Q: I’m looking at buying a house in LA that has a garage converted into an office. I’d like to use the garage but protect the new tile floor. I’ve seen mats but think I may need a weight distribution type overlayment to the floor. Any suggestions?
Paul
I did a quick follow-up with Paul to get some more information on the tile and also to find out how much weight he expects this floor to be bearing. He mentioned it will be one car, a Saab Convertible which weighs roughly 3500lbs and sent in this picture of the currently converted office.
A: Off hand I can’t tell precisely what type of tile this is. Here’s the big thing, if this tile is the type that is meant for flooring (which most is not, its meant for walls and counters), then you should be ok. If it’s a cheaper ceramic (tend to be a white or tan bodied tile before glaze), then it may not be able to hold the weight as its likely built for a wall.
If you can find out from the previous owner precisely what type of tile this is (porcelain, ceramic, etc) and where it was purchased it will give us a great deal of help. Your other option would be the test it and pray method – basically, try taking your car over it and see what happens. With most tile meant for flooring it is rather rare that they could not bear this type of load, realistically its what’s under the tile that needs to be suited to bearing this weight, so as long as the mortar was done well, and the tile is a flooring tile, not wall tile, you should be ok.
Use of a mat or overlay may help with direct impact, such as dropping an item on the tile, but for raw load bearing, it becomes a matter of what is under the mat – which means the tile and mortar, so in this case a mat is not likely to help much.
