Hi - I would be grateful for some expert / experienced advice. I had a building project finish 5-6 months ago. Part of the project was a 90m2 porcelain patio at the rear installed on a hardcore/MOT compacted base with mortar bed. The porcelain tiles were 20mm thick (60x60cm) external grade. I discovered after the installation that the porcelain tiles were NOT pasted with the specified slurry bond agent before laying down on the mortar bed - as listed in the fitting instructions. The landscaper did not do any prep to the tiles before placing on the mortar as far as I am aware . After only 5 months I noted that one of the tiles on the stepped area of the patio was loose, and when looking further saw that the adjacent tiles could easily be lifted with mild finger pressure. I haven’t tried further tiles in the other areas as I am scared to, but I would suspect they could easily come loose at some stage. See photos. What should I do? It would be messy to replace the whole 100m2 patio but then I guess its going to come up/“pop” at some stage in other places. The rectification is presumably to chip out the old mortar bed and replace and then properly slurry bond the tiles on a new mortar bed? It would be a right pain as we have now in progress decking and new turfing. In fairness the mortar bed is rock hard solid when I look at underneath the lifted tile (photo) and the whole patio in the main is a solid mass with no obvious issues. One issue in future May be that he has used water permeable brush in grout - Silka Fast Fix… so there is lots of water soaking through the grout to the mortar bed.
The other point to add here is that the patio edge hasn’t been properly finished..(photo).. there are gaps. I think he needs to come back and fully haunch the edges as we are having turfing flat to the edge of the patio.
My current thinking as I don’t want to disturb the area around the decking is to lift all the accessible edge tiles and get them to slurry bond them down on the existing mortar bed. Then to fully haunch the edges to lock in the patio as a solid mass.