In the new factory-fast prefab world, this is an attractive solution poles apart from the old way of doing floors.
We talk often about Open Building, the idea that buildings should be able to evolve and change with the times. Sometimes it is because of technological change; sometimes it is a matter of style and taste. One of the most expensive components in a building, and perhaps the most difficult to change, is a tile floor; if you drop something and crack a tile it can be difficult and expensive to fix.
We are also possibly at the start of a prefab revolution, where companies like Katerra are building new factories to crank out housing. Conventional tile doesn’t play well with prefab; it can crack during transport and is relatively slow to install. We are in a fast new world now.
And don’t ever make a mistake like I did in the last prefab I built; because the work is done in the factory far away from me and the client, nobody noticed that a 6x6 inch tile was being installed when the client wanted a 12x12. It is one of the reasons that it was my last prefab project.
How Magnetic Flooring Works
That is why I was so intrigued when I saw Kablan Magnetic Flooring at a building show a few months ago. It is a new product where porcelain tile is not held down with toxic glues and grouted with mortar; it is instead held in place by magnets. There is not much information on their website about exactly how it works, but there is Gabriel Krausz’s patent which describes it:
As best as I can understand the patent, a layer of magnetized sheetmetal is attached to the subfloor; the metal may have punched out tabs to bang into the floor. The tiles, with magnetic backing, are then put in place.
Advantages to Magnetic Tile
Krausz summarizes the problems with conventional tile floors, which are pretty much the same as my complaints above.
Instead, with magnetic flooring, the assembly is thinner because there is no troweled thinset layer, there is probably a lot more flexibility if you are putting it into a prefabricated unit (no grout to crack) and if you are like me and spec the wrong tile, it is not the end of the world to pull it up and replace it. It is also going to be a really fast installation. I worried about water penetration but on their site they note that their tile is so precise that they have this covered.
There is lots to love about this kind of thinking. In this new Katerra world where everything is factory fast, old fashioned tile installation is a real drag. In an Open Building world, it is nice to see a system that can be fixed and replaced if required. It is an attractive idea. Lots of great photos but not a lot of information at Kablan, but I will update this post when I receive it.
