Installation + Continued Care
Your tile was glazed in one run, in one week, for your order alone. Nothing came out of a warehouse, which is why the boxes on your pallet match each other and why the pattern you chose exists at all.
This covers the whole arc: what to do while we make it, what to do when the truck arrives, and how to live on it afterward. Give a copy to whoever is setting it.
While we make it
Your tile goes into production as a single run. That takes about six weeks, and it is the window where a little preparation saves a lot of trouble.
Check your count now, not later. Order 10–20% more than your measured square footage. Cuts, waste and a spare box at the end all come out of that margin. A diagonal lay wastes more than a straight one, and a busy room with a lot of edges wastes more than an open one. If you come up short after the run is finished, the replacement tile is a second production cycle and a second freight charge.
Decide on bullnose while you still can. Anywhere the tile stops and the edge shows — a step, a curb, the lip of a shower, the end of a backsplash — wants a finished edge. Bullnose added now is glazed in the same run, in the same week, and arrives on the same truck. Added later it is none of those things.
Book the installer before the tile lands. Good tile setters are booked out further than six weeks. Ask whether they have set patterned porcelain before, and whether they are comfortable dry-laying a floor before they set it.
Look at the substrate. It has to be clean, dry, cured, structurally sound and flat. For tile with any side over 15 inches, the industry tolerance is 1/8" in 10 feet and 1/16" in 24 inches. Finding a dip in the floor now is a scheduling problem. Finding it the morning the installer arrives is an expensive one.
Have the setting materials on site. Mortar meeting ANSI A118.4 or A118.15, the right trowel, spacers, and a wet saw with a porcelain-rated diamond blade. Your installer will have opinions; the point is that nobody is making a hardware run mid-install.
When it arrives
Tile ships by freight on a pallet, not by parcel. For a home address the carrier books an appointment — they will call you to set a two-hour window, so you will know exactly when to be there.
Count the boxes against the delivery receipt. That is the whole job most of the time. Count them, look at the pallet, sign.
We pack carefully and breakage is rare. But tile is heavy and freight is freight, so in the rare case something is broken:
- Write it on the delivery receipt before the driver leaves. Be specific. “Two boxes crushed, left corner, tile visible through the box” — not “damaged.” This one line is what makes a claim work.
- Photograph it. The pallet, the box, the label, the tile. More photos than feel necessary.
- Call us within three business days. 877-933-HAUS or sales@haustileco.com. Claims have to be recorded on the original receiving documents and reported within three business days of delivery.
- Keep the damaged tile and its packaging until the claim is settled.
Don’t refuse the whole shipment over two boxes — that sends your floor back across the country. Take the delivery, note the damage, and call us.
Then put it somewhere safe. Out of the way of whatever else is happening in the house. Porcelain is tough and doesn’t need babying — it just shouldn’t be where someone will back a wheelbarrow into it.
Before it goes down
Once tile is set, it is yours — installation counts as acceptance, and nothing can be resolved after the fact. So there is one afternoon’s work to do first, and it is the best-spent afternoon of the whole project.
Confirm you got what you ordered. Check the pattern and color on the box labels against your order, and check the box count. You do not need to inspect every tile. Your boxes came off a single production run, made for your order, so they will be consistent with each other — that is the point of making tile to order instead of pulling it from a warehouse.
Dry lay it. Open several boxes, pull from across all of them, and lay the floor out loose before any mortar is mixed. This is where you decide the layout, not on the product page. A quarter turn on one tile gives you a different floor from the same box, and the layout people end up choosing is often not the one they expected.
Every Haustile pattern has a Pattern Play layout guide on its product page — page one shows the layouts, page two is a cut-out sheet you print and move around on a table. Use it before the installer arrives, not while they are standing there.
Plan the cuts. Keep whole tiles at doorways and in sightlines. Push the thin slivers to the edges people don’t look at. Decide where the pattern starts.
Set aside attic stock. Pull one full box before cutting begins. Label it, leave it sealed, and store it flat somewhere dry. If a tile cracks in five years, a box from your own run matches better than anything made later.
If something is wrong, call before the thinset is open. A wrong pattern, a short count, anything that looks off — 877-933-HAUS. Every one of those is fixable before install and none of them is fixable after.
Setting the tile
This section is for whoever is doing the work. Follow the Tile Council of North America handbook where it and this disagree.
| Mortar | ANSI A118.4 or A118.15, mixed per the manufacturer |
| Coverage | 80% minimum in dry interior areas, 95% in wet and exterior |
| Back-butter | Large format, wet areas, exterior, uneven substrate |
| Substrate flatness | 1/8" in 10 ft and 1/16" in 24 in for tile over 15" on a side |
| Site conditions | Enclosed and weather-tight, 50–100°F surface and ambient |
| Running bond offset | 33% maximum unless approved — more invites lippage |
| Cutting | Wet saw, porcelain-rated diamond blade; diamond hole saws for penetrations |
| Movement joints | Per TCNA EJ171 |
Pull tiles periodically to check coverage. Set one, lift it, look at the back. Thin spots under a patterned floor show up later as hollow sounds and cracked tile.
Clear the joints before the mortar sets. Mortar squeezed up into a joint and left to cure takes the joint depth with it, and the grout has nowhere to go.
