Tiles Defined

Builder Superstore defines a tile as a manufactured piece of hard-wearing material such as ceramic, stone, metal or even glass. Tiles are generally used for covering roofs, floors, and walls, or other objects such as tabletops. Another category are ceiling tiles, made from lightweight materials such as perlite, wood, and mineral wool.

Tiles are often used to form wall and floor coverings, and can range from simple square tiles to complex mosaics. Tiles are most often made from ceramic, with a hard glaze finish, but other materials are also commonly used, such as glass, marble, granite, slate, and reformed ceramic slurry, which is cast in a mould and fired. Builder Superstore has a great selection of tiles available on next day delivery if necessary.

Floor Tiles

These are commonly made of ceramic or stone, although recent technological advances have resulted in glass tiles for floors as well. Ceramic tiles may be painted and glazed. Small mosaic tiles may be laid in various patterns. Floor tiles are typically set into mortar consisting of sand, cement and often a latex additive for extra strength. The spaces between the tiles are nowadays filled with sanded or unsanded floor grout, but traditionally mortar was used.

Our natural stone tiles are especially beautiful. However, as a natural product they are a little less uniform in color and pattern and require more planning for use and installation. Since stone tiles are mass-produced, they have very uniform width and length dimensions. Stone tiles such as those of granite or marble are sawn on both sides and then polished or finished on the facing up side, so that they have a uniform thickness. Other natural stone tiles such as slate are typically "riven" (split) on the facing up side so that the thickness of the tile varies slightly from one spot on the tile to another and from one tile to another. Variations in tile thickness can be handled by adjusting the amount of mortar under each part of the tile, by using wide grout lines that "ramp" between different thicknesses, or by using a cold chisel to knock off high spots.

Some stone tiles such as polished granite and marble are inherently very slippery when wet. Stone tiles with a riven (split) surface such as slate or with a sawn and then sandblasted or honed surface will be more slip resistant. Ceramic tile for use in wet areas can be made more slip resistant either by using very small tiles so that the grout lines acts as grooves or by imprinting a contour pattern onto the face of the tile.

The hardness of natural stone tiles varies such that some of the softer stone (i.e. limestone) tiles are not suitable for very heavy traffic floor areas. On the other hand, ceramic tiles typically have a glazed upper surface and when that become scratched or pitted the floor looks worn, whereas the same amount of wear on natural stone tiles won't show or will be less noticeable.

Natural stone tiles can be stained by spilled liquids; they must be sealed and periodically resealed with a sealant in contrast to ceramic tiles which only need their grout lines sealed. However, because of the complex, non repeating patterns in natural stone, small amounts of dirt on many natural stone floor tiles do not show.

Builder Superstore endeavour to ensure that that there will be minimal variation in color and pattern from one batch of tiles to another of the same description and variation within the same batch. This is part and parcel of manufacture of this type of product and it underlines the need for customers to ensure they have enough tiles for replacements in emergency situations.

Stone floor tiles tend to be heavier than ceramic tiles and somewhat more prone to breakage during shipment.

Roof Tiles

Providing water tight conditions for construction roof tiles are designed to keep out rain, and are traditionally made from locally available materials such as clay or slate. Modern materials such as concrete and plastic are also used and some clay tiles have a waterproof glaze. These are becoming increasingly important in UK construciton methods.

A large number of shapes (or "profiles") of roof tiles have evolved. These include:

• Flat tiles - the simplest type, which are laid in regular overlapping rows. This profile is suitable for stone and wooden tiles, and most recently, solar cells
• Imbrex and tegula, an ancient Roman pattern of curved and flat tiles that make rain channels on a roof
• Roman tiles - flat in the middle, with a concave curve at one end at a convex curve at the other, to allow interlocking
• Pantiles - with an S-shaped profile, allowing adjacent tiles to interlock. These result in a ridged pattern resembling a ploughed field
• Mission or barrel tiles are semi-cylindrical tiles made by forming clay around a curved surface, often a log or one's thigh, and laid in alternating columns of convex and concave tiles

Roof tiles are 'hung' from the framework of a roof by fixing them with nails. The tiles are usually hung in parallel rows, with each row overlapping the row below it to exclude rainwater and to cover the nails that hold the row below.

There are also roof tiles for special positions, particularly where the planes of the several pitches meet. They include ridge, hip and valley tiles.

Ceiling Tiles

Ceiling tiles are lightweight tiles used in the interior of buildings. They are placed on a steel grid and, depending on the tile selected, may provide thermal insulation, sound absorption, enhanced fire protection, and improved indoor air quality. Also frequently called ceiling panels, or drop-ceiling tiles, they offer the advantage of easy access to wiring and plumbing above the ceiling grid, and can be easily changed, removed, or replaced as needed. They are fabricated from perlite, wood, mineral wool, plastic, tin, aluminum, and fibers from recycled paper. They frequently have patterns comprised of holes, to improve their sound absorption properties, though many have a molded surface providing a textured, sculpted, or pressed-tin look to the ceiling. Some tiles are available with decorative photo/transfer surfaces, some are approved for installation under fire suppression sprinkler heads so the sprinklers do not show, some are approved for use in food preparation areas, and some are certified for indoor air quality by the GreenGuard Institute. Tiles are available that resist mold and moisture damage, that have enhanced acoustical properties, and that can be easily trimmed with household scissors. Recycling old tiles depends upon the material used to make them, and some landfills no longer accept traditional mineral fiber tiles, so they must be recycled to the manufacturer.

A History of Tiles

The word is derived from the French word tuile, which is, in turn, from the Latin word tegula, meaning a roof tile composed of baked clay.

Fired roof tiles are found as early as the 3rd millenium BC in the Early Helladic House of the tiles in Lerna, Greece. Debris found at the site contained thousands of terracotta tiles having fallen from the roof. In the Mycenaean period, roofs tiles are documented for Gla and Midea.

The earliest finds of roof tiles in archaic Greece are documented from a very restricted area around Corinth (Greece), where fired tiles began to replace thatchet roofs at two temples of Apollo and Poseidon between 700-650 BC. Spreading rapidly, roof tiles were within fifty years in evidence for a large number of sites around the Eastern Mediterranean, including Mainland Greece, Western Asia Minor, Southern and Central Italy. Early roof tiles showed an S-shape, with the pan and cover tile forming one piece. They were rather bulky affairs, weighting around 30 kg apiece. Being more expensive and labour-intensive to produce than thatchet, their introduction has been explained with their greatly enhanced fire resistance which gave desired protection to the costly temples.

The spread of the roof tile technique has to be viewed in connection with the simultaneous rise of monumental architecture in Archaic Greece. Only the appearing stone walls, which were replacing the earlier mudbrick and wood walls, were strong enough to support the weight of a tiled roof. As a side-effect, it has been assumed that the new stone and tile construction also ushered in the end of 'Chinese roof' (Knickdach) construction in Greek architecture, as they made the need for an extended roof as rain protection for the mudbrick walls obsolete.