A huge disappointment

For those of you that followed along with our horrible floor travails back in January of 2014 realized that we had a tremendous job ripping out the rotted, from the leak, floor, and all the tile in the coach, the rebuilding of the floor, the extremely careful redo of the tile in the galley and bath areas and finally the installation of engineered wood throughout, we have experienced a huge unexpected problem.  But first let's recap.

The original damage caused by the leaking
refrigerator panel

Chipping away more and more

As the damaged area got bigger and bigger we determined the only way to go was to remove all the tile from front of the coach to the bedroom and reinstall new tile in the galley and bath area.

Ripping out the tile in the hallway,
this is NOT fun

New plywood installed

Tile dry fitted

And tile all installed and awaiting grout

Although Jan and I did all the demo, we hired a guy to cut and lay the new tile.  Nothing against him as he researched through his tile contacts what kind of mastic or thinset would be best to use in a rolling home.  He came up with an elasticized mastic that we all agreed should work well.  

Our coach has 4 slide outs, one on each side of the living area, and one on each side of the bedroom.  The slide in question affecting the tile is the one on the passenger side front that encompasses the galley, associated cabinets, and the couch.  The slide moves in and out over rollers, 5 in all.  3 are mounted in the floor of the coach from the front of the slide to about the 3/4 mark going aft, the other 2 are mounted in the bottom of the cabinets, one at the rear of the slide about where the double doors are in the above photo and the other in the front of the photo where the single door is.  Now when the slide comes in, those two rollers mounted in the base of the cabinets roll over the tile.  We knew this when we installed the tile and our installer worked hard to be sure to have an even solid covering of mastic behind those tiles in particular.  Well, the challenge to accomplishing that is the ends of the tile had to be pushed and squeezed under the cabinets, but we all thought he had accomplished the task satisfactorily.  We had the wood installed later after our return from Alaska in 2014.  That went very well, and the slide functioned beautifully.

Wood being installed

All done

Now to earlier this year.  We first noticed that on one tile in front of the refrigerator the grout was cracking along one side.  On inspection we noticed that we could ever so slightly move the one edge of the tile.  All we could think of was about a leak, gun shy you know, well there was and is no leak, hmmm.  Then we noticed the tile that was under the aft roller in the cabinet seemed to be slightly loose as well.  OMG!  

If you remember we had an appointment with Elite, our go to shop in Oregon back in August of this year to have some work done.  They are experts with slides, systems, and remodeling, so we figured we'd ask about our problem while there.  Well, Murphy raised his head the very morning of our appointment.  We were at a campground not too far away, so we decided Jan would take the truck over a couple minutes before I would bring the motorhome just to make sure they were ready for us.  So as she left I started to put the slides in, it is just coincidental that that slide is the last one we bring in, so with all the other slides in, I start to bring the passenger front slide in and......BAM!  A loud sharp crack that stops me cold, OMG, what in the world???????  I stop and go look and find the porcelain tile that the rear slide roller moves across has snapped in two.  Porcelain tiles are very, very hard and tough, it's why we picked them so when they break it's like a gunshot.  I figure well it's already broken and I got to go, so gritting my teeth I bring the slide in the rest of the way and head for Elite.

We get Erik at Elite to take a look and he informs us that whoever installed the tile used the wrong mastic, and in his opinion, there were going to be more and more tiles come loose over time.  Oh wow, we don't want to do this job again:(  So we decided to cover the broken tile with plastic and packing tape to protect us, the pieces and shards from this tile are like razor blades, and figure we will nurse it back to Florida where we can deal with this one way or another.  Well about a week or so ago, the tile shattered completely, and it was really interfering with the movement of the slide so we knew we couldn't ignore it any longer.

Closeup of our busted tile

The first thing we had to do was raise the roller, remove it and find out what was going on. Of course that calls for removing the floor of the cabinet so a lot of unloading had to occur first.  Once we got the roller out we could see the roller was sitting right where it was supposed to be on the edge of the tile.

The adjustable roller

The roller's home and the edge of the tile

We pulled the broken tile out and the first thing we noticed, it was easy.  Not what we want, if it's easy then the mastic isn't holding at all, bad news.  In fact we found two not so good things, one the edge of the tile where the weight of the slide sat was hardly buttered with mastic, no wonder the little bit of mastic wore down, and then caused the edge to not be supported, and eventually from the weight snapped the tile in two, and then eventually to shatter, and secondly when we pulled up the rest of the tile, there was NO adhesion to the plywood floor, it came up clean as a whistle!

You can see here the abysmal coverage of mastic

And here the fact that there was no adhesion to the plywood,
it looks brand new!

So what to do?  We needed a temporary good solution to get us to Florida, then we can determine exactly how we want to proceed with this tile repair.  We decided to make a "tile" of plywood that the roller can move over.  We shimmed it up in the back and cut it to fit, plus we can report the slide moves in and out very well.

Our temp solution

When we get to Florida we will fashion a smooth strong plate, probably of an MDO or something for under where the slide roller sits when it is extended  instead of tile, which will butt up against the new tile we will install.  Also Erik at Elite told us what mastic to use, the one they use and have never had a tile loosen, going to do a bit more research into that before we begin.  As to the other tile that slightly moves, well, we think it might be best left alone until it gets worse, it really isn't noticeable except to us.  We don't even  want to think about the possibility that ALL the tile may have to come up sometime in the future.