Movement joints are not optional. At room perimeters, changes in plane, material transitions and anywhere the floor meets something restraining. They get flexible sealant, not grout. A floor with no movement joints is a floor waiting to tent.
Never butt-join the tile. Pressed porcelain has a slight size tolerance by nature, and a grout joint is what absorbs it.
Grout
Use sanded grout at a 1/8" joint. Sanded is the right choice at that width — unsanded shrinks and cracks in a joint this wide.
The decision worth making deliberately is what kind, and most people never get asked. Your installer will turn up with whatever they always use, and on a patterned floor that choice shows for the next twenty years.
| Cement grout + sealer | Epoxy grout | |
| Porosity | Porous — absorbs water and stains | Non-porous |
| Sealing | Required, and again periodically | Never |
| Color over time | Discolors with wear and cleaners | Holds its color |
| Working time | Forgiving | Short — sets fast, small sections |
| Installer skill | Any tile setter | Wants someone who has used it |
| Cost | Lower up front | Higher, mostly in labor |
There is no right answer here. It comes down to installer and client preference, and both are legitimate. Plenty of excellent setters will only use one or only use the other — if yours has a strong view, that view is worth listening to. Ask early, not on install day.
Color is a design choice. A close match quiets the grid. A contrasting joint makes the grid part of the pattern. A darker joint hides debris better in a floor that gets walked on hard. None of those is the correct answer — go with what you like looking at. Try a few on loose tiles during the dry lay.
Cheap custom color: add grout pigment to a base grout rather than buying pre-colored. It is a fraction of the cost and gets you to colors the shelf doesn’t carry.
Timing. Let the mortar cure fully before grouting — the mortar manufacturer sets that, not the grout. Remove haze promptly; cured haze is a different job. Then leave grout alone for about 7 days before any real cleaning, and 21 days before a shower or anything immersed sees heavy water.
Sealing
The tile never needs sealing. Not on day one, not in ten years. Our porcelain absorbs less than 0.2% of its weight in water — there is effectively nothing for a sealer to soak into, and a sealer sitting on a glazed surface is a film that will eventually look like one. If somebody offers to seal your Haustile floor, decline.
What the conversation is actually about is grout, and that depends on what you chose:
- Epoxy grout — nothing to do. It is already non-porous.
- Cement grout — seal it once it has fully cured, and reseal it on whatever interval the sealer manufacturer gives. This is the maintenance you signed up for by choosing cement.
Wet areas need waterproofing, not sealer. Tile and grout are not waterproof and no sealer makes them so. A shower, a steam room, a wet room needs an approved waterproofing membrane behind the tile, proper slope and proper drainage. That is a construction detail, decided before anything is set, and it is the single most expensive thing to get wrong.
Continued care
Porcelain is close to maintenance-free. Most of what people do to tile floors is unnecessary, and some of it is actively harmful.
Routine: sweep or vacuum on a hard-floor setting. Damp mop with warm water and a pH-neutral cleaner. Rinse. That is the whole routine.
Wipe spills when they happen — not for the tile’s sake, which doesn’t care, but for the grout’s.
What to avoid
- Acidic cleaners — particularly anything containing phosphoric or glycolic acid. A lot of supermarket “tile and grout” cleaners are built on them, and they etch glazed surfaces and eat grout.
- Harsh alkaline cleaners, oil-based cleaners, and solvent-based cleaners unless the maker approves them for glazed porcelain.
- Steel wool, scouring pads, anything abrasive.
- Wax, polish, and “restorative” coatings. There is nothing to restore, and the coating is what you will end up stripping.
- Bleach and ammonia as routine cleaners. Occasional and diluted is survivable; regular use is not, mostly because of the grout.
Test anything new in a corner or on a spare tile from your attic stock first.
For harder deposits — hard-water spotting, soap scum in a shower — use a cleaner formulated for ceramic tile rather than a general bathroom product.
Protect it during construction. If other trades are still working, cover the floor with breathable material, not plastic sheeting, and not cardboard that will get wet and sit there.
Specs, claims and contact
Coverage
| Size | Pieces per box | Coverage |
| 8" × 8" | 24 | 10.66 SF |
| 12" × 12" | 8 | 8 SF |
Nominal 12" × 12" tile measures 11 11/16" actual, 1/4" thick. Glazed brick is 2 1/4" × 7 1/2" × 5/8".
Performance
| Water absorption | < 0.2% |
| Breaking strength | 250 lbs |
| Mohs hardness | 7 |
| Shade variation | V1 |
Porcelain tile is rated for floors and walls, indoors and out. Glazed brick is for walls only, indoors or out.
Windows that matter
| Shipping damage or shortage | Note on the receiving documents, report within 3 business days |
| Defect claims | Within 30 days of purchase |
| Installation | Counts as acceptance — raise anything before tile is set |
| Returns | Not accepted; every order is glazed on demand |
| Lead time | About six weeks, confirmed at order |
Full terms are on the warranty page.
Reach a person
sales@haustileco.com · 877-933-HAUS · Monday–Friday, 8:00am–4:30pm CST
If you are mid-install and something is not right, call rather than email. We would far rather talk to you before the tile goes down than after.
