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The Natural Philosopher

wrote:
I've been asked to remove some slate floor tiles in a massive kitchen.

They seem to be laid on a layer of plywood or possibly blockboard which
is in turn laid onto the original floorboards.

The owners want to salvage as many as possible so the can sell them.
The tiles are about 20mm thick.

Questions:

1. How do I remove them

With extreme difficulty.

If you are lucky, they will lever up.

If not they will break.

The likelihood is that they will break, or come up covered in cement,
which will need chipping off, and or dissolving off in brick acid.

Yoiu have to balance the time and expense of cleaning them against their
value. cheap multicolored riven Indian slate can be bought for as little
as 16 a square meter, good grey Indian is about 20-25.

When I laid my floor, the final cost, including my time, was about 100 a
square meter..huge amounts of labour, and cement (about as expensive as
the tiles when used thick to cover irregularities) grout, sealant and
endless hours. The hours could have been spent getting the floor dead
level, but they were spent putting the tiles down.

It is a rule that expensive materials cheap labour is usually cheaper
than cheap materials expesnive labour..on average materials constitute
1/3rd of the cost of any building project. This is higher admittdely
when interior finishes and fitments come into play, but its still
usually around 1/2

Which is why you find skips full of perfectly good tiles, sheets of
marble and stone and the like. The cost of reusing them exceeds teh cost
of buying new.

2. Will they come off whole or are they more likely to break

I'm thinking of doing it by levering my massive crowbar under the
blockboard/plywood layer to loosen than in the hope that the flexing of
the layer will break the bond between the tiles and the blockboard
layer.

I am sure it will in some case. In others the slates will snap. In all
cases they will be filthy and covered in cement.

Any tips would be appreciated.

Quote £45 a square meter carefully remove and clean up what slate they
get, and then tell them that new slate is £23 a sq meter.

That will solve the problem.