Acceptable Lippage Floor Tile

How to prevent lippage when laying large floor tiles.

Acceptable lippage floor tile. Imagine a floor where all tiles are at 1 32 lippage. Lippage is the industry term for floor tiles which have some edges and corners higher or lower than others creating an uneven surface. Discuss acceptable lippage in large format floor tiles in the tiling forum. Tile lippage what s acceptable.

There are tolerances for tile lippage. Large ceramic porcelain or stone floor tiles add beauty and luxury to a home design. The challenge is determining whether the lippage is due to bad workmanship poor quality substrate naturally occurring differences in the calibration of the tiles or the finish of tiles. If the grout joint width is 1 4 or greater then the allowable warpage is 1 16 plus the allowable inherent warpage of the tile.

There are industry standards for determining whether the amount of lippage is acceptable or excessive. To address this on a practical basis some manufacturers recommend against any patterns with offsets in excess of 33 if the tile being used has an edge larger than 18 inches. Lippage is the vertical displacement between two adjacent tiles of a ceramic glass or stone installation. Lippage refers to differences in elevation between edges of adjacent tile modules.

What is acceptable variations in the height of adjoining tiles. For large tiles exhibiting the maximum allowable warpage 50 offsets are guaranteed to exhibit lippage. Would it technically be acceptable. This is defined in the ansi american national standards institute standard a108 02 section 4 3 7.

I understood that you were referring to your earlier comment about defective tiles tnt. To be clear these weren t expensive tiles they varied between 603 and 605mm sq. The work was completed on thursday and i am concerned with the lippage of the tiles. I have yet to see the percentage question addressed.

What percentage of floor tiles that are at the 1 32 limit for lippage is acceptable. The ansi a108 02 standards say that acceptable lippage for floor tiles with a grout joint width of 1 16 to less than 1 4 is 1 32 plus the allowable inherent warpage of the tile. We have 40 spots that are at 1 32 lippage and 8 spots that are above. A leveling system will still give you a bit more control over crappy tiles and allow you to split the high and low spots so you can end up with two spots off by 1 16 rather than one spot off by 1 8.

When excessive this can lead to numerous problems ranging from chipped edges to snagged furnishings and appliances to safety hazards. Lippage is more of a problem with large format tiles because they are harder to set. What looks like a center offset isn t helping either because the tiles themselves can dip down in the middle so when the ends of the offset tile are set in the middle the differing levels are accentuated.