For the Filofacts – HOUSE & HOME – TILING
Jeff Howell offered the following advice in the Telegraph 4.4.15 :
“The way to minimise cracking is to have more and wider joints, rather than fewer and thinner ones.
This principle applies whenever solid “unit” materials are jointed together, whether they are bricks, blocks, sheets of plasterboard, or ceramic tiles. These materials will always expand and contract, through thermal movement, or moisture movement, or settlement, or vibration from slamming doors or passing traffic.
If there are only a few, thin joints between the units, then these joints will have to accommodate all that movement, and it will often result in cracks. Whereas, if there are lots of wider joints, then the whole expansion/contraction movement will be spread out – to be shared between lots of areas.”
The House & Home Filofacts, for your steam-powered personal organiser, is a work in progress. Watch this blog. But thatsallfornow …
