foot traffic in their time.

Of course, they may have been treated with oil or wax once upon a time.

 

[formerly known as]

Earth Wood and Stone (Norwich) do some very good Spanish clay tiles in both 300mm and 225mm. They are a very good alternative and match historic pamments very well. I laid mine half bond with a butt joint and 'sealed' them with a 50/50 mix of turps and white spirit. Footfall has polished them and they have resisted - in no particular order - tea, coffee, food, mud, clay, lime, red wine, mouse/rat/rabbit intestines (gotta love cats) and two / four stroke stroke oil. Whatever you use, please avoid chequer bond and 10mm joints.

 

[Zebra]

Thanks, formerly known as. That's useful advice. How long have they been down, and have you had to retreat them in that time? Don't suppose you have a photo you could post?
Z
Edit: do you mean real turps or turpentine substitute?

 

[Flyfisher]

Whatever you use, please avoid chequer bond and 10mm joints.

In principle, I agree. In practice, it's not always so simple. We found the best bond effect depended on the room layout and whether there was a 'dominant' aspect from which it would be viewed. We laid out our kitchen floor in brick bond and it looked fine from one aspect but less so from another. When we swapped orientation we found it just reversed the problem. In the end we chose a diagonal, which also made it easier to 'hide' the one non-parallel side rather than accentuate it. Just experiment with the tile layout before choosing the one you think best suits the space. In contrast, for our fireplace, brick bond worked best (we thought).

As for joint sizes, I agree with 'the smaller the better'. However, we found that handmade pamments are not as geometrically regular as ceramic tiles and consequently could not be simply laid with spacers for a consistent joint gap. We discovered this when laying out tiles to choose the orientation and quickly found that simply abutting the tiles resulted in the grout lines drifting off 'true'. So it wasn't quite as simple as using a single chalk line for reference and then working to the other edges of the tiles with fixed spacers, as is generally the case with ceramic bathroom tiles etc. I imagine this effect would be accentuated when using reclaimed pamments from many different sources and therefore of many (slightly) different sizes.

 

[formerly known as]

Thanks, formerly known as. That's useful advice. How long have they been down, and have you had to retreat them in that time? Don't suppose you have a photo you could post?
Z
Edit: do you mean real turps or turpentine substitute?

They have been down for about 10 years. Aside from the initial couple of (saturation) coats of 50/50, I have done nothing with them aside from wipe and sweep up debris. The tiles in the raw state look almost identical to your Mexican examples.

I recall that before laying, some of the raised edges needed to be dressed - easily done with back edge of a trowel - and, as indicated by Flyfisher, they all vary slightly in size, but it all came good in the end with butt joints. No spacers used, so the joints are very tight.

With my 'real' pamment floors, I wash them down with soapy water every few years (emphasis on few) and let the soap and grit do the job of pointing - as advised to me by a well known surveyor several decades back.

turps substitute appears to do the same in this instance as proper turps.

 

[Flyfisher]

I recall that before laying, some of the raised edges needed to be dressed - easily done with back edge of a trowel -

Good reminder! Most of my pamments required this and I used a stone block to dress the edges of each tile. Unfortunately, I don't know where to get them as someone kindly gave them to me, but they said they are used in concrete floor polishing machines. They are a bit like a heavy duty pumice stone. After dressing a dozen or so pamments, they developed a slight groove which made it very quick and easy to run down each edge corner of the pamment.

A quick search suggests they might be called 'dressing stones'.

 

[plasticpigeon]

I'll second that. I used reclaims from all over the place, there was as much as half an inch between biggest and smallest, and some were not quite square, but I still laid most with butt joints. Some joints had to be bigger of course, and I sometimes had to be selective about which tile I used so the lines didn't stray from parallel too much, but the finished effect was what I wanted.

 

[Zebra]

All useful info, thanks. So is the consensus that a lime/sand mix should be used for pointing them, rather than grout? The chap who gave them to me also gave me some tile adhesive and a grey "stain resistant wide joint grout" which I was thinking of ignoring, and using an NHL mortar mix, both for the laying and the pointing. However, my query is simply whether a butt joint, being so tight, is open to receiving something so coarse, if you know what I mean?

 

[plasticpigeon]

I don't see why you would use lime at all if it is the modern bit of the house. Very small joints will need a very fine and runny grout, I think that is why Victorians and Edwardians used cement slurry, but if you are not keen on that I'm not sure what else. I used a lime grout from Ty mawr which was lime and a very fine aggregate; it seemed like talc or chalc or something so fine it was impossible to see the grains.

 

[formerly known as]

if on a modern floor, use the adhesive, but fill gaps with dry mix of hydrated lime and soft sand .... brush in, gently mist with a sprayer, tamp, and repeat until gap is full. Have a glass of red wine and admire your handiwork.

 

[Zebra]

Thanks again, both.