Two tiled rooms of identical size can be very different jobs. These are the variables that decide which one you have.
Cement backer board, a thick mortar bed, plywood or a concrete slab each produce a different demolition method and a different amount of substrate repair.
Modern thinset over a rigid backer releases differently from a bed poured over wire lath. Bond strength decides whether tile chips off or takes the substrate with it.
Porcelain fractures rather than crumbles, and large-format units come away in heavy sharp pieces. Both change handling, protection and debris weight.
Tile demolition is the dustiest flooring work there is. Sealed openings, protected routes and a chosen dust-control method are part of the scope, not an extra.
If material we suspect may contain asbestos is uncovered, we stop work in that area and hand the question to a licensed abatement contractor before anything else happens.
Tile, thinset and board often come out together as one system. The work shifts to fasteners and screw holes, and the substrate below usually survives in reasonable shape.
Common in older bathrooms. The bed is thick, heavy and reinforced with lath. Removing it is slow, produces serious debris weight and drops the finished height significantly.
The hardest case. Thinset bonded straight to the substrate means the substrate takes the damage, and gouged plywood or a scarred slab needs preparation before anything new goes down.
A tile removal is finished when the base is sound, clean and flat enough to build on, not when the last tile hits the bin. Ridged thinset, torn plywood veneer, exposed lath fixings and a slab scarred by scraping all have to be dealt with before the next floor is ordered. We photograph and describe that condition rather than covering it over, because it determines whether the next step is a skim coat, a levelling pour or panel replacement.
Flooring Experts Calgary carries out tile removal in Calgary, taking up ceramic, porcelain and stone tile together with the thinset or mortar bed it is bonded to.
Carpet is pulled. Laminate is unclicked. Tile is broken. Every tiled floor is a bonded assembly, and the bond is usually stronger than the parts around it, which means the setting material decides where the failure happens. If the thinset is holding better than the plywood veneer beneath it, the plywood is what comes away.
Tile removal is therefore planned from the setting system rather than from the tile. The debris is heavy and sharp instead of bulky and soft. The dust is fine, mineral and persistent, so containment is planned before demolition rather than improvised during it. And the finished height changes, sometimes by a noticeable amount, which affects door swings, thresholds and the transition into any adjoining room.
Three setting systems cover most Calgary tile. Tile over cement backer board is the cooperative one, because tile, thinset and board frequently come out together and the work becomes fasteners and screw holes. Tile over a poured mortar bed, common in older bathrooms, is slow and heavy: a reinforced bed with wire lath comes out in weighty sections and takes a real amount of finished height with it. Tile bonded straight to slab or plywood is the difficult one, because there is no sacrificial layer, so the substrate absorbs the damage.
Once the floor is open, the slab gets its own look. Expansive clay soils are widespread across Alberta including Calgary, and forensic engineering sources note that basement floor slabs are affected by clay movement to a much greater degree than footings are. Heaved and cracked slabs are far more common in this city than foundation damage. If a basement tile floor cracked in a consistent line, the slab under it is the thing to assess before choosing what goes down next, because a new floor over a moving base repeats the same failure.
Vinyl-asbestos tile and asbestos-containing sheet flooring and adhesives were used in North American housing built before roughly 1980, and Calgary's pre-1960 inner-city stock and its 1960s to 1980s bungalow ring both fall inside that window. Tile removal is exactly the activity that disturbs it.
If we uncover material that we suspect may contain asbestos, we stop work in that area, leave it undisturbed and tell you immediately and in writing. Testing, handling and removal of asbestos-containing material is a licensed abatement trade in Alberta. We do not sample it ourselves and we do not perform abatement. The job resumes when a qualified abatement contractor has cleared the area.
That stop-work boundary sits in the agreed scope before demolition begins, and abatement is contracted separately with the licensed trade rather than added to the tile removal price.
Tile removal sits at the demanding end of the general floor removal planning range of roughly $1 to $3 per square foot in Canadian dollars. Heavy mortar-bed demolition, where a reinforced bed comes out in weighty sections, can run past the top of that band. These are planning ranges for budgeting, not quotes.
Whatever the substrate needs afterwards is priced separately once it is exposed, because ridged thinset, torn plywood veneer and a scarred slab each call for a different correction: a skim coat, a levelling pour or panel replacement. Levelling work in Calgary sits in a planning range of roughly $2 to $6 per square foot.
Sometimes, but it is not something to promise in advance. Tile set over backer board usually comes away cleanly with the board. Tile bonded directly to plywood or slab almost always leaves ridged residue or surface damage that needs preparation afterwards.
It is occasionally possible, but it raises the finished height, loads the existing assembly and hides whatever condition the original substrate is in. If the plan is a long-lived floor, removal gives you a base you can actually verify.
A great deal, and the dust is fine enough to travel. Sealed openings, covered routes and an agreed dust-control method are part of the scope, along with the point at which debris leaves the building.
It may change what happens next. Expansive clay soils across the Calgary area move basement floor slabs far more than they move footings, and a cracked or heaved slab is a more common finding than foundation damage. Once the tile is off, the slab should be assessed on its own before a new floor is selected.
We stop work in that area, leave the material undisturbed and tell you in writing what we have found. Identification, sampling and removal of asbestos-containing material is a licensed abatement trade in Alberta. We do not sample and we do not perform abatement, and the job resumes once a licensed abatement contractor has cleared the area.
Removal generally, across all floor types, sits in a planning range of roughly $1 to $3 per square foot in Canadian dollars. Tile is at the demanding end of that band, and heavy mortar-bed demolition can run past it. That is a budgeting figure, not a quote.